Time to recalibrate your agreements with yourself.

Post 396 - For years people believed that it was impossible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Then Roger Banister proved that wrong in 1954. The following year, another 37 runners broke the belief barrier. And the year after that, 300 more runners did the same thing. Which all goes too show that there’s no other more powerful force in directing human behavior than what we believe. The line between "the way it is" and “the way it could be” is often no more than a belief about what’s possible.

What we agree to believe impacts our health, wealth, work, and every one of our relationships. Everything we do is based on agreements we’ve made - agreements with ourselves, with other people, with life. But the most important agreements are the ones we've made with ourselves. In these agreements, we tell ourselves who we are, how to behave, what’s possible, what’s impossible. One such single agreement isn’t a big problem, but when we have many such agreements that are3 based on fear, they deplete our energy and diminish our self-worth.

As we get ready to welcome a new year, it seems a great time to review the ideas of Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz, a Mexican author and New Age spiritualist, born in 1952. His most influential work, The Four Agreements, was published in 1997 and has sold more than four-million copies worldwide. In it, he advocates personal freedom from agreements and beliefs we've made that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives. Ultimately, it's about finding our own integrity, self-love, and peace by way of absolving ourselves from responsibility for the woes of others. These four agreements are:

- 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.

- Don’t take anything personally.
Taking things personally is like taking poison. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dreams. When you're immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

- 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.

- Always do your best.
Your best is going to change from time to time. It'll be different when you’re healthy as opposed to when you're sick. Do your best under all circumstances and you’ll avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Why not review your beliefs now, this week, and find out which ones are empowering and which ones you need to change in 2010. By acknowledging and changing our negative, distorted beliefs about ourselves, we can live richer and more fulfilling lives. Ultimately, each of us is free to unlock the shackles of our limited mindset and regenerate ourselves anew to become whatever we wish to be.

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are." - Don Miguel Ruiz