Part IV: Always Do Your Best

In this talk, we'll explore the Fourth Agreement, 'always do your best'. It reminds us that our best is not a fixed standard, but something that changes moment by moment. In the Buddhist teachings, this aligns with 'right effort' - the gentle, wise energy of showing up without strain, comparison, or self-judgment. In this Lovestrea,m we'll explore how doing our best is not about perfection, but about sincerity, presence, and meeting each moment with compassion for our human limits and capacities.

Transcript

Welcome dear soul family so happy to have you here to explore and dive into the fourth agreement.

Always do your best.

We've already explored the three agreements which are recorded on my page so you can take a look at that if if you're called to and today we're going to explore the fourth agreement.

So we're going to have a deep dive into the fourth agreement not just the but also how the dharma the buddhist teachings tie into this that's going to be fun and this chat this talk will be recorded so if you can't stay the whole time you can catch it later and i will record the guided meditation that we'll do towards the end and i will post that as a separate little few minute guided meditation that way you can listen to it individually if you don't feel like listening to the whole talk again.

Okay so i invite you into this journey with me let's dive into the fourth agreement the first agreement from Don Miguel Ruiz book is be impeccable with your word the second agreement is don't take things personally the third agreement is do not make assumptions and the fourth agreement is always do your best so we're going to look at the fourth agreement today as a compilation of the other three agreements and we're going to dive into it as it was introduced to us in the book the four agreements it's a small little book and if you haven't read it i highly recommend it i used to buy a ton of them and have them in my desk drawer in my office and when i had a deep dive soul surgery moment with one of my patients i would go and grab the book write a little something inside and gift it to them because this book is quite transformational as i often say he could have written thousands of agreements right agreements that we make with ourselves on how to show up in this life but he only chose four four agreements what does that tell us it tells us that these are important ones that these are transformational ones that if we want to really make a difference in our lives and transform our suffering transform our anger transform whatever it is that is no longer working for us in our lives we can dive deeply into these four agreements and it will support us and i can definitely attest to that and what we're going to do is we're also going to bring in not only the book and the fourth agreement but we're going to look at it through the buddhist lens and you're going to see that they are one not two they really complement each other and so my friends let's take a deep breath just to land in our bodies in the here and now and just notice how that one breath meditation shifts something in you it certainly does in me i feel my voice soften my tone deepen the rhythm of my speech slow down a little bit so this is how we meet ourselves through the breath let's get into it always do your best this is the fourth agreement offered to us by the author don miguel ruiz and so i ask you how do you hear that always do your best because for many of us this phrase can land with a little bit of pressure right doesn't it sound like another another fixing project another self-improvement project another demand on us oh gosh now i have to do my best not just sometimes but always do my best right it feels a little bit pressure some but we're going to explore really what the fourth agreement is so don miguel ruiz is not inviting us into perfection into more self-improvement into doing our best always as a demand on us and neither is the buddha so both the four agreement and the buddha's teaching on doing our best is actually much deeper than what the ego might think right because the ego that illusory sense of self that we have that which says i am this person right the ego is constructed of all of our history everything we believe ourselves to be everything that happened to us the ego thinks that we need to go and self-improve and do more but what doing our best actually means is that our best changes it's not a fixed thing because we are not a fixed entity right so our best changes when we are rested and relaxed versus when we're exhausted our best changes when we are grieving right in a moment of deep grief and sadness we're not going to be able to offer the same bestness of us as we offer when we're joyful and elated and just having a fantastic day or even when our body's not well our best looks a certain way and when our body is well our best looks different if we're training for a marathon or a little 5k run or walk when our body feels well doing our best looks a certain way right we can really show up with our bodies push a little bit run a little extra get our our respiratory system our circulatory system really going but on another day when our body's not feeling so well our best looks different our best that day may just be a slow short walk right and the same goes for our nervous system when our nervous system is regulated doing our best looks very different than when our nervous system is dysregulated or in anxious overwhelmed so you're beginning to see that this fourth agreement of always doing our best is not a fixed thing we are not a fixed thing