The Four Agreements Every Creative Needs

Season 3, Episode 11

What if a lot of creative suffering comes not from the work itself, but from the stories we tell ourselves about the work? 

In this episode, I'm covering The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz through a creative lens and discussing how the principles can help you protect your peace and your creativity, too. 

If you've ever overanalyzed feedback, spiraled after criticism, tied your worth to outcomes, or struggled to protect your peace while creating, this episode is for you. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to your next chapter, the podcast for women who read, write, and live creatively. I'm your host, Rebecca Hasselak. And today we are focusing all about the Four Agreements, which is a framework that protects not only your peace, but also your creativity itself. I'll explain a little more, so let's dig in. The Four Agreements is actually a book that was written by Don Miguel Ruiz, and it deals with four things that you are supposed to agree to within yourself. And they are all a way of interacting with the world, of moving through the world, and of living your life. And if you hold to these standards, hold to these agreements, your life is going to go a lot more smoothly. And I was reminded about the four agreements. Some people call them the four A's, but I was reminded about them by my partner. Bless him. He is my voice of reason. He helps keep me grounded when my emotions threaten to spin me up into a tizzy. But I recently had a situation where a friend had texted something to me. And I was a little appalled by how kind of inconsiderate I considered the text. A little bit callous, a little bit rude. And I was really hurt by it. And I took that to him and I was sort of just like, hey, I need your help. I am really upset about this. And he reminded me of the four agreements. And he has a really great way of talking me through things. So, you know, he didn't just say, Remember the four agreements. He actually like broke it down for me and kind of reminded me of some things and encouraged me and still validated how I was feeling. And so it was really, really good. And I walked away from that conversation feeling so much better and so much more empowered because the fact is we cannot change other people, but we can change how we react to them and how we relate to them. So before we talk about the four agreements through a creativity lens, I did want to mention that it is also a wonderful framework just for your everyday life, just through, just for getting through relationships and helping to empower yourself through difficult situations. Highly recommend it. So check out the full book. But for the purposes of our podcast today, I will tell you kind of just a brief overview of what the four agreements are. Number one is to be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity, say only what you mean, avoid using words against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. So that's number one. Number two is don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. I'm laughing because that one is very hard for me. But it is a great one if you can do it. Number three, don't make assumptions. This is the other one that's hard for me. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. And then number four is always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you're healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. So let's recap them. 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. You can see why these would be powerful if you're able to apply them. And I acknowledge that sometimes, especially two of them for me, are very hard to apply. But let's dig into them a little bit here. So being impeccable with your word. What they're actually talking about, or what Don Miguel Ruiz is actually talking about, is integrity. If you give your word about something, follow through. Your word is your bond and that sort of thing. I absolutely agree with that. And I've always tried to live my life like that. Well, we all mess up from time to time, of course. But the more you can speak truth, the more you can follow through on your commitments, the more you can be someone who is trustworthy. The other part of that is to be careful about gossip. It's very easy to slip into gossiping about people. And that really takes you out of a place of integrity. It weakens relationships, and it just kind of puts you in a negative pet space because most people when they're gossiping, it's not positive, right? We're not going, my gosh, can you even believe how beautiful that person looked today? Like, no, gossip is usually mean-spirited. It's snarky, it's catty, it's whatever, you know, adjective you want to use, but it's not putting you in a good space. And it's certainly not lifting anybody else up. So that's also something to really keep in mind. And as creatives, we want to be careful about what we're saying about other creative people as well. So I'm always very careful. I've said this before, if there's a piece of art that I didn't particularly connect with or care for, or even something that I outright did not like, even passionately, I do not share that publicly. I don't tell people the name of the work, the name of the author or creator or artist, because I think it's really important that if I am sharing something about another artist, it is only going to be if it's something positive. So that is being impeccable with your word. The fact is that the way you also speak to yourself matters. So I would encourage you, just like you don't want to be gossiping about other people, think about how you also speak to yourself. Try not to catastrophize and self-criticize and really be in tune with how you're showing up for others and how you're showing up for yourself. Being impeccable with your word doesn't mean having false positivity. It just means being honest, intentional, and non-destructive. So for me, I mean, we all have to work at all of these in different time periods in our lives, but that one is not particularly hard for me. You know, I have to watch and make sure I'm not doing the gossip thing. But other than that, like that's one that comes fairly naturally to me. I actually am a very terrible liar. So I always say I try my best to just be really honest. I cannot lie to save my life. So, in any event, agreement number two, don't take anything personally. Wow, you guys. If only we could really adopt this in our lives, we would be so much happier on a day-to-day basis. I will be the first to say I take almost everything personally. I am me. So everything that happens in my life, I'm filtering through the lens of me and myself and my circumstances. And it is very hard to separate something someone says or does to not take it personally. A few things to keep in mind, especially from a creative perspective. Creative work is inherently subjective. We've talked about this. I've had entire episodes about the subjectivity. Someone's response to your work is simply their response based on their history, bias, preferences, even moods. It is not a measurement of your worth. And also, not every reaction is a revelation. Just because someone thinks something about your work doesn't make it true. The only thing that taking everything personally does is creates paralysis, fear, resentment. It makes you become a people pleaser. You're trying to constantly get approval, and that just makes you spin your wheels and, you know, try to cater to everybody, in which case