1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

Just finished rereading The Four Agreements (for the first time in over a decade) and thought I’d share these powerful principles here. One thing I notice is the tendency for most of us to project a negative outcomes, before entertaining a positive one. It goes something like this when you are talking to our friends and clients;

“Hey friend, I can see you are really struggling with your X, I have been there before and this [insert solution] really worked for me, maybe you could try it?”

 

“Yes, BUT [fill in the blank about why that would never work or never be possible].

Our brain immediately negates the potential positive and goes directly to reason why more positive outcome would never work or never be possible. How rare is it for someone to take a beat after being offered a more positive option and go,

“Hmm, that sounds so much better, I’ll try it.” Then take action on it.

This is where “don’t make assumptions and don’t take it personally” ARE truly a golden rules… We tend to project when someone doesn’t call enough, email back, or when we have something we want to ask of someone else. We project they are not calling because they are upset with us, not emailing back because we are not worthy, and that whatever we have to ask, someone will probably say no to.

When the TRUTH is, it probably has NOTHING to do with us. And the possibility of a YES response is just as likely as a NO. So I turned these into an exercise for my upcoming workshop…