Unpacking The Four Agreements 1/7 — Master the Meaning. Change Your Response: #MakingMovesMonday

0:00Greetings and welcome. Blessings to you. You are listening to The Sweet Spot. It is making moves Monday. Yes, indeed. And we're going to have a great week. This week we're going to be looking at a book by Miguel Ruiz. It's called The Four Agreements. It's a classic book. It's been around for decades. And it's The Four Agreements. It's about reclaiming your response to things when things don't go well. Or it's about getting unstuck or it's about not taking things personally. It's about doing your best. There's so many themes in this book that are applicable. But you and I are going to go over this week and have a fantastic week. Are you ready? I know I am. So I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work in high performance. But more than that, I'm your teammate. I am your teammate here in this

1:06game of life. And we're going to get started right away, sweet spotter. Let me start with this. What belief about yourself? Do you react from most often? And who taught you that belief? Not what you say out loud. I'm talking about the quiet belief below. The one that flares up when somebody corrects you or criticizes you. The one that surfaces when you feel overlooked. The one that tightens your voice when somebody is disagreeing with you or you didn't get what you wanted. When you're frustrated, who installed that belief? And why do you run it? That's what this week is about. And that's why we're looking at this book called The Four Agreements. We're stepping in to a very focused one week spirit through this book. And I've read it several times

2:12and I've used it in many workshops that I've done. And I love it. Don Miguel, who is in a great job with this book. It's an evergreen. And you may have read it too, but it's always helpful to intentionally have the conversation because this book has helped many people untangle things like resentment, quiet, self-criticism. And it's also helped them communicate more cleanly, more clearly. And to stop living inside of reactions that you didn't even consciously choose, right? So many of us are running these scripts, this automatic programming. And this book has helped leaders that I know stop over-personalizing the feedback that they get when they're not doing well. It has helped athletes and an artist recover faster from mistakes. It's a great read for that. This book has also helped professionals who feel underutilized

3:15to stop interpreting everything as rejection. And sometimes you feel stuck. And when you realize that you're stuck because it's your assumptions keeping you stuck, not the facts, you get freedom. So this book is a great book to fall agreements. And if you can pick it up, if you don't, pick it up. This school, this whole week, we're going to be covering it and you're going to know everything you need to know. So in sports, talent, right? Talent isn't usually the rate limiter. People think it is. It's not talent in sports. You know what it is? In my experience in sports, that's the rate limiting thing, the thing that actually determines how things are going to go. It's the reaction that players have. It's the reaction that coaches have. It's the reaction that management has. It's the reaction, not the actual thing that's going on, that you have to pay attention to. How are people reacting to what they see or what's happening? In business, it's the

4:21same thing. Deals don't collapse over spreadsheets. You know why they collapse? They collapse over the interpretation of what's on those spreadsheets. The front line, similarly, yeah, the misreading can escalate fast on the front line based on what people are perceiving and how they react to that. And I don't have to tell you in a relationship. Wow, you can see where there can be all kinds of issues. You know, in relationships, the argument really begins from a place of everybody being on the same page, right? It begins because we're in so many different scripts. We're in so many different worlds that by the time we argue, we don't even realize it, but we're coming from completely different places. And at the same time, the irony of arguments is that we are actually probably wanting the same thing to be heard, to be listened to, to be respected.

5:24Yeah, in relationships, arguments really begin where they seem to begin. And that's the work I do when I do conflict negotiations or restore to practice work. Yeah, I realize that in a relationship, that argument wherever it began is not really where it began. So look, sometimes you're alone at night, right? You're alone at night and there's some kind of a conversation that's replaying in your head. And that conversation won't let you rest because you have interpretations or story about it. Yeah, and it's, you see, it's a lot about what you decided it meant. And that is what this book addresses. The four agreements are simple. Okay, let me run to the four agreements with you. You probably know that many of you have read this book and I know you have, but I just run through the four agreements. What are the four

6:24agreements? And I know these by heart. I actually, there were times when I used to just live by these four agreements. And you know, it's funny. You forget them. And then you come back to them and they're always like an evergreen. The first agreement is this. Be impeccable with your word. Just honor your word. Honor your word. Let your yes be a yes and your no be a no. Don't use your word to harm anybody, including yourself. Don't use your word to criticize, to gossip, and to cut other people up or to cut yourself up. Be careful with your word because words create reality in many ways. And then the second agreement is don't take anything personally. Well, that's a big one, huh? Yeah, I've had to work on that one. Don't take things personally. Half of what people are saying if not more is what they think what their reality is. It's their story. It's their dream. It's their vision. It's their way of thinking. It may have absolutely

7:29nothing to do with you, even though they're talking about you is coming from them. That's them. And you have to not be so thin skinned because then every little thing is going to make you bleed. The third assumption, the third agreement is don't make assumptions. Don't assume, ask a second question. You're walking down the hallway. Somebody doesn't say hello to you. And now you're all mad about it because you think that they're rude, that they don't like you, that they're being I don't know arrogant. And in fact, they might have just gotten a diagnosis of something terminal and in their own heads, you always have to ask another question. Instead of getting angry or getting upset, get curious and always ask. That's the third assumption, the third agreement. And the fourth one is always do your best. In every moment, with everything you're doing, do your best. Because then you don't have to have any regrets when you do your best.

