Happy New Year

Call me a sentimentalist, but this has always been my favorite day of the year. I am a sucker for New Year's Day.

It feels like a spiritual shower, washing away all the stuff from last year—all the resistance, excuses, and procrastination. It's the ultimate Mulligan.

This is the day I make choices about the future. Sure, I look to the past, but not out of nostalgia—more as a barometer.

What did I accomplish? What habits (good and not-so-good) did I acquire? Where can I grow? Where can I improve? What improvements did I make from the year before? What were my wins, and what were my lessons? What did I learn? What lessons am I still learning? Did I write enough? Was I of service enough? Did I ask for help? Was I helpful?

But the only question I must ask is: Did I do my best? Because I know that my best is enough.

Don Miguel Ruiz’s excellent book The Four Agreements offers a powerful framework for living with clarity, intention, and love.

The long and the short of it is that if we live by and honor these four agreements, we will obtain Heaven on Earth. These agreements remind us of the commitments we can make to ourselves—not for perfection, but for freedom:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean, and mean what you say. Avoid using your words to spread fear, doubt, or self-judgment. Words can shape our reality, so we must choose them wisely. This means showing up when you say you will and being honest.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally: What others say about you is none of your business. If someone calls you an asshole, it doesn’t mean you’re an asshole; it just means someone has an opinion about you. The same goes if someone calls you a genius… This says way more about them than you. When we stop taking things personally, we free ourselves from unnecessary suffering and stay grounded in our truth… especially if we are all in on the First Agreement.

3. Don't Make Assumptions: So much conflict stems from assuming we know what others think or feel. Instead, we can find the courage to ask questions, seek clarity, and communicate openly to avoid misunderstandings. Basically, it means to know what you know. Know what you don’t know. Know that you know what you know (for some reason, people are often reticent to own their knowledge), and if you don’t know something, ask.

4. Always Do Your Best: This brings me to my favorite of the four agreements. The one that ties everything together. Always Do Your Best. Look, some days, our best is writing 40 really strong pages in one sitting, then making dinner and debating the veracity of the hypothesis that Göbekli Tepe might overturn everything we thought we knew about the timeline of human civilization. And other days, it’s putting on pants. Doing your best—whatever that looks like at the moment—is the path to peace. It allows us to live without regret, knowing we’ve given all we could, no matter the circumstances… or choice of pants.

But the real magic of The Four Agreements is found in how Ruiz challenges us to use our fertile imagination to step into what he calls the New Dream (a new way of perceiving life).

Ruiz says, "...Forget everything you have ever learned your whole life. This is the beginning of a new understanding, a New Dream."

And this isn’t reserved for January 1st. We can apply it at any time. We get knocked down, we screw up… flip the script and start a new dream.

We can change our lives now, starting with how we choose to see the world and react to things we cannot control. 

Could we create a life where we can be our authentic selves? A life without fear of expressing ourselves, no conflict with others, no judgment, no need to control anyone else? These are pretty lofty goals, but hey, that’s why they’re called ‘Dreams.’ Amiright?

If we do our best… I think we can. And if not, well, there’s always tomorrow.

On New Year’s Day, I see a chance to clean the slate and create my “new dream.” I see a chance to focus on love, service, and showing up as authentically as possible. It’s not about perfection; it’s about growth.

So here’s to a year of growth, gratitude, and dreaming bigger.

And here’s to doing our best—because our best is always enough. Pants or no pants.

Happy Writing and Happy New Year!