we are dynamic entities and so let me ask you a question is your best today the same as your best 10 years ago it's different it's not better or worse it's different and it doesn't need to be the same as 10 years ago but what happens what happens to us silly little humans is that we create suffering for ourselves real suffering when we compare our current capacity to an imagined ideal maybe how we were 10 years ago or maybe what we believe we should be this this time in our lives and that is self-perpetuated suffering i often say that comparison is an act of violence against the self it truly is think about it as soon as i compare myself to the me of 10 years ago or to the me of this idealized version of myself i'm harming myself i'm immediately telling myself that i'm not good enough right off the bat and how does that feel so take a look for yourselves how do you engage with this fourth agreement do you cut yourself some slack about always doing your best can you offer yourself some kindness and compassion and gentleness so that when your body feels really good and your nervous system feels regulated and your emotional state is really feeling stable your best looks a certain way but when those things are a little bit out of whack are you able to offer yourself some gentleness and to say okay my best is going to look different today and the reason that our best looks different from moment to moment literally we can be having a lovely relaxed conversation with someone and then an hour later on a phone call something upsets us and our best looks very different we are impatient we're intolerant we're just not able to put up with whatever that person is telling us on the phone right so always doing our best is constantly shifting and changing why because everything every moment in this life is dependent on causes and conditions everything a couple of weeks ago when i had scheduled this love stream that i was going to offer and 15 minutes before starting the power outage went out well my intention was to come on here with my beautiful soul family and do my best and offer an exploration of the fourth agreement but in that moment causes and conditions occurred there was a power outage in the whole house i had to address it and doing my best was no longer doing what i had committed to which was coming on and doing the love stream it had to shift based on the causes and conditions that showed up in my life so all of a sudden doing my best was letting you know unfortunately i need to cancel the love stream and i need to attend to the power outage and such is everything that unfolds in our lives so you can see that holding ourselves to a certain standard of bestness can be quite harmful and it's a way of living through ego the ego dominating mind so let's dive into what the buddha said about doing our best because we just explored this very simple fourth agreement from the book not too difficult to understand i would imagine and certainly if you have questions you're welcome to put them in the chat or you can always send me a dm as well and now let's look at what is right effort what is doing our best through the buddhist lens doing our best is talked about at length in the noble eightfold path the eightfold path is the teaching from the buddha on how to live our life with less suffering in the right view so to speak how to cultivate seeds of love and joy and compassion rather than cultivating anger and jealousy and dissatisfaction so right effort is one of those eightfold path teachings and so just briefly before we dive in in one sentence what the buddha taught as right effort was not hard effort meaning efforting hard it was actually effortless effort which is gentle and wise so using this gentle and wise energy of staying present to the moment and engaging with whatever is coming up in the present moment without forcing it without trying to fix it and without fighting our own selves so in essence it's a nourishing nourishing of whatever leads us to feeling better and then a letting go of whatever makes us feel worse so right effort is walking towards freedom and letting go of what's creating our suffering how does that sound showing up to our lives in presence without forcing anything using our gentle wise energy so we're not necessarily trying harder to fix ourselves we're simply noticing what is making things worse here what is just not really helping me out and then we're gently choosing the opposite of that rather than increasing our suffering we choose to soften our suffering so you can see that the buddhist path is very much aligned with the fourth agreement and i thought i'd give you four little simple tools we all love tools right little takeaways that we can use i certainly do four little tools that we can use to support right effort in our lives to support doing our best yet doing it from a space of effortless effort doing it from a space of wise gentle energy in showing up to the present moment so here we go these are the four simple tools that you can tap into and remember when you're just not feeling aligned and thinking oh gosh how do i do my best here i'm just not exactly clear so little sip of my tea okay and here we go so the first tool to remember when we want to show up doing our best from wise effort is don't add fuel to the suffering so when you notice that you're in the space of anger or fear or all of a sudden the self-criticism is just coming in the inner critic the perfectionist you don't have to feed it you first have to notice that you're in this space so as i often say with the abcs of soul surgery which i'll get into a little bit