Comments:Why are the Four
Agreements BS? and why aren't the 12 elements, now being
called the 13 primes, not BS.
Here are the four agreements as
they were passed to our discussion list.
1. 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.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is
a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you
are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be
the victim of needless sufferin! g.
3. 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.
4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be
different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any
circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid
self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
I need to drop all the explanatory material for the sake of
brevity, as including it would require a book-long explanation
and for now, that's not practical, as these Four Agreements
are loaded BS-CS.
1. Be Impeccable with your
Word
First off, all of these four
agreements are made up of a composite standards. Second, when
you divide them by one, and themselves, you get ambiguity
which produces not individual differences (because if you got
individual differences, it wouldn't be a composite standard).
Second, each says, I have to
change, IF i do not meet this standard. There doesn't seem to
be any other way to approach this, in that, this requires
personal change, NOT scaffolding. And if it does, I doubt it
is explained.
Third, since they are composites,
the degree of ambiguity for a single person is not allowed,
for instance: someone could think they are impeccable with
their word...however, unless the composite norms judge it so,
it is not. I will give you real life example.
Is it ok, to lie, distort the
truth, use half-truths or hide the truth...is that impeccable?
MOST of us would say of course not,
yet that is the reason why the four agreements are so narrow.
Is it ok to survive? OR, should
your word be impeccable, based on what set of standards, so
you can live?
In the Philippines, it is perfectly
acceptable and I would suggest enough to answer impeccability
in there culture, to lie, cheat, steal, and distort, half or
not tell the truth as they know it...to survive. In fact,
EVERY successful coping strategies have been developed to make
a con artist embarrassed in the Philippines, and many other
places where the route to survival is to impeccably use your
words.
Fourth, out of this example, comes
what makes BS, BS, is that something you do, can be
generalized to what I do, and it can work. I've put forward
ideas where only a small percentage, choosing a number of 1-5%
as a figurative way of saying, some might, most won't.
SO, why don't these four agreements
work? in reality? A prime: Culture is Key, and to me, we can
reduce that perhaps to Culture, as it says enough.
Impeccability will not translate well across cultures, and Don
Miguel should know that...now to create the composite standard
as a moral point of view is fine, but you can't project this
onto everyone, as you then define people, and that is not what
the primes do in FLOW.
The PRIMES are used to guide the
person to Natural Born Happiness, and to view Success
Requirements as such and not the path to happiness, allowing
for the person NOT TO HAVE TO CHANGE, but to scaffold and
support the space between the two.
2. Don’t Take Anything
Personally
I won't spend much time on this
one, because it forces a group of people, who take things
personally, which is like saying to them, you need to be
taller, and tells them to give up who they are. Let's face it,
while you can say this, or don't worry, or don't be
self-doubting... If I am motivated in my design that comes with
me to make me a unique individual, and you say this to me, I
may want to do this, but the very fact you say it, and people
believe it, like all those who are born into
non-personalization, you are asking too much. You are asking
me to give up my happiness in the pursuit of your success
model. In FLOW, we don't ask people to change. We find ways to
design, scaffold and support (dss;)...change<G> a la dss
change, not bad eh<G>
Seriously this is without a doubt
BS, while it might be something to shoot for in success, only
some people will be able to make this climb and you place a
serious handicap on those you are asking to give up who you
are. FLOW does not ask you to give up who you are, it asks you
to look IN, not up, at lofty social goals painting by the
unknowing for the unknown, IMHO. FLOW asks you to know
yourself, it doesn't say know yourself best, or better than
anyone else, or in comparison to others, or using composite
standards, it just says know yourself. Happiness is Natural,
so why would FLOW fail to recognize that asking someone who
takes things personally, conform to a standard which some will
meet without thinking and others have to give up happiness
for... Go figure.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
This just doesn't compute. A
thought is an assumption, Don't Make Thought would actually be
better, or don't have expectations, I've seen that used, and
saying, don't make snap judgments would be more logical, but
no matter how you put this, it is BS. Blank Slate anyone can
do anything, learn anything, become anything, if you will just
change.
