Ep 209 – Using The Four Agreements in Your Marriage: Be Impeccable with Your Word & Don’t Take It Personally
The Four Agreements. I read this book over 20 years ago. It change the way I move through life on a daily basis and I hope it does the same for you. Whether this is the first time you hear about it or it’s one of your classic favorites too.
I just had an amazing conversation about the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz with the brilliant Annie M. Henderson. And we had such a deep and in-depth conversation that it ended up being a longer than usual episode.
So I wanted to cut it into two sections to make it easy to reflect on the first part, easy to reflect on the second part, and to digest the lessons we’re talking about—what we learned from the book, how to put it into practice.
It was so rich that I just wanted to give it space to breathe.
The Four Agreements: A Quick Overview
Before we dive in, let me share what The Four Agreements are:
Agreement #1: Be impeccable with your word
Agreement #2: Don’t take anything personally
Agreement #3: Don’t make assumptions
Agreement #4: Always do your best
In Part 1 of this conversation, we dive deep into agreements 1 and 2. In Part 2 (next week), we’ll cover 3 and 4.
The Fable: We’re All Made of Light
The Four Agreements starts with a beautiful fable. The idea is that everything is made of light. The space between the stars, between people—it’s all light.
In the fable, the author sees every person as a mirror reflecting that light. And between the mirrors, there’s a fog and a dream.
The fog is made up of all the agreements we’ve absorbed throughout our lives about who we are, what we’re worth, how relationships work.
The fog is made up of all the agreements we have made about who we are.
And here’s what struck me: These are agreements that we never consciously chose.
I didn’t choose to be born speaking English or Spanish (Spanish is actually my first language—I didn’t even know until I asked my grandmother). I didn’t choose the family I was born into, the culture, the society.
We were born into those agreements that those people made.
And many of those agreements cause suffering because they aren’t actually true.
Breaking Generational Curses
Annie talks about this concept of breaking generational curses.
She said: “When we look at our mom and she does things a certain way and we look at our grandparents and they do it a certain way, then we have this assumption that this is the way it is. And when we are in our small little community and everyone else does it the same, or if we go to this church and everyone does it the same, we have those assumptions that this is the way it is.”
The book uses the word domestication.
We’ve been domesticated, like cattle, where we are penned into this way of being and doing and showing up in our life. And we don’t even realize that there’s a world outside of this pen and we’ve never experienced that.
Annie shared how she sat down with her daughter and read The Four Agreements with her at bedtime.
She said: “This is something that people in our family struggle with. They take things personally, they make assumptions, they speak poorly and judgmentally about themselves and others. They create kind of a living hell on earth because of these agreements that they don’t realize is a choice and that you can make a new agreement.”
Breaking that generational curse so it doesn’t continue through her lineage, through your lineage—that’s the work.
The Movie Analogy: Reconciling Light with Difficult People
One thing I wanted to explore with Annie is this idea that we’re all made of light, we all have the divine within us—which is actually what I believe as well.
But I really had to reconcile that with all the awful things that happen on earth.
The analogy that I came up with that gave me some peace:
Imagine we’re all in a movie and we’re all playing roles in a movie. Your favorite actor might be the villain in the movie. And in the movie, they’re awful and they absolutely should get the worst consequences.
But then they walk off the set of the movie and they go to lunch and crack jokes and play with their dog.
But in the context of the movie, the heroines absolutely need to respond to the villain as if the villain is a villain—taking all the measures they need to take, doing all the things in the practical logic of the movie to address that thing.
For me, at a spiritual level, I can grasp the idea that at some point, there is some divinity inside of all of us. But in the moment when the person is in front of us—and sometimes when we have difficult people, whether it’s our partners, our bosses, challenging family members who can do what we would call a bad thing—we have to respond to how they are right now.
In some part of reality that I don’t have access to, this person has divinity in them. But in this moment, in this movie, I have to protect myself, set boundaries, do things for how they are right now.
The Four Agreements: Choosing New Conscious Agreements
So that’s the foundation—the fable, the fog, the agreements we never chose.
Now let’s talk about the four agreements Don Miguel Ruiz offers as a way to clear that fog and create new, conscious, intentional agreements.
In Part 1, Annie and I dive deep into the first two.
Agreement #1: Be Impeccable with Your Word
The first agreement is: Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say what you mean. Avoid using your word to speak against yourself or gossip about others.
First of all: Do we even notice how we talk to ourselves?
Sometimes our programmed voice is so deeply ingrained that we don’t even notice.
This week, just listen. Do you call yourself stupid if you forget something? Do you beat yourself up constantly?
Annie pointed out that with people pleasers, it’s usually turned on themselves. They judge themselves more than anyone else.