you lose sight of your own instincts, and you're never going to please everybody. So it's really pointless. It also just inhibits you creatively. So just remember that. I mean, there are times that people are going to do things that are rude and actually are personal. I even think that that conversation I mentioned with my friend, it felt personal to me. There were, I could make an argument that the things she wrote were pretty inconsiderate on a very personal level, and I could explain why. And most people would probably agree with me. But when I spoke with my partner about it, his point was kind of, you know, how they frame this in the four agreements is that nothing others do is usually directly because of you. It's truly not. It's a projection of their own reality. So if someone's being inconsiderate or saying something that's hurtful, a lot of the time it's either because they're hurt, it's because they don't even realize how it's coming across, it's because they have their own agenda. He said, everybody is self-interested. Some people are just better at hiding that than others. And he's right. And you know, some people are more selfish in that way and others are more giving. But regardless, we all are looking out for ourselves and our own families to some extent. And so a lot of the time when someone does something that you're taking personally, it's really, really not about you. And the more you can remind yourself of that, the easier life is gonna go for you, the less resentment you're gonna hold, the fewer grudges, you know, it'll just help you to have a little more peace in your life. I'm still working on that one. Brene Brown has a great way of saying this. She talks about the stories we tell ourselves. So something can happen, and how you interpret that can make a world of difference in your own happiness and in what happens next. And my friend Kristen Arnett, who spoke about confidence a couple months ago, back in gosh, I think it was April, also talks about the thought model, which is basically you have a thought, you can choose how you are handling that thought. And based on that, your actions will follow. And that's a really cool way of thinking about it. And Brene Brown talks about it in the in the way of like the stories we tell ourselves. So when I got that text, the story I was telling myself is that this friend doesn't care about me as much as I thought she did. And that may or may not be true, but either way, that is a story I am choosing to tell myself by interpreting what she wrote. And she did not explicitly say that. So that is ultimately an assumption. So be careful about the stories you're telling yourself. A lot of the time we make things worse because of that. So that's assumptions. And, you know, gosh, that's not assumptions. Wow. Well, I sort of fused into assumptions from not taking things personally, but really these two are very intertwined. So that's actually okay if you're okay bearing with me here. I jumped around a little bit, but taking things personally and making assumptions are often one and the same. Again, back to that conversation with the friend. I did make assumptions, and because of that, I took it personally. So the two often are related. When it comes to creative work, you might have gotten a bad review on something. Let's say it's a book, you got a one-star review, and you make the assumption that the reader hated your book and you take it very personally and decide that that means you're a bad writer. When in reality, what if that person just doesn't like your genre? What if they thought they were getting a horror book and instead it ended up being a romance and they were just completely annoyed that the reading experience they were signing up for is not what they got? I mean, that would have nothing to do with you as a writer, with your characters, with your story, with the quality of your work. It would literally just have to do with that person's expectations. And you might meanwhile be getting all frothed up about what you think this means. And really, it's not about you. So again, don't make assumptions, be careful of the stories you're telling yourself. And remember that a lot of creative suffering comes from stories that might not even be true. Creatives often suffer more from interpretation than reality. And a key point here is that social media tends to amplify assumptions and comparison. So be mindful of what you're consuming, especially on social media platforms, because it can make all of this worse and it can kind of get us into these grooves that we're really trying really hard to break out of. All right, so that was we covered being impeccable with your word, not taking anything personally, not making assumptions. And last but certainly not least is always do your best. I already said that your best will change moment to moment, day to day. I also tell my daughter this there are days when she's going to show up at dance, for example, and she will feel rested and well fed and fueled and excited. And she's going to be able to perform at a really high level because of that. But there are also going to be days where maybe she didn't sleep well, she doesn't feel great, she had a lot of stress at school, there's something else on her mind, and her best is going to look drastically different than it did on that other day. And that's okay. It is still her showing up and her doing her best. And some days for us to do our best, it means not even showing up. It means taking care of ourselves, taking care of our minds and our bodies and listening to what we need in that given day. So your best is going to change. This agreement is about sustainability and not perfection. So I encourage you to go and listen to the episode about the long game that I recorded on the topic of sustainability because it kind of ties into this. So just remember that consistency matters more than intensity. And as long as you're doing your best, that is enough. All right. So we covered the four agreements. As you can tell, these are really important. If you can master these in your day-to-day life and in your creative life, you are leagues ahead of so many of us. I'm still working on them, but I do find that when I am intentional, especially about not taking things personally and about not making assumptions, that everything just kind of goes a little better. Everything's a little more smooth and my peace of mind is a little more intact. And that's really all we can hope for. Just remember that creativity can become lighter when we stop attaching our entire identities to every reaction that we get. Every rejection, every imperfect day, every imagined judgment. The four agreements might not eliminate creative difficulty, but they definitely can reduce unnecessary suffering. And as always, I would encourage you to go and actually buy the book, The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, R-U-I-Z. And I will leave you with a closing quote from Brene Brown, who I have also mentioned, and whose books I also highly recommend. And she says, talk to yourself like you would to someone you love. And I just adore that quote because so often we're so much meaner to ourselves than we are to anybody else, than we ever would dream of being to people we love. So remember, you are worthy of love too. Self love, self compassion. Keep that in mind. And I hope that the four agreements give you a new framework and a new perspective as you navigate life and creativity. Until next time, I hope you'll keep creating and keep turning the page.