In this episode:
Navigating the complex emotions of recovery is no small feat, yet understanding the principles of Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements gives us tools to foster peace, self-compassion and clarity. This episode is a testament to the healing potential of these agreements, especially within the framework of sobriety.
Resources:
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
00:17 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone. So for today’s episode, I actually wanted to Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the four agreements. I’ve had a couple of people ask me recently, like Jessica, what were some of the books that were most impactful for you in your early recovery, and the four agreements was one of those books that really opened my eyes to just a lot of the different ways in which I was making myself really miserable and wanting to drink, and so I kind of wanted to do an overview of what the book discusses. I highly encourage anybody who has not read the book to go ahead and get the book. It’s a short read but it’s incredibly powerful and incredibly impactful and can really help you reflect on ways in which you are the own cause of like half of your own misery. Right, and it’s just a really empowering text. So again, domín Guérd-Ríces essentially he didn’t come up with these four agreements. If you read in the book and read more about him, he’s basically reflecting on ancient Toltec indigenous wisdom, and so these agreements are not necessarily his, but obviously he is credited with them because of the fact that he wrote the text. And so the four agreements are the following Number one be impeccable with your word. Number two don’t take anything personally. Number three don’t make assumptions. And number four always do your best. So first let’s talk about this recovery journey and agreement number one, which is be impeccable with your word, which, to summarize, really it’s about excuse me for coughing, because I have this cough that has not gone away, so you’re going to hear me cough on occasion, and if you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to skip this episode. But being impeccable with your word speaks to speaking with integrity right and really speaking what you mean. Also, it speaks to avoiding gossip and self-destructive speech right and really.
02:11
The big emphasis here is to speak with truth and kindness. I want to emphasize that being honest does not mean being brutal, and there are times where people think that, because they tell it how it is and they just keep it real, that they think that they’re doing some sort of noble act of practicing honesty. You can speak truth without being cruel, and so the example that comes up in the book that I’m going to share with you in a second is a perfect example of somebody speaking how they felt, but it wasn’t honest, it wasn’t true and it wasn’t kind and then it had a negative ripple effect, right? So if you have the book and you go to pages 34 to 35, there is a story of a woman who was intelligent, had a great heart and she had a daughter that she loved. But basically she had a hard day at work. And she comes home and her daughter is singing right, but mom’s got this terrible headache, she’s exhausted and she really just wants peace and quiet in the home. Right, but her daughter is like singing and excited, because that’s what kids do. And at one point her mom just snaps at her and basically I’m paraphrasing from the book right, but the mom basically shouts at her and is like stop singing, you sound terrible. No, she didn’t sound terrible. What mom had was the headache, right, what mom was was exhausted, but mom didn’t communicate her need effectively and what impacted her words have, right, the power of her word, which the author talks about was that it really basically crushed that daughter. Do you think that that little girl ever sang again? According to the text, she never sang again. Right, and so you’re like, just what does this have to do with sobriety, again, a lot of sobriety, especially because we talk about how community is the opposite of addiction, right, we often hear that in a lot of different spaces that you all might be in, and I say that because you have to be mindful of how you speak to other people. When you embark on this recovery journey, you are going to find other people who are struggling sometimes, and the way that you treat them, though, it’s their choice, how they take your words and act on it, but the truth is we do impact others, and so when we are in recovery, right, speaking kindness, speaking truth, pausing before we speak, can have a great impact.
04:38
Another really important point that is brought up in this chapter is avoiding gossip. When you’re in recovery, a lot of the time, you are going to be joining different communities, right, so you may be participating in different meetings, and it’s going to be so important for you to not engage in shit talking right Like there that maybe an old habit and so many of us will thrive off of, like the feeling that rushes through our bodies when there’s gossip being talked about. However, the author argues that basically talking about gossip is like ingesting poison, in a sense, and then you get wrapped up in uncomfortable conversations, you get accused of things, and then suddenly you’re feeling uncomfortable showing up to a specific meeting that you previously enjoyed because you participated in gossip right, and therefore now you have a risk or something threatening your recovery because now there’s a meeting that you don’t want to go to anymore. So, again, if you are starting to see people engage in conversations that are not healthy, if you are starting to see people in your recovery space engage in yeah, gossiping, shit talking, however you want to call it, feel free to call them out on it or feel free to remove yourself from the situation. You don’t need to engage in gossip in order to be a part of right. Those are old behaviors that we may have engaged in. Those are old behaviors that we probably learned, especially in like elementary, middle school, high school, right To create a sense of belonging, let’s, let’s belong to each other by shitting on someone else, but that’s really not helpful. And so, again, being mindful of your language and the language that you allow yourself to surround yourself with is going to be imperative to your recovery. So that’s kind of like my version of being impeccable with your word.
06:27
So the next agreement excuse me, is the second agreement. Don’t take anything personally, and I want to say that between agreement two and agreement three, don’t make assumptions. Those to me are like the cornerstone of my mind being blown in early recovery and being like whoa, I don’t have to take things personally. That completely blew my mind right as a concept and so to essentially kind of paraphrase what this agreement means, it’s basically saying that whatever other people do, be it their actions or the words that they say, they’re a reflection of the reality that that individual is in and it’s never a personal attack. Even if it’s directly said to you right now in your face, it still has nothing to do with you and everything to do with that individual who is taking those actions or saying those words.
