7 Agreements You Should Make With Yourself At All Cost

 

Keeping these commitments to yourself will change your life for the better

Photo by THÁI NHÀN

You can make and keep agreements with yourself the same way you do with people.

When you make an agreement with someone, you expect to honor it. You suffer the consequences if you don’t keep your part of the bargain.

But, we sometimes fail to keep the agreements we make with ourselves because nobody punishes us for it.

When you make an agreement with yourself, you’re simply making yourself a promise about something you want or don’t want to do.

It’s about deciding to live your life a certain way only.

This article highlights 6 such agreements that you can enter into with yourself if you want to transform your life.

Being true to your words at all times

One pact you need to make with yourself is standing by your words at all times. This means to only say what you mean and mean what you say.

In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz describes this agreement as being impeccable with your words.

The idea is one of integrity in everything you say.

If you say you say you will or won’t do something, you don’t go against yourself. You don’t speak to yourself in a way that puts them down.

Words are powerful. We can't throw them around carelessly.

And whether you’re speaking to yourself or someone else, your words will either can either build up or bring down.

Researchers who studied how our brains respond to negative words in an experiment found that negative words can release stress and anxiety-inducing hormones.

The bottom line is that saying the right things to yourself will result in less negative energy in your daily life and less friction with others.

Not to make decisions based on assumptions

We read meanings into other people’s actions and most of the time, the meaning we come up with are based on assumptions.

Take, for example, you texted a friend, who reads your message but doesn’t respond. You interpret her behavior to mean she’s ignoring you.

The truth is that there could be a thousand reasons why you didn’t receive a prompt response; she’s probably busy with work, or she forgot.

But by assuming or jumping to conclusions as to why she didn’t reply immediately, you’re likely to create conflict that affects your relationship.

To avoid making unnecessary assumptions, the solution is to ask more questions.

When you ask more questions, you minimize the tendency for conflict and misunderstandings by getting as much clarification as you can.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that we only make assumptions about others. But, you can make assumptions about yourself as well and this creates an inner conflict.

You can assume you’re a good writer and then discover that you’re not.

think I can do this.’ You make this assumption, for instance, then you discover you aren’t able to do it.

You overestimate or underestimate yourself because you haven’t taken the time to ask yourself questions and answer them.

Perhaps you need to gather more facts about a particular situation. Or maybe you need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want.”

Don’t let fear stop you from trying

Fear is a powerful human emotion. And depending on how you respond to it, fear can work against you if you let it

The emotion of fear is a signal. It’s to let you know that you’re trying to push yourself to do something that takes you away from your comfort zone.

Fear can come in different forms; the fear that you’re not skilled or talented enough, fear that you’ll fail if you try, fear that things won’t work out, or fear of being judged.

Some people, especially women, also avoid success out of fear that it doesn’t align with traditional gender roles.

So, they tend to conform to expected norms because of fear of possible social or economic backlash.

You have to make an agreement that you’re not going to let fear of any form cripple your dreams and hold you back from going after what you want in life.

If a course of action will positively impact your life, decide with yourself that no matter how scared you are, you’ll never let fear stop you from trying.

Decide that rather than a dull and uninspiring life, you’ll take risks, make mistakes, fail and learn from those experiences.

Be willing to always do your best

Many people want success but they’re only willing to do the bare minimum.

It’s hard for them to do the very best they’re capable of.

Getting to where you want to be in life requires more than just doing the bare minimum. On the flip side, overworking yourself to the point of burnout will hurt your health.

Thus, doing your best entails striking a balance.

It’s about wholeheartedly honoring the work in front of you and giving it your best honest effort with the time and resources at your disposal.

According to Don Miguel Ruiz:

“When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best you subject yourself to frustrations, self-judgment, guilt, and regrets. Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you can always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment.”

If you want to be happy and successful, you always owe it to yourself to give the best of yourself in whatever you do.

It’s when you do your best that you can be proud of yourself no matter the outcome. Because then, you don’t have the self-judgment and regrets of knowing you could have done more.

Be kind to other people

As human beings, we’re all capable of doing evil. We’re extraordinarily selfish, manipulative, and unkind.

You’ve probably thought about throwing your boss out the window at some point. You may have even considered harming someone because of what they did to you.

For example, psychologists Douglas Kenrick and Virgil Sheets asked study participants if they had ever considered murdering someone.

As it turned out, 73 percent of men and 66 percent of women said yes.

Surprised by the result, they decided to run the study a second time. Again, 79 percent of men and 58 percent of women answered yes.

Despite our capacity for being evil, we’re also innately good. You can be loving, kind, and respectful of others.

But you must consciously cultivate your own good nature. You must choose that you’re not going to let yourself be controlled by the desire for cruelties.

Being kind, however, doesn’t mean you let other people take advantage of you or be bullied.

It’s simply a matter of being willing to assist and care for those in need. It is about understanding what can cause harm to others and not doing those things to them.

This is not always an easy thing to do. But it’s a pact you make with yourself that this is how you want your life to be.

Live by authentic values

Our values define who we are.

They’re the moral codes that shape our decisions about what we choose to do in any situation.

Making a clear decision about the values that guide your life is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

When you’re conscious of the values you live by, you won’t have problems knowing what matters to you and what doesn’t.

Values like respect for others, love, honesty, trustworthiness, openness, and so on.

Telling the truth, for example, is one value that most people fail to live by.

About 60 percent of people lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation.

You can agree with yourself that you’ll always say the truth at all times.

It can be difficult to live by authentic values at times, but honoring your values and allowing them to guide your life will have a significant impact not just on how you see yourself but also on how others see you.

Listen and see things from other’s perspectives

It’s important to recognize that you can’t always be right. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

You can have your opinions on a wide range of issues. Yet, it’s unlikely your views will be right all the time.

People have differing opinions. We see things differently. We don’t all have the same concerns and fears.

Where your ideas and those of others conflict, the right thing to do isn’t to dismiss those contrary views as irrelevant.

Instead, it's being willing to listen to what others have to say and to try to see things from different points of view, no matter how uncomfortable it is.

So, a vital agreement you can make with yourself is to be willing to listen to what others have to say, to see things from their unique perspective, and to be humble enough to give up your own opinions when it’s evident that they’re incorrect.

Final Thought

Make these agreements with yourself and commit to honoring them.

You cannot expect to honor the agreement you make with others if you can’t honor the ones you make with yourself.

But one thing is clear: you’ll have more clarity about your life and what you want if you make these “agreements” with yourself.