THE FOURTH AGREEMENT

Always Do Your Best

THERE IS JUST ONE MORE AGREEMENT, BUT IT’S the one that allows the oth­er three to become deeply ingrained habits. The fourth agree­ment is about the action of the first three: Always do your best. Under any cir­cum­stance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is nev­er going to be the same from one moment to the next. Every­thing is alive and chang­ing all the time, so your best will some­times be high qual­i­ty, and oth­er times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and ener­gized in the morn­ing, your best will be bet­ter than when you are tired at night. Your best will be dif­fer­ent when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feel­ing won­der­ful and hap­py, or upset, angry, or jeal­ous.

In your every­day moods, your best can change from one moment to anoth­er, from one hour to the next, from one day to anoth­er. Your best will also change over time. As you build the habit of the four new agree­ments, your best will become bet­ter than it used to be. Regard­less of the qual­i­ty, keep doing your best — no more and no less than your best. If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more ener­gy than is need­ed and in the end your best will not be enough. 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 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. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.

There was a man who want­ed to tran­scend his suf­fer­ing so he went to a Bud­dhist tem­ple to find a Mas­ter to help him. He went to the Mas­ter and asked, “Mas­ter, if I med­i­tate four hours a day, how long will it take me to tran­scend?”

The Mas­ter looked at him and said, “If you med­i­tate four hours a day, per­haps you will tran­scend in ten years.”

Think­ing he could do bet­ter, the man then said, “Oh, Mas­ter, what if I med­i­tat­ed eight hours a day, how long will it take me to tran­scend?”

The Mas­ter looked at him and said, “If you med­i­tate eight hours a day, per­haps you will tran­scend in twen­ty years.”

“But why will it take me longer if I med­i­tate more?” the man asked.

The Mas­ter replied, “You are not here to sac­ri­fice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be hap­py, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of med­i­ta­tion, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won’t enjoy your life. Do your best, and per­haps you will learn that no mat­ter how long you med­i­tate, you can live, love, and be hap­py.”

Doing your best, you are going to live your life intense­ly. You are going to be pro­duc­tive, you are going to be good to your­self, because you will be giv­ing your­self to your fam­i­ly, to your com­mu­ni­ty, to every­thing. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intense­ly hap­py. When you always do your best, you take action. Doing your best is tak­ing the action because you love it, not because you’re expect­ing a reward. Most peo­ple do exact­ly the oppo­site: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don’t enjoy the action. And that’s the rea­son why they don’t do their best.

For exam­ple, most peo­ple go to work every day just think­ing of pay­day, and the mon­ey they will get from the work they are doing. They can hard­ly wait for Fri­day or Sat­ur­day, what­ev­er day they receive their mon­ey and can take time off. They are work­ing for the reward, and as a result they resist work. They try to avoid the action and it becomes more dif­fi­cult, and they don’t do their best. They work so hard all week long, suf­fer­ing the work, suf­fer­ing the action, not because they like to, but because they feel they have to. They have to work because they have to pay the rent, because they have to sup­port their fam­i­ly. They have all that frus­tra­tion, and when they do receive their mon­ey they are unhap­py. They have two days to rest, to do what they want to do, and what do they do? They try to escape. They get drunk because they don’t like them­selves. They don’t like their life. There are many ways that we hurt our­selves when we don’t like who we are.

On the oth­er hand, if you take action just for the sake of doing it, with­out expect­ing a reward, you will find that you enjoy every action you do. Rewards will come, but you are not attached to the reward. You can even get more than you would have imag­ined for your­self with­out expect­ing a reward. If we like what we do, if we always do our best, then we are real­ly enjoy­ing life. We are hav­ing fun, we don’t get bored, we don’t have frus­tra­tions.

When you do your best, you don’t give the Judge the oppor­tu­ni­ty to find you guilty or to blame you. If you have done your best and the Judge tries to judge you accord­ing to your Book of Laws, you’ve got the answer: “I did my best.” There are no regrets. That is why we always do our best. It is not an easy agree­ment to keep, but this agree­ment is real­ly going to set you free.

When you do your best you learn to accept your­self. But you have to be aware and learn from your mis­takes. Learn­ing from your mis­takes means you prac­tice, look hon­est­ly at the results, and keep prac­tic­ing. This increas­es your aware­ness.

Doing your best real­ly doesn’t feel like work because you enjoy what­ev­er you are doing. You know you’re doing your best when you are enjoy­ing the action or doing it in a way that will not have neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for you. You do your best because you want to do it, not because you have to do it, not because you are try­ing to please the Judge, and not because you are try­ing to please oth­er peo­ple.

If you take action because you have to, then there is no way you are going to do your best. Then it is bet­ter not to do it. No, you do your best because doing your best all the time makes you so hap­py. When you are doing your best just for the plea­sure of doing it, you are tak­ing action because you enjoy the action.

Action is about liv­ing ful­ly. Inac­tion is the way that we deny life. Inac­tion is sit­ting in front of the tele­vi­sion every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of express­ing what you are. Express­ing what you are is tak­ing action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the dif­fer­ence is the action. With­out action upon an idea, there will be no man­i­fes­ta­tion, no results, and no reward.

A good exam­ple of this comes from the sto­ry about For­rest Gump. He didn’t have great ideas, but he took action. He was hap­py because he always did his best at what­ev­er he did. He was rich­ly reward­ed with­out expect­ing any reward at all. Tak­ing action is being alive. It’s tak­ing the risk to go out and express your dream. This is dif­fer­ent than impos­ing your dream on some­one else, because every­one has the right to express his or her dream.

