Love & The Four Agreements

One of my all time favorite books is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Living by the agreements has made my life easier and more manageable over the years, in all areas, especially love!

By applying these agreements to your love life, you can avoid the trap of “taking your loved one for granted” while deepening and enriching your relationship.

Here are the basic Four Agreements:

1) Be Impeccable With Your Word: This one is so simple: To me, being impeccable with your word is to keep your promises and to be sure to communicate changes in advance.  Your soulmate should be able to count on you, always.

2) Don’t Take Anything Personally and 3) Never Make Assumptions:  We are all imperfect beings and from time to time say things we don’t really mean. Jumping to conclusions (by making assumptions) isn’t the best way to go.  Rather than let someone’s actions or words ruin our day, don’t run off seething: From a neutral place ask them for clarity, maybe even add some humor such as “I’m pretty sure that you didn’t mean to insult me just now when you said X,Y,Z?”

Most people never intentionally set out to harm you, yet we often overreact to things because we take it personally or make a wrong assumption. Communicating clearly and from the heart, without attack, will keep the love flowing.  And remember, we are all personally responsible for our own happiness.  If we put our happiness into the hands of someone else, they are sure to disappoint us.

4) Always do your best: If we wish to achieve our goals in life, striving to always do our best makes total sense. Make a point to always do your best with and for your partner.

The key to living these truths is to remember that according to Ruiz : “Awareness is always the first step because if you are not aware, there is nothing you can change. Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being our self is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people’s demands.  We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves. But if we look at our lives, we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others, rather than living our lives to please ourselves. When you transform your whole dream, magic just happens in your life. This is the mastery of intent, the mastery of love, the mastery of gratitude, and the mastery of life. This is the path to personal freedom.”

Wishing you love, laughter and magical kisses,

Arielle