Self-care is easy to talk about but much more difficult to put into practice. Most of us know at least some of the things we could do to be kinder to ourselves, but we have all sorts of excuses for not implementing them now. Thus, I found a sermon my friend preached some time ago very helpful as it spoke to the issue of self-care. She drew her ideas from Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom.
The four agreements are:
1. Be impeccable in your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best.
Be impeccable in your word, or to put it another way, watch your mouth. Think before you speak. Don’t say something you’ll regret. When our son was in treatment, he was told to count to 10 out loud before he said anything. That way, he would have time to think before speaking. As he told us when he got home. “It’s really hard to count to ten slowly and then use the f-bomb or say something mean or spiteful.
Don’t take anything personally. It feels so good when we can detach ourselves from others’ criticisms and complaints. When I was in counseling, my counselor told me to step back from what felt like a personal attack and remind myself that the other person was not really saying anything about me but was giving me important information about how they think and feel. I will admit it took some hard work to come to the place where I no longer personalize mean-spirited attacks or what I would have thought was painful criticism. The bonus for not personalizing things is that once we can hear what the other is saying without getting defensive, we may discover they have some pretty good ideas that can improve what we are doing.
Don’t make assumptions. This is a big one that can get us into all sorts of trouble. As my husband used to say, making assumptions makes an ass out of u and me. When we assume our spouse knows what we want for Christmas, for instance, rather than telling him what we want, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and hurt. When we assume that the kids know they are supposed to clean their rooms before company comes, we are setting ourselves up for a fight. Make no assumptions. Be clear about what you want another person to do. Then, they are free to say yes or no, and you will be able to clarify things from that point.
Always do your best. This one can be a bit tricky as we often have unrealistic expectations about what we can or should do. Always do your best, which encourages us to be realistic about our abilities. As we become comfortable doing our best, we may discover that we can achieve far more than we’d realized. Always do your best, but that doesn’t mean we have to be better than everyone else. It means learning what our comfort zone is and growing from that point. Once we can do that, being comfortable in our own skin, we can stop being so hard on ourselves and discover that it feels good to be me.
So there we have it, the four agreements: Be impeccable in our word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best.