Hi all, Lucky Jim quoted something from Don Miguel Ruiz's book
The Four Agreements. It was very interesting, so I looked up the book and I think the principles behind it are worth of looking at in the context of personal inventory.
A summary from the website
Toltec Spirit -- Based on the Four Agreements: Common sense wisdom for the spiritual warrior's journey:
In the best selling book The Four Agreements Don Miguel Ruiz gives four principles to practice in order to create love and happiness in your life. Adopting and committing to these agreements is simple. Actually living and keeping these Four Agreements can be one of the hardest things you will ever do. It can also be one of the most life changing things you will ever do.
As you practice living these four practices your life will dramatically change. In the beginning these new habits will be challenging and you will lapse countless times. With practice these agreements become integrated into your being and every area of your life and become easy habits to keep.
The Four Agreements are:
1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions: Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best: Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
Although this is the first time that I've seen these four "agreements" codified in print, I believe that I held these values and practiced them before I ever met my exBPDgf. While I believe that I'm still always learning and growing, these four principles are ones I'd already independently arrived at in my short four-plus decades on this planet. However, with the wisdom of hindsight, I realize now that I violated most of these when involved in a BPD relationship.
1.
Be Impeccable with your Word: I know there are times that I simply agreed with her just to avoid conflict. This isn't in context of a simple white lie, which I do not feel is violating my word. But I was foolish enough to think it was necessary to agree with her sometimes when I didn't 100% agree, and I realize that I would not have done this with a healthy partner. So in some cases, not only did she pretend to be somebody she was not, I
also was pretending to be somebody I was not! This realization is very humbling as I always try to be honest and place a very high value on that virtue.
2.
Don’t Take Anything Personally: One principle in life that I've learned was that to understand the actions of another person, I have to think like that person instead of thinking like myself. When somebody does something that seems crazy to me, it's because their thinking is crazy to me but makes sense to them! So if I just try to think like them, then I can understand that this person is not necessarily acting in a vindictive way to hurt me (although that can be a distinctive possibility depending on the situation), but that most people are actually acting in a non-compassionate self-serving manner, and that we're just "collateral damage" nothing personal... .When I take it personally, I want revenge which is an outlet for anger but not particularly healthy. Unfortunately in this world, the easiest way to understand many people is to understand that many people are only looking out for themselves in many situations.
3.
Don’t Make Assumptions: I know that I did a lot of wrong things in regards to this principle. I assumed that I knew best (a bit of a narcissist, eh?), and now I understand the one time near the end when my exBPDgf said I was "controlling". I also assumed we wanted the same things: that she no longer wanted to feel the ways she felt and no longer wanted to do the things she did because of her mental illness, and while part of her doesn't, at the same time she is not 100% invested in trying to combat it, and I assumed and acted like she was. I'm sure this was just as frustrating for her as it was for me at times. In fact, I know it was.
I also assumed other people believe in these four principles, but in reality many if not most people do NOT.
4.
Always Do Your Best: This is the one principle that I feel that I strayed the least from. My best varies from day to day, and I was doing my best with what I understood at the time. I think this is also why I personally hung in longer than I probably should have. One of my best friends told me she was crazy and I could "do better" after the very first time he met her.
I don't feel like I am looking for "perfect" because nobody is perfect! I understand everybody is flawed, but there is a difference between loving somebody who is flawed and loving somebody who is absolutely not compatible with your core values.
I think these four principles can definitely help me get back to my old baseline level of fulfilment, joy, and grateful appreciation of the world. I know there are some other issues in my past that made me very susceptible to falling in love with my exBPDgf, and being honest and trying my best is the only way to overcome any deficits that I have from these issues. Maybe I'll get into those in another post.
Thanks to Lucky Jim for pointing this stuff out.
