The Four Agreements Part 5 of 5: Always Do Your Best
January 16, 2009 by dr. lam
Today we conclude our five-part series on Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, celebrating ancient Toltec wisdom so that we can pursue our own personal freedom to create our dream of happiness. The first 3 agreements in summary are as follows: be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions. Today’s is “always do your best.”
Doing our best is the embodiment of the first 3 agreements. It is the way that we can accomplish the first 3 agreements, and it will represent a constant struggle on a daily basis to attain. Doing our best does not mean doing more or less than our best but simply our best. There was a man who approached a religious Master asking him, “How do I attain transcendence?” The Master said, “Spend four hours a day in meditation.” The man asked, “How long then will it take for me to attain transcendence?” The Master replied, “Meditating for 4 hours a day will allow you to attain transcendence in ten years.” The man then said, “What if I meditate for 8 hours a day? How long then would it take?” The Master replied, “It would probably take about 20 years.” The man looked quizzically and probed further, “How is that?” The master explained, “We are here to live life and to enjoy our life. If you only need 2 hours a day to meditate, but you spend 8 hours a day, you will frustrate your ability to attain happiness. Do your best and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy.”
Sometimes, we spend too much of our effort to be our best and we diminish our pleasure in so doing. Sometimes, we do not spend enough effort and we lose pleasure as well. Doing our best is the most important thing to do. For example, sometimes we go to work simply to work to get a paycheck and do not enjoy the action that we do. If we don’t enjoy our work and don’t take pleasure in the action, we can never do our best. Instead we work all week so that we can escape during the weekend, in which we punish ourselves through self-hating behavior of intoxication and self-disregard. Then we start over again.
Our best will vary. We will not always be at our best. But our contract is that we don’t give up simply because we fail at one time or that we don’t succeed in our effort to be our best. Our contract to be our best, which entails following the first 3 agreements (be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions) will need to be renewed all the time. The more that we submit to these 4 agreements, the fewer failures we will encounter and the easier we will find our path to accomplish them. The more we submit to our past dreams, i.e., past failures or past indiscretions, the more that we cannot live fully in today’s moment. We must live in the action of today and take pleasure in doing so. When we take a shower, feel the water hit your body in a cleansing way. When we eat, taste the beauty of the food that enters your mouth. Live today and for today. If you fail, never mind. Try again to succeed. If you live your life in this way, you have no option but to live in a blissful state so that your personal dream is a dream of heaven and no longer self torment. I am working on my own path to personal freedom, and the act of writing these blogs helps me every day try to be better than I was yesterday. It is helping me taste life a little sweeter and to unburden myself of my own human failings.
All my best,
Sam Lam
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Well said.
Doing our best in whatever it is we are doing in each moment, attending fully to THIS MOMENT without assumption or attachment, is to live life completely.
Thanks for sharing “The four agreements”.
my pleasure. i am working on the sequel, the voice of knowledge, for next week. have a great weekend!