Why We Replay Conversations

Have you ever played a conversation for hours? If it's something you do personally assume what someone else is thinking or something, trying to do everything perfectly. Today we're exploring the four hours and completely change the way the way. Welcome back to Rights with the Rise with Me. Sarah Hope. Hello everyone. Welcome back. I have thought about doing an episode on the Four Agreements for quite some time. And finally, what kind of kicked my butt into doing it is I'm I'm teaching a workshop on it on Friday. And I thought, okay, this is great. Let me use this as my excuse to finally talk about this on the podcast. I love the four agreements. It is cognized by this man, Don Miguel Ruiz. And he wrote this really lovely short book. I mean, this is something that you can digest. Well, you can read it probably in an afternoon. Digesting it, that's kind of another story. Because as simple as these four agreements are that you can make with yourself, actually putting them into practice is really challenging. So what I want to do today is give the broad strokes overview of these like deceptively simple principles that can be very powerful with how we relate to ourselves and to other people and to the way we experience our life in general. And then later on at some point, I will do follow-up episodes to kind of go in more detail with each of them. Because while we can go over these basic ideas today, to actually live them is an entirely different story. And as I talk about them, you're going to very quickly see why. Now, this is not a book review, so I'm not going to go into a big explanation of the author and all of the backstory behind the four agreements, but I do highly recommend that you read the book and you get all of that. Okay. One of my favorite quotes from the book is the most important agreements are the ones you made with yourself. You tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you believe, and how to behave. So when we're talking about agreements, these major four agreements, we're talking about kind of how you have decided or how you have been programmed to respond to your life circumstances, to yourself within your life. And these four agreements are here to help you untangle yourself from fear, emotional reactivity, old conditioning, and unnecessary suffering so that you can move through life with more awareness and compassion and honesty and peace. So the one we're going to start with is be impeccable with your word. Your words shape your reality, both the words you speak to others and the ones that you repeat internally to yourself. So this agreement is an invitation for us to speak with integrity, to avoid using words as weapons, and to become more aware of the stories we continually reinforce. You know, the core idea here is that words hold creative power, both externally and internally. To be impeccable means to be without sin, which means not using words against yourself or other people. This is how we get more aligned between what we think, what we feel, and what we say. One of his other quotes words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it. Have you ever experienced that? Where someone says something and you immediately feel that sting of hurt and they see it on your face and they somehow course correct and they say something different, and you feel better almost automatically. Or what about the glow you get when someone says something positive to you, when a boss comments on what a great job you've done, or when your spouse says, Oh, you're looking really nice today. Now, granted, that might hit higher or harder for someone who is a words of affirmation love language like myself, but still, you know what it feels like to have someone talk kindly to you or not. We all know that bullying is a problem in schools, right? And what is that? It's an improper use of words, of what we speak. So the practices we want to implement when we're working with being impeccable with our word are things like say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean. We can be honest and kind at the same time. Uh, another thing is avoiding gossip and agreements with untruth. When someone says something and you know it's not true, but you agree because maybe it's easier. And that's a symptom of people pleasing, right? And people pleasing is all about not checking in with yourself, not checking in with your true alignment and only saying yes when you feel like it is truly aligned for you, but doing it in order to make other people happy for a whole slew of reasons that we won't get into now. And another thing that's important with being impeccable with your word is staying curious rather than reactive. And that will segue us into the second agreement. But before we do, you know, the gift here that being impeccable with your word gives you is alignment, authenticity, integrity. So some things to think about. Where in your life are you not fully saying what you mean? Do you speak to yourself with integrity and kindness? Can you remember a time when your words have created harm and when they've created healing? And what would it look like to be fully aligned in your communication this week? Okay, moving on to number two. Don't make assumptions. See why staying curious rather than reactive is important. So much unnecessary suffering comes from the stories we create in the absence of clear communication. This agreement, it encourages curiosity over certainty, clarity over mind reading, honest conversation over imagined narratives. The tricky thing about assumptions is that they are often mistaken for truth. They create this chain reaction. There's an assumption, which leads to a misunderstanding, which typically leads to us taking things personally, which is another one of the four agreements, which leads to a reaction, which creates conflict. And that's the problem with assumptions, is that we believe they are truth. And we typically make these assumptions for, well, a whole slew of reasons, right? Sometimes it's because we're using past experience to make an assumption about your current experience, which has some validity sometimes. I mean, if someone does the same thing over and over and over again, it's kind of fair to assume that they're going to do the same thing the next time. Uh, if a rattlesnake bites you, likely it's going to bite you again. So we want to recognize that and acknowledge it. But especially when we're in a relationship dynamic where we're trying to affect change, when we are trying to change maybe how we respond, well, we've got to leave room for the opportunity for someone else to respond differently. But there's a whole bunch of other reasons why we sometimes make assumptions. Sometimes it's fear. We're trying to protect ourselves. It is a natural byproduct of our story-making minds. And also sometimes it's because we believe that others think or feel like we do. This happens all the time in the spiritual world, where people will make an assumption that you are on board with a particular philosophy or premise or a political party or whatever it is. So, how do we get out of making assumptions? The biggest one is to ask, ask questions. Another thing is to notice always and never language. Oh, this always happens. Oh, she never does that. Those are assumptions because pretty much nothing is correct 100% of the time or happens always. Usually there's an exception to the rule. Another thing that you can do is consider at least three alternative explanations. This one's good for like road rage situations. You're driving down the road, someone is uh speeding or cutting you off. And it's really easy to immediately assume that they're just a