FLOW on the other hand, makes no
assumption about change, in that it is something which occurs,
but FLOW doesn't ask you to make any personal change. In fact,
FLOWers, or maybe what i should call Florists, the plural
<tongue in cheek> assume YOU CAN'T/WON'T/DON'T change so we
don't sub-optimize change, we try to get you to stop
pretending you will change and suspend for a moment the idea
that you even will, now, let's design against that, you NOT
changing. If you changing, then perhaps we can reallocate some
of the resources, or not, but the design will always be
sub-optimal if we pretend you will change. Keeping Score does
that.
YOU WILL NOTICE perhaps that all of
the Primes do not suggest a standard, a routine recurring
event that becomes a routine, or composite procedure. The
Primes don't put a number, a measure, or quantity, or even
quality, if they did, they would NOT be Primes, as they would
require a standard to be composite, as in the next agreement
BEST.
4. Always Do Your Best
Tell me, how is your best measured.
If you are the one who measures it,
then why do you have self-doubt? If you have done your best
and you know it?
IN BS, we are conditioned to see
BEST as a moving target, which can NEVER be reached. I don't
know whether Don Miguel has gotten any pushback or not, but
really, this is an insane agreement that is so far down the
road in BS, I never want this hung on me, or my children, just
be, do, have, become...there will be plenty of time for
judgment about that when you die.
In all actuality, there is nothing
that we can quantify as Best, other than-->to compare it with
others, she has the best marks, as measured against her peers,
or those who went before her... And that someone the ladder
metaphor is again engaged in BS... There is no ladder in FLOW<
only re-calibration, only getting feedback and I am going to
change getting feedback to feedback, which makes it a verb as
well, which means not only do you get, but you feedback, as in
ROs best advice in a work situation, or closing the loop of
input-thruput-output in a system or process, or as a noun to
see it as feedback and not yourself, so it is not your
subject, but object to you, and that is a better way of
saying, don't take it personally, although 1/2 of you will, no
matter what I say, it's the ONLY way you could take it, your
filters inborn into you, mean everything is personal, your
entire makeup is personal, and everything about you and what
you believe is personal, why would I ask u for something else?
It would be inhumane.
While Don Miguel is free to and
encouraged I suspect to put out best practices in this form as
a composite standard that keeps people striving, changing and
never-getting, this is clearly a fit for BS and not FLOW.
In fact, I can't see anything about
this that would produce FLOW at all, because people in one
form or another are always going to be having to change, to
strive, to take, to always, to be impeccable...shouldn't you
be able to accept me as impeccable?
Can't you see me that way, is it
ok, am I ok?
Can you accept yourself and other
unconditionally, without these four agreements... Would there
be any need for them, if we could do that one thing, the 13th
Prime... Take it and leave it?
Now, let me summarize for myself
please:
Reasons why something is BS and not
FLOW: (First cut at this folks, accept these as such<G>, I'm
doing my best, and that's all you can ask:)
1. Evoking a composite standard,
which EVERYONE can't achieve without changing themselves
personally versus personal non-change, which can be
scaffolded, and supported to meet composite success
requirements while preserving inborn happiness vectors.
2. Something to be, do, have and
become, which is not emergent, but linear from a norm, or
model, versus observations that provide data to feed design.
(this one is really tricky, as I need to id meta, which is
also a composite, and I just haven't got there yet)
3. Suggesting that you can do, be,
have, become anything you want if you will just change versus
you can be, do, have, become everything you can-->using FLOW
the sky's the limit if you collaborate.
4. Is not a meta standard which
means that the composite means that I am conforming you, the
personal you, which is changeable (BS), and not using a meta
standard based on you not changing, but being informed, or in
observance of the standards, but not trying to change to meet
them personally.
Ok, I'm going to stop here and
let's those bake for awhile, I can feel something else, but I
have to unwind this idea of meta first before I can
distinguish more about the BS and FLOW designs.