later the a stands for awareness so the first intervention is always awareness we can't do anything without being aware of what's going on in the moment so what i mean by don't add fuel to the suffering it means that the moment you notice oh gosh anger is here fear is here self-criticism is here and you don't make it worse you get out of this loop of mental spinning and you come back to present moment through the breath that's the b of the abcs of soul surgery you see they come up whether i want to or not it's just such a simple way to remember to come back to yourself and support yourself in moments of severe discomfort or even mild discomfort so first you become aware and secondly you pause soften come back to the breath by not adding fuel to your suffering and making it worse and the second tool is let go of whatever and whenever you can so if something painful is already here right effort means we want to meet it with kindness and allow it to pass rather than to judge ourselves for having this anger or this fear coming up we want to honor it and let it go and believe it or not we are already at the c of the abcs of soul surgery which is compassion although in essence for anyone who's new here i'll explain that the abcs of soul surgery have three c's compassionate curious contemplation but this is the first limb of the abc c sounds like a tongue twister which is compassion which is rather than judging yourself meet that emotion with kindness so if anger is here feel is here self-criticism is here bring the self-compassion in and remind yourself hey sweetheart it's okay it's okay everyone feels fearful sometimes we all have that inner critic some louder than others but you see how that self-compassion can soften the moment and help us to let it go rather than indulge it the third tool of right efforting is to nurture to nurture ourselves with whatever brings us ease so ease may come if we bring some curiosity which is that second c compassionate curiosity if we bring curiosity into the moment i wonder why every time i talk with this person i feel anxious you see how there's a curiosity there rather than coming from a space of judgment and that's tied into contemplation because we're doing a curious contemplation right we're doing self-inquiry we're asking ourselves what can bring me ease in this moment what can bring me calm and give yourself a little bit of that maybe it's gratitude maybe in the moment having a gratitude practice can support you in doing your best and then allow that nurturing to just grow and the fourth tool in supporting us to do our best or right effort is to support what's already good when you're feeling grounded or present right effort means stay there stay there don't try to cling to it and don't try to make it a permanent thing but come back to that grounded presence so my friends take a moment to just check in with yourselves and see how does this land on me this right efforting these four tools can i apply them to my life and then remember that right effort is not about forcing it's not about self-disciplining ourselves through shame you know you should be doing this and why aren't you doing this thing it's not about pushing ourselves past our limits that's not what this fourth agreement is about we're not fixing ourselves pushing ourselves forcing ourselves we're actually aligning ourselves doesn't that feel very different so we started with a concept of always do your best and how it can feel very imposing oh gosh now i have to just do my best all the time my goodness that's exhausting we moved out of that mindset to a more compassionate space and as you know if you've been with me before on our 16 prior love streams you know that i love questions i love self-inquiry because it's an active way to engage in the process what process the process of waking up my friends the process of waking up from autopilot from this mind that just regurgitates thoughts and narratives and stories and ideas and just often tortures us let's be honest we want to wake up from that mind don't we i mean ask yourself if you enjoy it by all means stay there but i'm out i don't want to be in that mind i want to be in the kind gentle compassionate loving inclusive patient tolerant mind space those are the seeds that i want to cultivate so often asking a question a contemplative self-inquiry question brings that curiosity into play takes us out of the judgy perfectionistic inner critic ego mind and invites us into presence into what can i do right now differently than my go-to autopilot so here's the question you ready for it here's the question and if any of you would like to write it down in your journal or in the chat it's really a question to live with it's a question to live into and the question is what is the most compassionate response available to me right now take it in with a deep breath what is the most compassionate response available to me in this moment right now not yesterday not 10 years ago not what i would have done when i thought about it last week but right now can you feel the power of this question can you see how it brings us into our intuitive wisdom rather than into answering it from the ego mind what is the most compassionate next step that's available to me right now and then you sit and wait for the answer not an answer from the thinking mind the answer that arises from your wisdom wisdom space and sometimes the next best thing you can do is simply do less sometimes that's the answer it's not about doing more it's doing less sometimes right effort gentle wise compassionate is about resting sometimes right effort is