The Reading Room by 8Notes

I still break all four agreements. Sometimes in the same hour.

This is Episode 06, the last of a six-part series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements. No triumphant ending, because I don't have one. What I have is a shorter distance between falling and standing back up, which is what integration actually looks like once you stop expecting arrival.

Ruiz describes three paths to freedom: facing your fears one at a time, starving the parasite, and the initiation of the dead. I talk about the third one through a 72-hour water fast I did on Easter Sunday, and the gap between the urge and the need where all of this lives.

I also name the belief that cost me most of my adult life. Either/or. You can be happy or sad, successful or struggling, open or protected. The truth is and/both, and the four agreements dismantle the binary from the inside.

The last part is the honest one. Everything in this series is knowable intellectually and that isn't enough. What changes behaviour is practice in relationship, and that's why 8Notes exists.

Chapters
00:00 The confession
01:23 What Ruiz means by freedom
02:32 The fast, and what it taught me
04:35 The either/or that nearly broke me
06:38 What integration actually requires
07:51 Why this work needs a room
09:06 A final note on this book

The cheat sheets
Comment or DM FREEDOM on Instagram for the Episode 06 two-page cheat sheet.
Comment AGREEMENTS for the complete series pack, all six sheets in one download.

Links
Companion essay: 8notes.substack.com
Series microsite: fouragreements.8notes.co.uk
8Notes waiting list: waitlist.8notes.co.uk
Adrian's writing: adrianmelrose.com

The 8Notes Reading Room is written and read by Adrian Melrose.

Somewhere in your house there's an unfinished thing. A course you were loving. A project that had you buzzing. Half a book. And every time you think about it — that little sting.

In this episode I read Part 5 of my series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements: the Fourth Agreement, Always Do Your Best — the agreement that makes the other three sustainable, and the one that finally changed my relationship with finishing things.

Ruiz's insight is not what it sounds like. Your best is not a fixed standard: it changes hour to hour, day to day, and both your best on a great morning and your best on an empty evening count completely. I also bring in Katherine Morgan Schafler's work on perfectionism types — including the messy perfectionist, in love with beginnings and allergic to middles — and Julia Cameron's insight from The Artist's Way that creativity lives in the doing, not the done.

In this episode:

• Why your best today is not your best tomorrow — and why both count fully

• Perfectionism as a phenomenon, not a flaw: Katherine Morgan Schafler's five types

• The messy perfectionist: superstar at starting, allergic to the middle

• Julia Cameron's Censor — and why its job is to stop you making anything at all

• How doing your honest best closes the gap the inner critic needs to operate

• Action as the antidote to rumination

READ AND FOLLOW THE SERIES

The full essay, visual guide, and free two-page cheat sheet:

https://fouragreements.8notes.co.uk/?ep=5

The essay on Substack: https://8notes.substack.com
Do this work in community — the 8Notes waiting list is open:

https://waitlist.8notes.co.uk

With Adrian Melrose · Plain Talk Matters · 8Notes

adrianmelrose.com · plaintalk.co.uk · 8notes.co.uk

Books and references in this episode:

The Four Agreements — don Miguel Ruiz

The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control — Katherine Morgan Schafler

The Artist's Way — Julia Cameron

A thing happens. A short reply, a cancelled plan, a silence one beat too long. And before a single question gets asked, a story exists — fully formed, internally consistent, and almost entirely fictional.

In this episode I read Part 4 of my series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements: the Third Agreement, Don't Make Assumptions. This is the one I see causing the most unnecessary suffering in my coaching work — not because we make assumptions, but because we believe them.

I go beneath Ruiz's framework into the psychology that powers it: confirmation bias, the mind's habit of collecting evidence for its own theories. And I bring in the most practically useful question I know for dismantling a story you've already decided is true — Byron Katie's "Is it true? Can you absolutely know it's true?"

In this episode:

• Why assumptions feel like observations — and the cascade from assumption to conflict

• Confirmation bias: you don't see the world, you see your theory of the world

• Turning the theory around: gathering evidence for a better story

• Byron Katie's four questions and the gap they open

• The most destructive assumption in intimate relationships: that love means mind-reading

• The assumptions we make about ourselves — and never test

• Why asking a direct question is one of the most intimate things you can do

READ AND FOLLOW THE SERIES

The full essay, visual guide, and free two-page cheat sheet:

https://fouragreements.8notes.co.uk/?ep=4

The essay on Substack: https://8notes.substack.com

Do this work in community — the 8Notes waiting list is open:

https://waitlist.8notes.co.uk

With Adrian Melrose · Plain Talk Matters · 8Notes

adrianmelrose.com · plaintalk.co.uk · 8notes.co.uk

Books and references in this episode:

The Four Agreements — don Miguel Ruiz

Loving What Is — Byron Katie (The Work)

EPISODE DESCRIPTION (paste into Transistor)

Nothing other people do is because of you. Easy to say — and one of the hardest things in the book to actually live.