Doing your best is a great habit to have. I do my best in every­thing I do and feel. Doing my best has become a rit­u­al in my life because I made the choice to make it a rit­u­al. It’s a belief like any oth­er belief that I choose. I make every­thing a rit­u­al, and I always do my best. Tak­ing a show­er is a rit­u­al for me, and with that action I tell my body how much I love it. I feel and enjoy the water on my body. I do my best to ful­fill the needs of my body. I do my best to give to my body and to receive what my body gives to me.

In India they per­form a rit­u­al called puja. In this rit­u­al, they take idols that rep­re­sent God in many dif­fer­ent forms and bathe them, feed them, and give their love to them. They even chant mantras to these idols. The idol itself is not impor­tant. What is impor­tant is the way they per­form the rit­u­al, the way they say, “I love you, God.” God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, “I love you, God,” is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, “Thank you, God,” is by let­ting go of the past and liv­ing in the present moment, right here and now. What­ev­er life takes away from you, let it go. When you sur­ren­der and let go of the past, you allow your­self to be ful­ly alive in the moment. Let­ting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is hap­pen­ing right now.

If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is hap­pen­ing right now because you will always wish it to be dif­fer­ent than it is. There is no time to miss any­one or any­thing because you are alive. Not enjoy­ing what is hap­pen­ing right now is liv­ing in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self-pity, suf­fer­ing, and tears.

You were born with the right to be hap­py. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life pass­ing through you, because that is God pass­ing through you. Just your exis­tence proves the exis­tence of God. Your exis­tence proves the exis­tence of life and ener­gy.

We don’t need to know or prove any­thing. Just to be, to take a risk and enjoy your life, is all that mat­ters. Say no when you want to say no, and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you. You can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best you are deny­ing your­self the right to be you. That’s a seed that you should real­ly nur­ture in your mind. You don’t need knowl­edge or great philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts. You don’t need the accep­tance of oth­ers. You express your own divin­i­ty by being alive and by lov­ing your­self and oth­ers. It is an expres­sion of God to say, “Hey, I love you.”

The first three agree­ments will only work if you do your best. Don’t expect that you will always be able to be impec­ca­ble with your word. Your rou­tine habits are too strong and firm­ly root­ed in your mind. But you can do your best. Don’t expect that you will nev­er take any­thing per­son­al­ly; just do your best. Don’t expect that you will nev­er make anoth­er assump­tion, but you can cer­tain­ly do your best.

By doing your best, the habits of mis­us­ing your word, tak­ing things per­son­al­ly, and mak­ing assump­tions will become weak­er and less fre­quent with time. You don’t need to judge your­self, feel guilty, or pun­ish your­self if you can­not keep these agree­ments. If you’re doing your best, you will feel good about your­self even if you still make assump­tions, still take things per­son­al­ly, and still are not impec­ca­ble with your word.

If you do your best always, over and over again, you will become a mas­ter of trans­for­ma­tion. Prac­tice makes the mas­ter. By doing your best you become a mas­ter. Every­thing you have ever learned, you learned through rep­e­ti­tion. You learned to write, to dri­ve, and even to walk by rep­e­ti­tion. You are a mas­ter of speak­ing your lan­guage because you prac­ticed. Action is what makes the dif­fer­ence.

If you do your best in the search for per­son­al free­dom, in the search for self-love, you will dis­cov­er that it’s just a mat­ter of time before you find what you are look­ing for. It’s not about day­dream­ing or sit­ting for hours dream­ing in med­i­ta­tion. You have to stand up and be a human. You have to hon­or the man or woman that you are. Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exer­cise and do what makes your body feel good. This is a puja to your body, and that is a com­mu­nion between you and God.

You don’t need to wor­ship idols of the Vir­gin Mary, the Christ, or the Bud­dha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of God, and if you hon­or your body every­thing will change for you. When you prac­tice giv­ing love to every part of your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow, you will love, hon­or, and respect your body immense­ly.

Every action then becomes a rit­u­al in which you are hon­or­ing God. After that, the next step is hon­or­ing God with every thought, every emo­tion, every belief, even what is “right” or “wrong.” Every thought becomes a com­mu­nion with God, and you will live a dream with­out judg­ments, vic­tim­iza­tion, and free of the need to gos­sip and abuse your­self.

When you hon­or these four agree­ments togeth­er, there is no way that you will live in hell. There is no way. If you are impec­ca­ble with your word, if you don’t take any­thing per­son­al­ly, if you don’t make assump­tions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beau­ti­ful life. You are going to con­trol your life one hun­dred per­cent.

The Four Agree­ments are a sum­ma­ry of the mas­tery of trans­for­ma­tion, one of the mas­ter­ies of the Toltec. You trans­form hell into heav­en. The dream of the plan­et is trans­formed into your per­son­al dream of heav­en. The knowl­edge is there; it’s just wait­ing for you to use it. The Four Agree­ments are there; you just need to adopt these agree­ments and respect their mean­ing and pow­er. Just do your best to hon­or these agree­ments. You can make this agree­ment today: I choose to hon­or The Four Agree­ments. It’s so sim­ple and log­i­cal that even a child can under­stand them. But, you must have a very strong will, a very strong will to keep these agree­ments. Why? Because wher­ev­er we go we find that our path is…