about speaking your truth in that moment sometimes it is about doing something about supporting someone getting up from your life and going to do something for someone else so do you see how this question brings us to the answer from a very different space within us and it really aligns us with compassionate care so it makes us stop working against ourselves pushing ourselves trying harder and it aligns us with reality with what's happening present moment in this moment right now through wise effort not ego-driven effort and this creates less suffering my friends why because there's no self-judgment in this decision of doing my best there's no forcing there's no violence against myself it's more of a responsive way of showing up to life so look at this for yourselves how does this land with you why can this be challenging and difficult to do for many of us because many of us learned that efforting is done through punishment and reward perhaps even through shame or through fear of if i don't do this thing in the best way possible i'm not going to be accepted i'm not going to be loved i'm not good enough right i work with a lot of young doctors i mentor young doctors so i do this soul surgery in person online in one-on-ones with people doctors and non-doctors lay people but in particular a lot of young doctors that i work with they're in their late 20s and 30s going through building their career as i did for many many years it's a long road many of them learned to do their best through fear and shame and it's a real mindset shift to have these openings open conversations with them to invite them into a different way of being because think about it when you hear the words always do your best don't you get a little like oh gosh that's a lot of work man i gotta show up as my best always in all ways my goodness feel a contraction a tightening and then we override our own selves at our own detriment we override when we're tired because we've got to do our best we override when we don't feel well because we have to always do our best and this kind of efforting becomes self-harm becomes self-harm because it's lacking wisdom it's lacking gentle wisdom so the beautiful thing about the dharma which is the name for the buddha's teachings from 2600 years ago is that right effort aligns with living in the middle path i always think of goldilocks and the three little bears right not too cold not too hot just right when she tastes the porridge or the beds right she goes to try the bed not too soft not too hard just right the middle way the middle path so the beauty of this path of effortless effort of right effort is that doing our best can mean honoring your limits not forcing yourself but honoring your limits not fixing yourself because you're doing it wrong and you need to do your best but honoring your limits and in order to honor ourselves and do our best from that space it means we need to listen deeply to what is possible and that's why this question is so profound what is the most compassionate next step that i can take right now in essence doing our best it's simply an act of radical honesty radical honesty with our capacity in this moment because our capacity changes from moment to moment right so sometimes doing our best if we're really radically honest is simply getting out of bed that day taking a shower getting dressed that's our best in that day other days doing our best may look like saying no to someone realizing that no i can't go to that event in the evening that's not what doing my best will look like that night i need to cocoon i need to stay in i need to rest and sometimes doing our best looks like showing up full steam ahead because everything feels aligned and so we can really show up in that moment as our fullest self whether that requires us to speak our truth and have a challenging conversation that's not an easy thing that could look like doing our best or simply staying present with discomfort that could be doing our best also so personalize it by taking a moment to think about a situation in your life that maybe you feel a little bit challenged with and ask yourself what is doing my best look like for that situation given the lens that i'm offering us here and ask yourself the question what is the most compassionate response available to me right now and lastly i want to invite one more thought that both don miguel ruiz the author of the four agreements and our dear noble buddha agree on and here's the last little bit which may be the clincher not so easy but let's see how you guys hear this the last part of this is that doing your best also means releasing attachment to the results so this is the opposite of what our society really conditions us to because society what a society tells us society tells us to not only do your best but to wait for the validation the acknowledgement the praise the rewards right so this is a radical shift the fourth agreement and the eightfold path of the buddha the right effort both ask us to not only do our best which changes moment to moment and do it from a gentle wise intuitive wisdom compassionate space but also to release our attachment to the results oh boy simple not easy simple not easy but this is where freedom lies my friends so you get to ask yourselves do i want comfort or do i want consciousness how do i want to live living in comfort looks very different than living in consciousness and consciousness is very often uncomfortable yep but when we release our attachment to the results we realize that there's nothing that we need to defend here there's nothing we need to prove we're just at peace with