This book was gifted to me this Christmas by a incredible, sensitive soul in Vancouver whom I love…she knows who she is! This is an extremely short read, almost like a quick guide to finding happiness, but much more inspired than the many “self-help in a nutshell” guides you find in the Personal Well-being section of the bookstore these days. I am pretty much open minded to any of these “guides” and usually end up reading both fundamentally soul soothing books as well as the Velveeta ordained ones that just recycle a bunch of known “truths” in a jumbled and inarticulately cheesy mess.
So why is this one particularly good? I think it’s in the simplicity of what these agreements are trying to help the reader focus on. Also, as with all of these guides, the timing of when you read it and your readiness to receive the information within all plays into the effectiveness of the guide. For me, it seemed to reinforce things that I have been pondering recently, including the paradigms set by your parents early on in your life, thus creating walls of approval and disapproval that you eventually must break down yourself. There are no walls but those that you erect yourself. The only approval required is your own. How simple these concepts but at the same time it is this seeking of approval that results in the deep-rooted insecurities that plague even the most headstrong.
The book focuses on four tenets: impeccability to your word, don’t take things personally, don’t make assumptions, and do your best in everything that you do. I think the one that was most jolting for me was “don’t take things personally”. People’s actions germinate from their own motives and purposes, and even when they seem directed at you, the true instigator is within them. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to take things personally because it’s never about you. In the same way, your own thoughts and actions stem from within and there is no one else to blame for the feelings and emotions you experience except you. Being rather sensitive in general, I think this is one of those tenets that really made me find freedom in the recent past. I realized my sensitive reactions to other people’s actions were misguided and unnecessary, and that I was enslaving myself to guilt and blame. Once you divorce yourself from those two harbingers of pain and self-doubt, there’s this sense of liberation, of bindings slipped off, of tethers untied, and you begin to soar on your own terms.
A big thank you to the beautiful woman who sent this book to me…sending virtual hugs from Hawaii.
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