07:19
Right, by you not internalizing any external event and taking it personally, you can really free yourself from a lot of unnecessary suffering and really experience some emotional balance, which, of course, is going to help you with a recovery journey. Right, like if you can see things falling apart, if you can turn on the news and see politics and not take it personally, if you can have a bad interaction with someone in a meeting and realize you know what that person’s probably going through something that can be incredibly freeing to you and really help you with that urge to drink or numb in however other way. You might do that Right, freeing yourself from taking things personally really allows you to focus on your own happiness and growth. Right, again, when you can recognize that others actions are a reflection of them and their experiences and it’s not a judgment on you, it’s not a reflection on your worth. This can really just help you reduce that risk of feeling discouraged or overwhelmed when things are going wrong. And again, I’m talking on both like a micro level, like on individual levels, with your colleagues, your family members, your friends, people that you are in recovery with, and support groups. But I also mean you know it’s an election year here in the United States. So, however you feel about politics, I really want you to take this agreement and apply it to society as a whole. Right, don’t take things personally when people make laws that don’t resonate with you, when public figures speak things that hurt. Don’t take it personally, and that can be huge in helping you stay sober when the world feels like it’s falling apart. Okay, so just a couple of things that popped up in the text, right, I would totally recommend in the book, reading pages 53 and 54.
09:21
But here’s a couple of quotes that I pulled just to kind of share with you. So the first one, in terms of not taking things personally, is if they tell you how wonderful you are, they’re not saying that because of you. You know you’re wonderful. It’s not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful. So I like this one, right, because it’s kind of twisting. It’s like well, why can’t I take a compliment? I mean, of course you can always be gracious and take a compliment, but again, right, whether it’s external validation or external stress, if we are the ones who determine our state of, like, mental balance, then we’re not getting super thrown off when people give us some indelible compliments, but we’re also not getting thrown off when people attack us or say things that hurt us, right?
10:08
The next comment that I pulled, or quote that I pulled from this section is don’t take anything personally. Even if someone got a gun and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal, even at that extreme. And I know that example can be wild and people will be like what the hell is this author talking about? If someone shoots me, of course it’s because it’s me. No, again, if you look at people who become violent, it’s usually something having to do with them is what the author would be arguing, right, and so when people talk badly about you, when people betray you, when people backstab you, a great example that I would say I see a lot say with like clients and one-on-one support is like, if their partner has been unfaithful, right, at the end of the day, a partner being unfaithful has everything to do with them and nothing to do with you. They’re the ones making that choice.
11:03
The last point that I loved from this chapter is even the opinions you have about yourself are not necessarily true. Therefore, you don’t need to take whatever you hear in your own mind personally. And again, this is super important in recovery, because in recovery, especially early on, we might be coming into this work with extremely low self-worth, right, we might feel horrible about ourselves, we might be still carrying a lot of shame, and so it’s important to recognize that those stories that we’re telling ourselves about ourselves are not always true, right, and so question your thoughts. A Cartoli in the Power of Now. He talks about looking at the thinker, right. So this is where you can give yourself the gift of separating yourself from your thoughts and recognizing that just because it’s a thought that’s in your mind doesn’t mean that it’s true and you can get curious about it. What is it trying to tell you? But you can recognize that it’s not necessarily true.
12:00
So, moving on to the next agreement is the third one. Don’t make assumptions, and it’s usually followed up with ask questions right, and this one you know. To basically paraphrase it is see clarity in your communication with others by asking questions right. Avoid misunderstandings by communicating openly and honestly. Don’t sit there and be pissed off at somebody who didn’t call and check in on you if you never expressed the need that you want to be checked in on right. People are not mind readers, and that is something that is so important with this agreement that if you are getting upset and you are finding yourself resentful towards somebody because they fell short of your expectation, here’s the question Did you communicate that expectation to them or did you just expect them to suddenly have common sense and show up for you? Because, again, people don’t have common sense. People don’t read minds. So it’s our job to make sure that the people that we need to show up for us know how to right. But again, when it’s in the case of receiving communication from other people, if you are not sure, it is absolutely your job to ask questions right. It is absolutely your job to seek a decrease in misunderstanding by getting curious right.