our contribution because we've done our best from this gentle wise space in present moment and we let go of whatever comes of it it's not up to us but what does the ego want to do the ego wants to grasp and control and manipulate and do it my way and i want the results to be a certain a certain way right i don't want the results just to be whatever they are i want the results to be the way that i'm intending them to be no my friends this is a path to suffering so if you want to be free from suffering which was the buddha's intentions when he offered us all of his teachings after his enlightenment a path to freedom if you want a path to freedom if you want a path to less suffering let's start with that then you will realize that most of our suffering is self-perpetuated most of our suffering comes from deep identification with the ego mind and the ego mind wants to control grasp resist what it doesn't like and grasp what it likes and both of those are the root of our suffering when we try to hold on tightly to pleasure those things that feel good we suffer why because everything is impermanent in this life how many of you like chocolate like me chocoholics in the house well i enjoy eating chocolate but if i grasp onto that i will for sure be disappointed because at some point that chocolate that i'm holding on to is gone it's done i've eaten it so grasping onto pleasure creates upset some of you know that i have five kids some of them came home for uh college break winter break if i grasp onto their being home i'm going to suffer when they leave but if i show up enjoying in present moment every moment not attached to how much time they spend with me or doing certain things that i want to do with them if i'm not attached and i just offer to do my best in presence with them then i'm flowing through life experience as it's unfolding rather than grasping to that which i want to keep here like my kids it's not possible and the other side of suffering is resisting what i don't like so if i resist the fact that my kids are going to leave and go on and live their lives and i'm going to have an empty nest very soon as my youngest goes off to college if i resist that i'm creating more suffering for myself so do you see how important it is to release our attachment to the results which is called non-attachment it helps us to live more fluidly and simply meet the needs of the moment rather than grasp or resist so my friends what i'm offering you is not a small thing it's a true redefinition of what we mean by success quote unquote so doing our best is no longer looking at it like we need to achieve a particular state we're looking at redefining success as alignment alignment between our intention our action and then our capacity in any given moment and when we're really honest about our intention our capacity in the moment our action will come from that space and it becomes compassionate action compassionate for our own selves and compassionate for those around us because now we're infusing right effort with kindness so what is this all about my dear friends it's all about giving ourselves permission you are allowed to be human you don't have to hold yourself to a certain standard of doing your best by comparing yourself to past versions of yourself or idealized versions of yourself because that creates suffering so just remember that always doing your best doesn't necessarily ask you to be better it asks you to be present to be aligned to be authentic and to meet this moment whatever the moment is asking of you honestly and simply respond with what is possible for you in that moment not more not less this is called right effort this is called the middle way and this is freedom my friends freedom from the ego mind freedom from the conditioned habituated mind freedom from our own belief systems expectations judgments inner critic perfectionist controlling attempting to manipulate life this is what we mean when we say flow like water from the Tao Te Ching right flow like water water just does what water does so my friends i'd love to hear from you let me know how this lands with you these two perspectives that are really the same one from the book the four agreements and one from the buddhadharma on always doing our best where are you with all of this take a look at that for yourselves because remember my friends at the end of the day the time we spend here together it can just be blah blah blah lots of words kind of entertaining oh wow that's a cool idea i'm gonna think about that or it can be an opportunity to dive deeply into transforming our lives really transforming our lives there's no right or wrong and there's no judgment i'm just inviting you to make a choice i am i'm inviting you to make a choice an intentional choice for you for your life how do you want to live what's important to you is self-compassion important is the first agreement important to you being impeccable with your word saying what you mean and meaning what you say is the second agreement important to you not taking things personally because you know that when we take things personally we really suffer and then we spew out anger resentment upset is the third agreement important to you do not assume because we know that when we assume it's just our mind's way of attempting to control to keep us safe to feel like we know what the next thing is that's going to happen or that that person is going to say and is this fourth agreement important to you always doing your best yet doing it from a space of gentle wisdom rather than from an ego-driven space so i invite you into the conversation into