Transform Your Life Through The 4 Agreements. . .

So what if I told you that everything you believe about yourself and others and life itself is just an agreement? And what if that agreement could be rewritten as easily as it was written? We're talking about this and so much more on this podcast called Wellness and Wisdom. All right, Mar, So this is really interesting because I think about how many agreements that I've written for myself in my life that completely destroyed me. And this is really amazing because any agreement that has been written can be rewritten. But we first have to understand, like, what actually is an agreement. We're going to define that through the beautiful wisdom of Don Miguel Ruiz, a very famous author who, fun fact, by the way, he was a trained medical doctor. Did you know this, Mar? Did you know the backstory on Don Miguel?

Tell us.

This is so cool. He practiced neurosurgery for several years. He had an nde, a near death experience, and it completely shifted his path towards being a teacher of this Toltec wisdom. And this event actually allowed him to abandon his practice as an MD and go super deep into teaching this mystical and really practical awareness of the Toltec wisdom. We're going to get into these four agreements. They're very popular. People know them. But knowing and embodying are very different. Would you agree?

A hundred percent, yeah.

The embodiment process is where it's like really the most important. So a lot of these agreements are shaped by belief. And belief is really interesting because whatever I believe to be true, it essentially becomes true. It becomes an agreement that I've made. And it happens in many different ways. How do you think this really happens for us where we make agreements with ourselves?

I believe there's agreements that we make on a soul level before we actually incarnate to our lives, which that goes a little too deep possibly, but we make a lot of agreements once we're already here. So we make agreements with our parents about the wounds and the lessons that are meant to teach us through traumas and conditionings and all of that. So I believe that's a bigger one. But I feel like the media also has a big impact on the beliefs and also the environments that we're surrounded by, which could be the culture that the country that we live in, the community that is around us. I think all of that shapes our beliefs and the agreements that we create for ourselves.

No doubt. So if y' all are struggling with self doubt or negative thoughts or limiting beliefs, which is most of us at times, then this episode is for you. We're gonna break down. Don Miguel Ruiz, Four agreements. And we're gonna go practical into how you can actually use them in your life. I mean, this is one of our superpowers here at Wellness and Wisdom. We, we. We take these massive concepts and we boil them down to just the honey, just the nectar that you can sip on and actually use today. So this podcast, among all of our podcasts, I don't say this from an egoic place. They truly have the power to shift your frame, to shift your reality, if you allow them to soak in. So I ask that you just allow this to soak in. Defining an agreement is actually calling it out for what it is. An agreement is a mutual understanding between one person and another person or more regarding their rights, their responsibilities, or their actions. Now, agreements can both be verbal or written. And when I say verbal, they can be things that you're saying to yourself in your head, but never speaking out of your mouth. That's still verbal, right? Because we have an internal verbalization which shapes our external verbalization. They can also be journal entries, right? Like, I'm a piece of shit. I'm not lovable, I'm not worthy. Which is an interesting practice to do because just by the fact that you and I are experiencing something written on a page that we think about ourselves can be a really great starting place for healing. So let's start with the foundation. More like when. When we talk about beliefs being an agreement or an agreement being a belief, which I think they're really interchangeable, right? In our program, the Liberated Life VIP, it's on the screen right now, liberatedlife.com one of the things that we do is we take all of our students through what's called the BTFA loop. That's beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and actions. Now, it literally happens in that order. And I pulled this wisdom from many different people on the podcast, but one of them that was amazing. His name was Nir Eyal, and he had the hook model. He was one of these people that studied how social media can be addictive, and Facebook and Twitter would pay him more to actually addict people to social media. He had a gut check moment, much like Don Miguel did, and he said, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do something more of service to the world. So now he actually trains people how not to be addicted. But I learned this model from him. I also Learned it from Dr. Kyra Babinet, who is a neuroscience specialist, and Dr. Judd Brewer, who, who is probably the best in the world at neurology and neuroscience the belief that we have stored in our software, in our hardware informs our thoughts and then our thoughts create a feeling. And anytime you put emotion to a thought, it unlocks the key for reality. And then that feeling makes us act in a certain way. So it's on the screen right now. Btfa, this is what we talk about and get really clear on in our liberated life VIP program and in our tribe. The foundation of all of this is that a belief is in agreement, but it's an agreement that actually informs our reality. Right? And this information that we're utilizing to create a reality, it can be morphed, it can be shifted, but it has to come through new knowledge and that knowledge gets to be turned into wisdom. So like, what do you really believe about beliefs more? Are they the truth? Are they not the truth? Can they sometimes be true? Can they many times not be true? Like, what's your sense on this?