jerk. But there might be other reasons why they might be driving erratically. Maybe they are rushing to get to the hospital because their loved one had an emergency. Maybe they're just having a really stressed out day and they're making mistakes that they don't normally make. I'm not saying it's okay, but also we've all been there, right? We've all accidentally cut someone off, right? Maybe it was just a simple mistake and they actually are sitting there in their car feeling really badly that they did that. You know, this is a way that we can offer other people some grace. And the last thing I want to recommend with assumptions is to use nonviolent communication. I know I talk about it all the time, but there are some great tools in nonviolent communication for kind of checking ourselves against making these assumptions. And the gift we get is clarity. Clarity. Things become clear. And that can't be underestimated because so often the problems that we have with people really can just be resolved if we're willing to have clear, honest, open, kind, impeccable with our word communication. So here are some reflective prompts for you. What assumptions have you made recently that may not be true? Where are you filling in gaps instead of asking questions? What is another possible explanation for the situation? And how would your relationships change if you replaced assumptions with curiosity? Another tidbit that I just thought of look into Byron Cady's The Work. This is a great book and kind of um philosophy or model for doing this kind of fact-checking yourself and looking for alternative uh explanations for things and finding deeper understanding. So, side note, that one is uh useful for this don't make assumptions piece. All right, let's move on. Don't take anything personally. This one's hard. It's hard not to take things personally. I mean, these all are hard, but but this one in particular. And what we want to try to understand is that other people say their actions, what they say, what they do. It's often always a reflection of their own wounds, beliefs, perceptions, and experiences, not an objective truth about you. When we stop absorbing everything as personal, as about us, we create space for greater freedom, for resilience, for more self-trust and self-love for that matter. You know, others act from their own reality, not because of you. We take things personally when we agree either consciously or subconsciously with what they're saying. Just take for a moment, say you have brown hair and somebody comes up to you and they say, gosh, you've got really ugly purple hair. Well, you're not going to take that personally because you know it's not true. There's there's not a single part of you that knows that that's true. So it just rolls off your back and you're able to kind of laugh and be like, yeah, okay. Because you know there's no reality to it. Whereas if you are someone who maybe is losing hair, you feel like your hair is thinning, and somebody comes over and makes a comment about, like, oh, might need to get some robaine, huh? And you take that personally. Well, you're taking it personally because you're feeling like there is some truth to what they're saying. I mean, in either circumstance, this person is not being kind. This is rudeness, very clearly. Uh, so you might take a friend to the fact that they're being rude, but the crux of what they're saying, well, you're not gonna ingest it. You're not gonna take it on because you know that it's just not real. There's a James Clear quote that I love. He says, You can take things seriously without taking them personally. Our tendency is to turn any criticism or complaint into a personal attack. We reply to it, defend against it, build a counterargument, lose sleep over it. You don't have to eat everything that's served to you. You can respond to criticism without digesting criticism. Take what's useful, do your best to improve, and leave the rest. This is something I'm gonna talk about in the next episode, which is going to be about criticism versus feedback. So stay tuned for that. What you wanna, you know, really take in when it comes to not taking things personally is that, first of all, you are not the source of others' actions. If you agree with something that someone is saying, you're essentially agreeing to ingest the poison. And that emotional freedom comes from non-attachment. Everyone lives in their own little worlds. It's important to question the story you are telling yourself. You can use things like nonviolent communication or simple questions to clarify rather than assume. And it's important that you take responsibility only for yourself. And if you do this, it gives you kind of an emotional immunity. It gives you freedom from being deeply affected by what other people think or say. So here are some questions to take this deeper. What did you take personally this week? Why? What part of you agreed with what was said? What story are you telling yourself? And is it true? And finally, what would it feel like to let that thought go? This is very much taken from Byron Cady's The Work. So another good uh, you know, excuse to check that book out. All right, lastly, we have always do your best. What do we need to know about that? First of all, recognize that your best will change from day to day, depending on your energy, your stress, your health, your circumstances. This agreement is not about perfection. It's about showing up sincerely and wholeheartedly in the moment you are in. When you do your best, you release yourself from the endless cycle of guilt and shame and self-judgment. So we really want to take in that your best is not fixed. It changes moment to moment. The version I am, when I am well rested and well fed, is very different from when I've gotten two hours of sleep and haven't eaten all day. You know, this agreement is the one that helps you bring compassion to yourself as you try to implement the other three. So, what we want to understand is that, you know, overextending yourself is not a true best. This is not saying that you need to show up 100% of the time in 100% of the circumstances and do everything completely, wonderfully, perfectly. It's saying that self-judgment is unnecessary if you do the best that you can in the moment. And one of the things that we want to cultivate is our ability to look at ourselves and self-evaluate both honestly and compassionately. So, in order to, you know, do our best, we need to be present. We need to be honest about our capacity, we need to prioritize self-care so that we are not trying to, you know, fill someone else from an empty cup. And perhaps the one I need to remind myself of often is that overwhelmed does not mean unaccomplished. And the gift this gives us is acceptance. We begin to accept ourselves for all the things we've done, all the things we haven't done, all our regrets, all the things we wish we could change. When we start fully stepping into recognizing that we truly were doing our best, we're better able to give ourselves some grace. So here are your prompts. What does your best look like today? Not yesterday, not a week ago, but today. And what would it look like to honor your capacity without judgment? So there you have it. The four agreements. Be impeccable with your word, don't make assumptions, don't take things personally, and always do your best. Check the book out. I'll link it in the show notes. I hope this got you thinking about your relationship with these agreements and what you've agreed to in your own life. I hope you have a wonderful week, and remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you are meant to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.