13:27
In the context of sobriety, avoiding making assumptions can really, really help you because if you are clear between you and another person, or you and your group right, then you can have clear expectations, you are able to not be confused about what to expect from other people and then again you’re giving yourself that opportunity to experience peace because you know exactly where people stand on things. You know that you have communicated where you stand on things. When you’re leaving things up in the air because of poor communication, you’re creating the space for conflict, you’re creating the space to feel let down, you’re creating the space to feel resentful and, of course, for someone who is still struggling with their substance use, whether it’s alcohol or other things, when we set that up, we’re going to want to drink right, we’re going to want to numb if we have all this turbulence between us and others because of miscommunication. So that clear communication is important and, yes, it takes a lot of courage to ask questions because sometimes you might hear what you don’t want to hear. Right? Let’s say that you’re dating someone and it’s kind of going into that little you know that term situation which is you’re acting like a relationship but it’s not officially one. Sometimes you don’t want to ask the question what are we? Right, because you might hear what you don’t want to hear. But giving yourself the opportunity to hear what you don’t want to hear gives you the clarity to decide if you want to stay in that ambiguous situation or if you want to break free from it because it’s not meeting your needs. Right, and so that gives you the opportunity to create space for what you want to receive that’s going to meet your needs. So super, super important to help you bring clarity into your life, to bring peace and opportunities for solid decision making, not making assumptions. Asking questions and making sure that you are communicating your needs directly to other people will absolutely set you up to be successful and find some peace. And I’ll pull this quote from the text he wrote if others tell us something, we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something, we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and replace the need to communicate, even if we hear something and we don’t understand, we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions. We have agreed in our minds that it’s not safe to ask questions and we have agreed in our minds that if people love us they should know what we want or how we feel. But again, the people who love us are not mind readers and that is an incredibly unfair expectation to put on others. Have the courage to say what you want, have the courage to ask for what you need and if someone falls short of that, then use that as data to inform your next decisions about your relationship or connection with this individual.
16:23
Okay, moving on Agreement 4. Always do your best. So the fourth agreement always do your best is super important in the recovery journey because there’s a solid high correlation of people in recovery journeys who seek to do everything perfectly right, whether it’s I’ve got a streak of continuous sobriety where I’ve never slipped and never had a relapse. You know, there’s a lot of markers by which people measure success that could sometimes fall into that area of perfectionism which can be difficult for people to deal with. Right. And so the principle, the agreement of do your best recognizes that your best is going to look different every single day for every single individual. So if on Monday you got a good night’s sleep that night before you had a good breakfast, you didn’t have any conflict with anyone and maybe you go into your job and you have a solid day’s work, right, that’s your best that day. But maybe Monday night your child was sick and so you barely got sleep and then you got a flat tire on the way to work so you had like that stress on you. Your best on Tuesday is going to look absolutely different from Monday. But the point is that on Tuesday you try your best and whatever that actually ends up being, that is perfectly fine, right, that is absolutely acceptable because you recognize that best looks different every day. Best looks different from individual to individual, right? And then, when you know that you gave it your best that day, even if your best was just showing up and clocking in, right, maybe you didn’t work on any projects, but you showed up and that was the best you can do you can at least give yourself the peace of that day of knowing that you tried your best.
18:22
Drink thing with recovery, right, for someone who is working on quitting their drinking. Maybe in one month they did not drink for 29 days and one of those days in that month they had a slip and they had like a couple drinks and then they immediately got it back together and went back to being totally abstinent. Prior to that, they had been drinking every single day one or two bottles of wine. Right, let’s talk about how great they’re doing. Let’s celebrate the fact that they have made such a drastic improvement, right, and so giving it your best every single day is going to look different, and in a recovery journey, right, the key here is to focus on that continuous improvement.
19:04
Right, you hear in some spaces you’ll hear that term progress, not perfection, and that’s the important thing here to remember in our sobriety journey right, that in sobriety, it’s about giving our best effort. Every day we acknowledge progress and we have to be compassionate with ourselves during difficult times. As someone who took 14 months to finally stop drinking because I kept relapsing and getting hospitalized because of my extreme alcohol abuse right, if I had been able to practice compassion with myself, I may not have spun out of control as much as I did, but I believe that I was basically a failure for drinking again after a period of sobriety. So as soon as I had the first one, I would say you know what effort. And then I would drink until I had to be hospitalized, right. And so there’s a lot that compassion can do for you when you’re struggling.
19:58
And so, again, that always do your best piece is just so important, so important to a recovery, and so I wanted to pull a couple of quotes with regard to the fourth agreement, just to kind of share it with you. So I’m pulling first from pages 75 and 76. And so the author, dominique Ries. He wrote under any circumstances, always do your best, no more and no less. Keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time. So your best will sometimes be high quality and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you’re healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy or upset, angry or jealous Right.
20:54
And then, on page 84 and 85, he shares this piece and he says we don’t need to know or prove anything. Just to be to take a risk and enjoy your life is all that matters. Say no when you want to say no and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you and you can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best, you’re denying yourself the right to be you Right. So give yourself that self-compassion and understand that sobriety is not a perfection journey and it should never be a perfection journey. Good for the people who make zero mistakes, but, to be honest, all of us fall short at some point or another of our different goals, and so it is absolutely okay to be a human, it is absolutely okay to be imperfect. And so with that I’ll just close out again.
21:56
I highly recommend reading the four agreements. I think that that will be a great read for anybody who is looking for something to read to help them with their sobriety. Quit Lit is great. A lot of people like it. I’m actually I’m not that into Quit Lit. I love more of the neuroscience than just general self-help books, and so I would say the four agreements, is a solid, self-help slash, personal development text that I highly encourage anyone to read at any point in their recovery journey, but especially early on when you have so many emotions trying to like hijack you. So, with that being said, thanks so much, and I will see you in the next one. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast. But also go to my website, bottomlesstosober,com, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.
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