I think both is possible and true. I think some beliefs may be true, some are not true.

But how do we know what's true and what's not?

That is the thing. I think a lot of the beliefs that we have, we can decide for ourselves if we want them to be true or if we don't want them to be true. Of course there's things that are the universal truth that's just like the sun goes up and down every single day at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. So we can believe that and we know that's the universal truth. But our personal beliefs, I think a lot of that can be changed by us because we can change what we believe. So are they ever the ultimate truth or are they just our perception and just like how to say that? Like a compound of everything that we've experienced. And so that's why we believe that's the truth.

The way that I always see it is, does this belief serve my dream? Does this belief serve my dream? One of the most incredible life changing things I was ever told was borrowed wisdom. Because by the way, all wisdom is borrowed and reorganized and recapitulated into something more practical for the modern time. All belief, all wisdom is borrowed. But Paul Check told me on a show once that when your dream is far greater than your crisis, your life will be a manifestation of that. Think about that y'. All. When your dream is far greater than your crisis, AKA the self inflicted crisis that are, that are hinged upon your beliefs, then that dream will become reality. And many times like we all have a dream, everybody has a dream, like right here in the studio, Martin Luther King is on the wall. What was the most famous quote he ever said? He said, I have a dream that all men are created equal, to not judge each other by the color of our skin. And that was his dream. Look what he had to go through in order for that dream to become reality. What I'm saying is, as you go deep into these four agreements, please do not treat this like just information. Please do not just get entertained by this podcast and not use it. Really, really, really. Let these four agreements soak in. They're super powerful. They have the capacity to change your life. And the first one is probably the hardest. What is the first one, Mar? What is the first one? What's the first one? The one that's probably the most challenging for all of us.

The first one is be impeccable with your word.

Be impeccable with your word. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Say it from a place to uplift someone rather than harm them. Woo. I mean, if that, if there is a spoken simple truth by Don Miguel from his near death experience, leaving the medical field, that would ever be a lifetime of work, it is that first agreement. It's on the screen right now. Be impeccable with your word. What does this really mean? It means that you've done the work to be clear on your dream, your values and your purpose. And I, I'll say this, for the next 10 years, probably it's the starting place for you to have integrity for the words in which you're speaking. In other words, if you don't know who you are, you don't know why you're here, and you don't know what you stand for, it's going to be actually impossible with that level of consciousness to be impeccable with your word, because your word isn't grounded on any truth that you know about yourself. So I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad. I'm saying this because at 44 years old, that's been a continuous learning curve for me to get clear and clear and clear and clear about who Josh is. Who is Josh? What does he stand for? What is his dream? I mean, these are the things that are so important, yet they're not taught in schools more. Did you ever have a dream visioning class when you went to college? Was that a thing for you where they were like, mar, what's your dream in life? What would you like to accomplish? That never happened, right?

Yeah, but it was usually related just to career. Like we were never really exactly given the permission to dream outside of our job. Like the corporate dream that we were sold as children.