these contemplations for yourself for your life and i'm simply sharing what speaks to me over my 20 years of this deep dive in the spiritual journey of self-discovery i realized that i was wrong about probably everything in the way i was living my life so it took a lot of humility to change and shift i'm not the person i was 20 years ago hopefully hopefully none of us are and so it took a lot of humility to realize that i was not being impeccable with my word and i didn't realize the value in that that i was taking everything personally and that was creating a lot of suffering for me and for others that i was making assumptions and living from a space of just creating narratives and stories in my mind and also realized that when i was doing my best it was from a very deep ego-driven space from an inner critic that was telling me you're not enough you're not doing it good enough you should be doing this this way and again creating more suffering for myself and for others so it's all about radical honesty my friends radical honesty when we can be really honest with ourselves we realize that there's another way and that's what the buddha offers us and i know when i say that it can sound preachy and it can sound a little bit like like follow this path that's not how i intend it i'm simply sharing what has transformed my life using teachings that guide me and it speaks to me so deeply that i decided to drop the scalpel close my surgical practice of working as a surgeon for over 20 years and just go head on into soul surgery spiritual transformational guidance into offering everything that has really transformed my life by using it by diving deeply into it and that's why i'm here on this beautiful platform where we get to share together our life experience and we get to compare notes and say wait you're really having a tough time with this thing you know what me too i'm having a tough time with this well of course we're always walking our lives for ourselves i can't walk your life for you but we can walk our lives together so i call it alone together because it's alone in our individual path but in togetherness and it's so so nourishing to do it this way right here this is it waking up waking up from everything we believe to be true that money is going to bring us happiness that having the the perfect partner is going to bring us ultimate happiness and joy that losing another 10 20 50 pounds is going to make us happy that getting that next diploma is going to make us happy this is a shifting complete overhaul of how we're brought up in this western culture so i'm inviting you to consider what in your life is creating difficulties and what in your life is creating joy and are you reaching out are you reaching out for support because we don't need to do it alone alone alone we can do it alone together we can come to community and if you need support you're welcome to reach out for one-on-one we can do that too if you want to do a deep dive into the specifics of your life and the sticky spots where you're feeling i just can't seem to move past this thing and you feel that perhaps opening up in a perspective shift might support your moving through this challenge just reach out the sangha the community holds us in our life experience we each get to show up in our way and that's the beauty of the spiritual journey and in essence this is the spiritual path it's a building of intimacy with all things intimacy with my life intimacy with how i'm showing up in this world how does my generous heart speak in this world for some people it'll speak through dana through green love and thank you karen and libby for the donation that's definitely one way to offer generosity for others that may not be available to them and maybe their generosity speaks by holding space by being in the space together and holding an open-hearted open mind space for us to share so you get to check in with yourself and take a look at how does my heart we can do a whole love stream on how does my heart speak right wouldn't that be a beautiful title and so my friends we are coming towards the closing of our time together and those of you that have been with me before know that i love to read and close up with this beautiful poem from Rumi the 13th century spiritual poet and the poem is called the breeze at dawn the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you don't go back to sleep you must ask for what you really want don't go back to sleep people are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch the door is round and open don't go back to sleep let us share the merit that whatever benefit might have come from our sharing today from listening may it be of benefit for ourselves and to everyone we encounter and may it aid in the healing and transformation of our world peace in your heart peace in your mind peace in our world thank you my beautiful friends for showing up again and again for all of you that are new and have come for the first time thank you for joining me for the first time for being here i invite you to follow my page so we can meet like this more often thank you for co-creating this love stream with me you can also join our group we have a group on insight timer where you can share how these teachings land on you we can get nice and active in the group sharing how's my life transforming how am i showing up using these teachings benefiting myself and all beings so that we can support transforming our world sending you so much love and i will see you next week on the other side of silence much love to you my friends and remember rumi's words don't go back to sleep