In this episode I read Part 3 of my series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements: the Second Agreement, Don't Take Anything Personally. I get into the line from the Celtic Poem of Approach that rearranged my 2025 — "I have no cherished outcome" — and what Elizabeth Gilbert's reflections on it (from her conversation with Tim Ferriss) reveal about the expectations we secretly carry into every relationship.

I also draw a distinction I think matters enormously, especially for men: not taking things personally is not the same as feeling nothing. Real immunity requires more emotional capacity, not less — and I bring in bell hooks' The Will to Change to make the case.

In this episode:

• Why nothing anyone does is actually about you — and why that's freedom, not indifference

• Personal importance: what Ruiz calls the ego's subtlest trap

• "I have no cherished outcome" — the Celtic Poem of Approach, via Elizabeth Gilbert and Tim Ferriss

• The wall vs the window: why armour isn't immunity

• Why praise is as destabilising as criticism when you take it personally

• Don't take anything personally vs don't take feedback seriously — they're not the same thing

READ AND FOLLOW THE SERIES

The full essay, visual guide, and free two-page cheat sheet:

https://fouragreements.8notes.co.uk/?ep=3

The essay on Substack: https://8notes.substack.com

Do this work in community — the 8Notes waiting list is open:
https://waitlist.8notes.co.uk

With Adrian Melrose · Plain Talk Matters · 8Notes

adrianmelrose.com · plaintalk.co.uk · 8notes.co.uk

Books and references in this episode:

The Four Agreements — don Miguel Ruiz

The Will to Change — bell hooks

The Tim Ferriss Show, episode 770 — Elizabeth Gilbert

Would you speak to the people you love the way you speak to yourself?

I ask that question in coaching and it stops almost everyone. The answer is almost always no. We give the people we love patience and context and the benefit of the doubt, then we turn on ourselves with a voice we would never let anyone use on a friend.

That is what the First Agreement is really about. When I first read Be impeccable with your word I thought Ruiz was talking about honesty. He is talking about something much bigger.

In this episode

• Why your word is the most powerful tool you own, and why most of us point it inward.
• Every belief you hold was planted by a word. A parent, a teacher, a throwaway comment that landed at the wrong moment.
• Gossip as emotional poison, including the version we run silently about ourselves.
• Clarity is kindness. Being impeccable is not about being nice, it is about saying the true thing cleanly.
• What changes in a relationship when one person stops using language as a weapon.

One thing to try this week

Write down the exact sentence your inner critic uses most. The actual words. Then read it out loud as if you were saying it to someone you love. Notice what happens in your body.

Links

• Read the full essay: The Word as Weapon or Wand on Substack
• Free two-page cheat sheet for this episode: fouragreements.8notes.co.uk
• On Instagram, comment or DM the word WORD and the cheat sheet comes straight to you.
• Episode 01, The Dream We Didn't Choose, is the foundation for this one. Worth starting there if you haven't.
• Join the 8Notes waiting list: waitlist.8notes.co.uk

The book

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by don Miguel Ruiz (Amber-Allen, 1997). Everything here is my reading of it. Go and get the book.

The 8Notes Reading Room is a podcast about the books that change how we think about being human. Written and hosted by Adrian Melrose. More at 8notes.co.uk.

Most of what you believe about yourself, you never agreed to. It was handed to you before you could argue back, and you have been running it ever since.

This is Episode 01 of a six-part series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements, the book I have gifted more than any other. Before we get to the agreements themselves, we have to look at what they are correcting. Ruiz calls it the Dream of the Planet. I call it the software you didn't write.

In this episode

• What Ruiz means by domestication, and why the reward and punishment system you grew up inside is still running now.
• The Book of Law: the rulebook you inherited about what is acceptable, what is shameful, and who you are allowed to be.
• The Judge and the Victim, and why they work as a pair. One hands down the verdict, the other serves the sentence.
• Why noticing the dream is the whole first move. You cannot renegotiate an agreement you don't know you made.
• What this looks like in coaching rooms with men who have never once questioned the rules they are living by.

One thing to try this week

Catch one rule you are obeying without ever having chosen it. Don't fix it. Don't argue with it. Just write it down and put a question mark after it.

Links

• Read the full essay: The Dream We Didn't Choose on Substack
• Free two-page cheat sheet for this episode: fouragreements.8notes.co.uk
• On Instagram, comment or DM the word DREAM and the cheat sheet comes straight to you.
• Join the 8Notes waiting list: waitlist.8notes.co.uk

The book

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by don Miguel Ruiz (Amber-Allen, 1997). Everything here is my reading of it. Go and get the book.

The 8Notes Reading Room is a podcast about the books that change how we think about being human. Written and hosted by Adrian Melrose. More at 8notes.co.uk.