8:31And another thing is to understand that your best, your best can be different in different circumstances. If you're not feeling well and you're tired and you're fatigued and you're doing your best, that might look different than on a day when you have it all together. So be impeccable with your word, agreement one, don't take anything personally, agreement two, don't make assumptions, agreement three, and also your best, agreement four. Very simple language, but serious application if you take it on. So how does this work, right? So you have to understand the frame for the four agreements this book. When someone challenges you, information moves through a brain region called the Thouness. And then it quickly engages another brain region called the insular, the

9:34anterior insular. And then when the anterior insular in your brain registers this internal shift, you know, all of a sudden you feel a certain tightness in your body, you become aware of it, you become aware of your heart rate, accelerating, when you get angry, it's your insular, this, we talked about the insular before, right? This sort of safety cuff and they're looking at things in your body, giving you a body awareness. So yeah, when you get challenged or something goes wrong in a conversation, you can feel it running through your brain. And then the hippocampus, which is scans for memory in the brain, starts thinking, hmm, where have I seen this before? The hippocampus is like a library. It's got all the past things that pissed you off or made you angry, disappointed, you were a TVU. And boy, it's asking, have I felt this before? What did this mean last time? So does this, and if what you're going through resembles past rejection or past embarrassment, your system, your mixer, your preference, everything starts to prepare accordingly. And then your

10:40mind constructs a narrative. That's how we work people. We create stories. I just gave you the neural anatomy to it or the neuroscience tip, but really just creating a story in our mind. Your mind constructs the narrative. They don't respect me. They don't like me. Oh, they're overlooking me. I'm stuck. I've got to protect myself here. When those scripts start running, by the time you speak it, it's already justified in your mind, but the reaction began as a prediction in your mind. This is how they always are. This is what they're going to do. This is why you react this way. An agreement is simply a belief that has become automatic. Yeah, our agreements are automatic. They have already been sealed. You have a, you and I have an agreement as to what criticism means to us.

11:44There's an agreement in us about what silence means in the conversation. I have a friend. He's very, very quiet. When we talk, sometimes he let a minute go by before he answers. It's who he is. I have to get accustomed to that because I like to talk. That's why I'm probably doing this podcast. So when we meet, I have to suspend my agreement about what silence means. It doesn't mean he doesn't like me. It doesn't mean that he doesn't know what he's going to say. He's thoughtful. So you can have agreement about what it means to not be, to be underutilized. You're under bench. The coach hasn't called you up. What does this mean? What is this story? What is this script? Or the coach takes you out of the game in the middle of a really important moment and puts you under bench vice versa. What does this mean? What is the story? This week, as we go through the four agreements in this book, it's all about taking responsibility for the agreements you and I have in our minds. We're not blaming our past. We're just going to

12:46own the response we have. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because all that we are, this is in the Dhamma part of a Buddhist book on life and teachings about life, all that we are is the result of what we have thought. Repeated interpretations. You know what they do when we keep interpreting things. We've been all doing all our lives. It strengthens the brain's neural pathways. Your brain becomes efficient at predicting the same meaning in similar situations. So you can be sitting across with somebody and they do something and you're like, I know exactly Buddhist Christmas. I know exactly what they're going to do. And your brain is just in the business of predicting it because again, your brain wants you to survive. It's protecting you. And that's why the same tone can trigger you every time. There are certain words that trigger you.

13:50There are certain tones that trigger you. There are certain looks and behaviors that trigger you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in your next tense conversation, I want you to pause for a half a beat and ask yourself, is the reaction of having mine or is it some old agreement I'm running with? Do I have an agreement with myself as to what this is? We need to know this because when we go into the book, I'm going to go into the book tomorrow and the rest of the week. We need to have this foundation that we all have agreements. So when you get the, we're talking to somebody and you're reacting, try to think through what agreement that do I have? Because if you can, you can't take responsibility for a response you never saw forming, right? Like if you never saw your response forming, how could you even take responsibility for it? So that's why we're slowing down today. Before we get into the four, I told you what the four

14:52agreements are that are liberating under the best agreements to have. I told you about them, but we may have different agreements, right? So listen, the first agreement was being peckable with your word, right? To honor your word. Well, what if we have an agreement that I'm going to hide my words? I'm not going to, I want to say negative things to me with positive things to people. That's not honoring your word. That's not impeccable. What if you take things personally? What if every time somebody says anything that doesn't like going what you want? Or if they tell you they don't like something you do that you really hold on to and you get mad and twisted and you just don't trust them or you feel really horrible, that's again your breaking agreement number two. Don't take things personally. What if you just don't do the things in life that you want to do because you just presume or assume that you just can't do it or the people are going to laugh at you or that you're just not good enough or that you can't trust the person in front of you.

15:57That's violating agreement number three. Don't make assumptions. And what if you're cutting corners, you know, you kind of, you know, you should go and work out at the gym, but you don't. I speak to myself right there. You know that you should do extra reps. You know that you should be studying harder for the exam. Excellent thing to think through. Well, you're not really following agreement number four. Always do your best. These four agreements, be impeccable with your word. Don't take things personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best. They're going to form the foundation of what we talk about as we go deeper into this book. Are you ready to go with me on this journey here on Making Moons Monday? Fantastic. Well, you've been listening to the sweet spot. This is real science, soul, and success

16:57come together. I hope that you've been blessed by hearing this conversation and that we're going to get a blessing out of our conversation this week about the four agreements. Because let me tell you, just the first thing honoring your word, that is incredibly spiritual. Even if look, your word is has to be impeccable because if you want to build something, you have to have an honorable word. Your word has to be pure. Remember in the ancient wisdom, it said in the beginning, there was the word. All right. Now, look, please subscribe. If you haven't subscribed here before, please subscribe. You want to build a community here of folks that have the right agreements. Okay. And if you know somebody who could benefit from hearing this series, who could use some insights around some of these agreements, maybe you know somebody who is stuck. Maybe you know somebody who is beating

17:59themselves up a part of a mistake. Share it. For science, for soul, for success, let's get into the sweet spot.