That's a good way to put it. We were sold. We were sold because many of the dreams that were sold come from a place of us just wanting to extinguish our fear. But a real dream is the one that doesn't even operate from a place of wanting to extinguish the fear. A real dream comes from you doing something, being something, standing for something that is so amazing to you as a person. Right? Like mar your dream to have this land with the cottontails flowing in the wind and the buildings and serving people in the way that your dream is real for you. But it doesn't come from a place of fear, Right? It comes from a place of joy. So getting clear on that, y', all, in our liberated life Tribe in the VIP program is really important. I'm not saying that because you need to join. You could go do the work. You could spend the next 10 years of your life going and gathering all these things. I'm just saying it's a whole lot easier to shorten the pain curve of getting clear on who you are. Look, our words create reality. You don't need to be Napoleon Hill or Wallace Wattles or read the New Thought Movement books to know that your thoughts create things and your words create reality. The next one's really interesting. What is the next one? This is one that I've struggled with probably the most, actually. Probably the most. It's about being hypersensitive to feminine criticism is my. My wound that I'm currently working on.

I feel like a lot of people struggle with this, me included. It's don't take anything personally.

Personally personalization. So when your woman or man is talking to you and they say, I'm so pissed right now. You didn't take out the garbage. This is like a traditional argument that happens with men and women. Nothing that she is saying has anything to do with you, my man. Nothing. Nothing. It is a reflection of their own reality. She's angry because you didn't take out the trash. But it's not about the trash. Remember, if you've ever listened to this podcast, then you know there is always a cover expression or a cover emotion for something deeper. The COVID expression of anger for a man not taking out the trash is really sadness because she doesn't feel like you care about her enough to remember. It's not about the trash, y'.

All.

You take out the trash. It's an act of love. You do the dishes. It's an act of love. You come home and bring flowers. It's an act of love. You make her a meal, it's an act of love. But if she knew that you were doing it because you wanted her love, it would spoil the whole thing. The whole thing's done. So as men and as women, I'll flip it to you, Mar. What's an example of how women tend to take things personally that their men do?

Well, this was a really good example. Let me think about it. Because, like, my experience with men has been past for a long time, so I don't even have any examples. Sometimes it can be just spending enough quality time together so it could be already shown in the communication that we take personally because he's too busy and we take it as, oh, he doesn't want to see me. But the reality is he actually has a business and he has things to do and he really has too many meetings this week. But we take it as an attack on ourselves, like, oh, he doesn't love me, he doesn't want to be with me, and it makes us sad. And then we might leash out on him.

So the more loving path in this situation and all is actually going back to the AMA we just recorded. So everything we're talking about today is@joshtrent.com 723 if you go to ama721 we talked about safety and a woman's safety being the most important thing for her to be whole in first. And then the man's responsibility is to feed that safety. But it starts with her. So when a woman is having thoughts, remember btfa, when she has a belief that she's not loved or worthy, when she has a thought that he's doing this, he's not taking out the trash because he doesn't care about me. It creates a feeling of grief or sadness, then comes out as a behavior of anger or attack. Y' all feeling this like it's so simple. It's actually so simple. And the fact that we operate in ways where we don't slow down and look at the BTFA loop and look at our stuff. How much more amazing would living these four agreements feel if there would be conscious conversations like this? At scale, y'. All. At scale. This is why it's so important for you to share this podcast with somebody that's struggling in relationship. Because it's not about the trash, it's about the COVID emotion of anger that's presented through her BTFA loop. Or let's now go to the man, when a woman, for me, like, my woman, Kerry Michelle, she's had a long day. The kids have been, like, literally sucking on her nipples and hanging on her. She's exhausted. I come home like, I'm. Where are you at 1 to 10? She's like, I'm at a 0.5 and I'm feeling good. Cause I just. I had a long day, too, but I'm at, like, a six, right? And so I get to be super mindful of that in that situation, that if she's short or curt or not giving me attention, that it's not personal, Josh. It's not personal. It's not personal. Because all that does. If I react with anger or grief or disappointment to her being short or to her being exhausted, I'm actually not doing the real work to read the room to understand that, no, it's not okay if somebody, like, yells at someone else or puts down someone else. Right? That's a whole other level of what I'm talking about. But when someone is just having a human experience because they're exhausted from taking care of children, and my heart goes out to all moms, our roles as husbands and fathers and intimate partners is actually to not take it personal. Because her reality of being exhausted has nothing to do with potentially a belief that I have stored deep in my unconscious that women can't be trusted. Women aren't safe, which was formed in utero when I was in my mom that developed into hypervigilance because of her bipolar disease. It's all fun and games for me to intellectualize this stuff with y' all on this podcast. Knowing and embodiment are two separate things. Knowing and embodiment are different. I can know why things are the way they are, and I can explain to you in full clarity about what this means. But embodying the lessons and using Miguel Ruiz's incredible agreements take practice. So give yourself grace. For all my men who are hypersensitive to feminine criticism or feminine moods, if you had a bipolar mother, if you were raised in an environment where you believe that women weren't safe or that a mother wasn't safe, these are things that are, on a continuous basis, getting to be worked upon. And we get better over time, right? Isn't this wonderful, Mar? We get better over time because we're just committed to the mastery. We're just committed to the process. So what is the next one? Right. We talked about the painful one, which is not taking it personally, which is a byproduct of our BTFA loop. But what is the next one? The next one's also challenging. I don't think the next one, for me is as challenging as. As the. Not taking it personally.