When I am coaching women who want marriages that work for them, one of the things I give for homework often is how about we speak to each other as if we love each other? Like let’s make that the baseline.
So what if that voice in your head, spoke to you as if she loves you. As if she holds you in the highest regard and you are a treasure. What if that is the deepest way to be impeccable with our word?
The ideas in this book are so rich and so deep we can take them in so many directions and experiment until we find our version of what being impeccable looks like.
Agreement #2: Don’t Take Anything Personally
The second agreement is: Don’t take anything personally.
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say or do is a projection of their own reality.
For everyone thinking about their spouses right now: What if nothing they did was because of you? What if it was because of what they’re living through and walking through?
The question I love to ask: What if it’s not about me?
When your partner snaps. When they forget something. When they don’t follow through. When they seem distant.
What if it’s not about me? Then what? Then where do I go? What do I do? How do I handle it?
This question creates an opening. A space. A possibility.
This doesn’t mean you don’t address it. This doesn’t mean you don’t set boundaries. It just means you approach it from a different place—a place of curiosity instead of defensiveness.
The Power of One
One of the things I teach all the time is this idea of the power of one: You shift how you’re interacting, you shift how you’re presenting to the other person, and then they react to that shift.
They don’t have to be in the coaching room with you or the therapy room. You’re just walking around with a different intention, a different thought in your mind, behaving differently. And then they’re reacting to that part of you, and their reaction also evolves.
When there’s a kernel of love, a foundation of love in the relationship, what tends to happen is that you’re in an up-level place and they meet you there.
Now, some people won’t meet us there. And the only way we find out is to shift ourselves first and then see: Can they meet us or can they not?
So much of the work we do is: We go first and then we see.
Your Coaching Homework This Week
Notice how you talk to yourself. What would I be saying to myself if I was being impeccable with my word to myself?
Notice when you take something personally. Try, with a spirit of playfulness, to put on the phrase: What if it’s not about me? Then what?
See if you can create an opening there.
Awareness is always the first step.
Listen to Part 1
This conversation with Annie M. Henderson is one of the richest I’ve had. We had so much fun that it turned into a two-part episode.
In Part 2 (next week), we’ll dive into agreements three and four: Don’t make assumptions and always do your best. Annie also shares about RIM (Regenerating Images and Memory), a fascinating modality that gives you the experience of a psychedelic journey without using any psychedelics.
Connect with Annie M. Henderson
Annie M. Henderson is a transformational life coach, educator, and former licensed professional counselor who helps women navigate identity shifts and emotional stuckness with compassion and clarity.
After years in traditional counseling, she transitioned into whole-brain approaches that work with the subconscious and nervous system, including Regenerating Images in Memory, or RIM.
Annie supports later-in-life lesbians and women who feel disconnected from themselves after years of people-pleasing or living for others. She is the creator of the Liberated Lesbian framework and host of the Liberated Lesbian Lounge podcast, where she explores what it means to come home to yourself at any stage of life.
- Visit Annie’s website www.anniemhenderson.com
- Follow Annie on IG @life_coach_annie
- Follow Annie on TikTok @Anniemhenderson
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About Maggie Reyes
Maggie Reyes is a Master Certified Life Coach and feminist marriage coach for high-achieving women who want to strengthen marriages that feel stuck but not broken. She is the host of The Marriage Life Coach Podcast, ranked in the top 2% globally, where she teaches high-achieving women the practical relationship skills they were never taught in school.
Through individual marriage coaching for women, Maggie helps clients improve communication, reconnect emotionally, and create real change in their relationships — even if their partner isn’t interested in couples therapy or coaching. She is the author of the bestselling Questions for Couples Journal and creator of the Soul-Centered Communication framework.
Maggie’s work is rooted in feminist values. While she primarily works with women married to men — navigating the patriarchal programming (and deprogramming) that shapes those relationships — she has also supported women in same-sex marriages. The same kinds of communication patterns, emotional disconnection, conflict loops, and repair skills apply regardless of gender. Her work is inclusive of diverse identities and experiences.
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If you love your husband but feel disconnected, stuck in the same arguments, or exhausted from carrying the emotional load of the relationship, you’re not alone — and your side of the table is where your power lives.
Maggie specializes in individual marriage coaching for high-achieving women who want to feel loved, respected, and deeply connected again. Whether you’re looking for communication tools, emotional clarity, or a new way forward in your marriage, you’ll find support here.
✨ Transparency Note
This blog post was inspired by The Marriage Life Coach Podcast episode, prepared by my team and helped by AI. IT REALLY TAKES A VILLAGE PEOPLE ;-).
Thank you for reading, it’s an honor to be part of your day.