Why I want to implement this in my life

Always do your Best

I can’t lie, this agreement was by far the hardest to conceptualize. I had so many intriguing thoughts and felt engagement to all the other agreements, but with this one my mind felt blank. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I can only assume that I had such a difficult time with this agreement because it's the one that's most difficult for me in practice. It’s cheesy isn’t it? The same quote we’ve heard countless times throughout our lives. Since we were young people always say to always do your best. This got me wondering, what is my best? Obviously I’m the only person who could know if I’m doing my best or not but I don't know what my best is. Is it the best result or the most effort? As a professional procrastinator I often put things off until the last minute and then don’t have enough time to do my best. But when I do the best work I could in the time frame I unfortunately gave myself, is that my best? See what I mean? How do I do my best when I don’t know what my best is? 

From what I’ve seen from my peers in Los Alamos, I highly doubt I’m the only one who feels this way. In my experience this town is a very polarizing one. There is nothing to do for teens, so pointless drama is no foreign concept to us. We’ve never had to do our best because what is there to focus all that energy on? I shouldn’t say we, but I know this applies to someone other than myself. I don’t mean to go off topic but when researching this agreement I couldn’t help but think there's no outlet for me to pour my energy into. I’ve found myself heavily relying on others because there's nothing I enjoy doing on my own. I think this is a huge reason I don’t know the meaning of doing my best. 

Although this agreement is the most vague it is exactly what ties the agreements to each other. Repetition is the best way to learn and get better at something. Using that logic doing your best at something is through repetition until it's mastered. That's the idea behind this agreement following the other agreements. If you practice these agreements repetitively they will become simpler to do. The more comfortable you are with the agreements the more comfortably you can practice them successfully. I believe the reason Don Miguel Ruiz chose this agreement as the last one is because it’s the answer to competently be able to perform the rest of the agreements.

These agreements aren’t stone cold rules, and aren’t always going to be easy or even possible to do. That being said, keeping them in the back of your mind, and using them to simplify conflict is exactly what The Four Agreements is intended to do. I’ve learned a lot from researching these agreements. It has completely changed the way I view mindfulness. I hope that after learning about these four “rules” to life you think about the way you carry yourself. I can promise I’m going to try my best to implement these into my daily life and I hope you do the same.