Transform Relationships with the Five Agreements

When those walls come down, you feel free to use your imagination to envision new possibilities.

Then anything can happen.

Case in point: Barbara, a strong and decisive businesswoman by day, spent much of the game watching silently, looking suspiciously like a wallflower. When her turn came around, she said, “I feel dull and boring. My relationship with men is a 1. In social situations where I can potentially meet and talk to a man, I feel frozen. I have no idea what to do.”

Barbara used the Second Agreement (“Don’t take anything personally”) to examine a major childhood belief. With the group’s support, she demolished that belief and left it in pieces, finishing with a relationship rating of 9. Her conclusion: “It’s been my experience that the wisdom of the universe is way beyond anything we know. What’s happened to me so far is because it had to happen.”

And then, in a shift that amazed us all with her new warmth, openness, and attractiveness, she let the wallflower go. “You say you have no idea what to do with men?” Danny joked. “If you show up like that, you’re not going to have to do anything!” And finally there was Bonnie, who after 34 years was still blaming herself for losing the love of her life. “I just take whatever I can get now,” she said. “I know things will never change. What I really wanted is gone forever.” Ten minutes later, after working with the Fourth Agreement (“Always do your best”), she had clearly seen and dropped her victim story and resolved to live her life now instead of staying stuck in yesteryear. “I can’t change the past,” she said. “But in the future I will do my best to ask for what I want-because I know I deserve it.”