I don't think it's challenging, but it's what causes so much conflict between people. And it's. Don't make assumptions so simple as that.

We. We create so much story that keeps us a slave that just assumes what the other person felt. And this goes back to the. To the trash analogy, right? She assumed, in this hypothetical situation, she assumed that he doesn't care about her, which, again, it taps on this core framework that we teach in Liberated Life about the BTFA loop. Her assumption, which was her thought, was actually, it happens in, like. I think it's like, 0, 25 seconds. I remember in our episode with Jud Brewer, he said that the unconscious or the body can respond a half or a full second before rational thinking takes place. In other words, your unconscious, your somatic system, your neural tree will light up with whatever belief is in there way before your conscious mind can actually accept it. And that's neuroscience. Hard stop. Like, that's real. So in this situation, she felt before she spoke, she felt the belief that he doesn't care for her. That's her work to do. He can come around and not take it personally and say, hey, babe, I understand how that could be upsetting for you. I just want you to know I love you. I had a full day and I just forgot to take out the trash and just give her a kiss. Then she just melts, right? Her whole system melts because he's helping her heal her nervous system. She gets to do the work on her side and help him heal his nervous system as well. That's what conscious coupling or spiritual union actually is. It's two whole selves coming together, which we talked about on last week's podcast, our ama. So, yes, it's so important to not assume. You know what happens when we assume, Mar.

What happens?

I make an ass out of you and me. That's what assume spells. I make an ass out of you and me. That's a dad joke. But seriously, seriously, it just makes us asses. It makes us jackasses. We're just fumbling around with each other. So this leads to the next one and probably, I guess, the keystone of the previous three. This is the keystone right here. What is this last one?

Always do your best.

Do you feel like you always do your best?

I feel like I could do better sometimes, but it depends. Sometimes my best is not 10 out of 10. Sometimes my best is 2 out of 10 because I'm tired and I didn't sleep well and there's too much on my plate that day. So it's very relevant, like to the circumstances that are currently happening in your life.

The practicality around this is important. So how do we start to instill this in ourselves? What are some key things we can do here to practice these?

I think it all goes back to cultivating awareness. So I feel like I've said it.

Isn't this always the answer? It's always about self awareness.

It's always self awareness, being conscious, being mindful. So that goes to practices where you can cultivate it, which could be meditation, journaling, breath work whenever you can bring yourself back to the present moment and be aware of what's happening, happening on the inside. And once you do that practice, it will become easier to do it in real life situation, not just when you're sitting down by yourself at peace with nice music on and a candlelight, but then eventually you'll be able to use it when you're actually triggered and things don't go the way that you expected. So, yeah, that's one part of it. Another part I would say for some people, I don't think it's for everybody, but for some people, daily affirmations is super important. And I've done it for myself, especially reprogramming some beliefs around my body. And sometimes I would notice telling myself, oh, you don't look good today, or you look fat today. And so whenever, because I've had the awareness practice, I'm aware of those thoughts, I'm able to actually rewrite them. And whenever I would say it in my head once, I would say at least three to five times, I'm beautiful, I'm beautiful, I'm beautiful. Or I look good, I look good, I look good. And just rewriting it now, I barely ever have this kind of thoughts because I've been consciously rewriting them for such a long time now.

