Be Impeccable
There is something I have been hearing out in the world lately. I caught it being uttered in my yoga class this week, and I decided it was something worth addressing from the perspective of the first agreement. The first agreement, the first of the four agreements of the Toltec Tradition, is ‘be impeccable with your word.’ In this belief system, words are seen as true power. They are the power we have to create. Words shape our thoughts, give us the power to express and to communicate, and become the reality in which we live.
If you make an agreement to be impeccable with your word and from this frame of reference examine the thoughts you utter inside your own head, I believe that you will be surprised by how often these words create negativity in your world. I believe this because it was my own experience. As I began to pay attention to the language in my mind, I began to see how these thoughts and opinions my many selves were uttering were self destructive or self limiting. In an effort to be impeccable with my words, I make a regular practice of recognizing the negative and limiting utterances, releasing them, and replacing them with words that create the world I want to see.
Perhaps most difficult to catch of these black magic utterances, are the subtly limiting ones. The ones whose language contains in them some assumption which if accepted creates negativity or suffering. The ones who hide in empowerment, a backhanded compliment from the core of your own ego.
It is that time when people focus on change and resolve to do things differently with this fresh start that the new year marks for us. We traditionally make promises, articulate goals, make resolutions, and generally focus on creating a better future and a better future self. The phrase that keeps jumping out at me is ‘be a better person.’ I am aware of the intent of this statement, but in the spirit of language matters, I’d like to examine what is truly being created when we speak the spell of ‘I will be a better person’ and ask how we might find a different more powerful dream to manifest.
This phrase is one of the subtly limiting ones. The assumption it contains is that you are not good enough. When you say that you aim to be a better person, you are saying that you want to be someone other than who you are. That being someone else would be better. I am confident that those people who I have heard promise this to themselves did not mean it that way. They were not conscious of the true meaning of what they had said. Its a common turn of phrase.
This is where being impeccable with your word comes in, where recognizing the true meaning of your utterances, the power that they have, can offer an opportunity for change.
I would suggest as a simple fix promising to be your best self. Although, I think we can take it a step further, all the way to the fourth agreement. Let’s promise to always do our best. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about that later.
Here’s what there is to see #thefouragreements
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