Always Do Your Best

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

5
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