So. Good.

Yeah. And I feel like a big piece of this whole concept of the four agreements goes to communication and being vulnerable. Because lots of the things like making assumptions and taking things personally is lack of communication and vulnerability. We are able to communicate from a place of our truth and authenticity. Then we're able to actually prevent all these situations from happening. And a big one, especially in romantic partnerships, is being vulnerable. So practicing vulnerability is a big piece. And I think, Josh, you might have some really good advice for people on this one.

I mean, it's advice but it's earned through pain. Okay, so this advice comes from a real place. Look right now on the screen as it is almost every week, because it's so important. This is literally a map of consciousness, y', all, by Dr. Hawkins. Shame resonates at 20 hertz. Shame is the opposite of vulnerability. So it's not until 175Hz that we get to pride. That can be then Transcended by just 25 hertz more, just a little bit higher. Vibration of 200 and 200, is the courage to be vulnerable. Everything below that, from 20 all the way up to 200, must be felt. And a lot of that can be felt through these four agreements. So I think the big takeaway here is let's recognize the agreements that we've put forth either inside of us or outside of us. Let's start to rewire these beliefs by just shifting our identity, by going through this identity shifting process. We do this in our VIP program and in our tribe. It's on the screen now@liberatedlife.com. please join us. If this is resonating with you, you don't have to join us. You get to join us if this is feeling like it's the right path for you. Because these are the conversations that we're having at scale in this trusted space. So we covered a lot of ground, Mar, I think, in this concept of liberation and the four agreements and how our beliefs literally create everything we talked about. The BTFA loop. What is one thing you think we missed when it comes to the four agreements? In other words, how can we integrate these in our lives?

I would first recommend people to read the book because it's amazing. And I read it probably a decade ago, and it completely changed so many things in my life, how I approach relationships and different situations. And whenever these days I catch myself making assumptions, I'm aware of that. And I'm like, I shouldn't. I know if I make an assumption, it's not gonna give me anything good, and it's probably gonna create a conflict. So just step by step integrating that into our daily lives with practice, being mindful, being aware.

It's so good. And I'll speak to all the men with us and also the women that are wanting their men to be the best version of themselves. Do you all know, as women, how incredibly vulnerable it is for us to share how we feel with you? It is so ridiculously hard. Brene Brown once was at a conference, and this man came up to her and he said, it's all well and Good for you to talk about vulnerability for women, but I noticed there's nothing for men in your teaching. And she just went boom. And it, like, threw her back. And he said to her, you know that my daughter and my wife and my family would rather see me die than lose the spot of riding the white horse. And she didn't know what that meant. And she said, what do you mean? He said, my family would rather see me completely go away rather than me losing my foundation and my solidity as the trusted leader of the family. In other words, men that share their emotions and are vulnerable paradoxically, can lose their leadership. They can lose their trustworthiness if the women aren't able to hold that man's sharing because they may perceive his sharing as weakness. And this is the dance that we dance back and forth with with our women as men, knowing when to share with our woman, knowing how to share with our woman. This is the complexity where we can still maintain our frame and our masculine core while being in dynamic relation with a woman who embodies feminine. This is the dance, and it's a dance. And if we can both commit to this being a dance without judgment, and if a woman can practice her four agreements while we practice ours, we will give you everything you've ever wanted and more. But the safety starts with you. And I'm speaking to all women. The safety starts with you. Then we feed that safety and that is it. Mic drop. We'll see you on the next episode for so much more. If you have any questions for us, drop it@joshtrent.com ama or write to us Podcastellness and wisdom until we see you again. Another ama. We're both wishing you love, wellness, and most importantly, peace and power. We'll talk with you soon.