Building your business with The First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

The First Agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements is Be Impeccable with Your Word. This may seem like a simple statement, but it has great power behind it for you and your organization or business.

Your word is everything. You word is the basis for intent and creation. It gives you the power to express, communicate, and thereby create your life. It is a powerful force, and can attract great things or awful things in your life. Therefore, your word is also linked directly to your success.

How often have you read the importance of policing your self-talk? We grow up with cultural sayings that become mindless mantras flowing from our mouths and through our thoughts. “I’m too old; I can’t afford it; Why does it always happen to me; It will never happen; I can’t do it; I’m not good enough…” The list of our self defeating mantras goes on and on. It is misused of The Word.

Our word is also heavily misused through the main form of communication in today’s society – Gossip. Today’s popular culture’s number one form of communication is gossip. Reality shows embrace the lie, cheat and backstab mentality to win at any cost. The television is inundated with entertainment shows which are nothing but gossip. The grocery store checkout line seconds as a gossip library, with all the rag magazines holding a captive audience.

When we deem this culture of gossip as acceptable, we dilute the importance of our own word as well as set a bad example for our kids. They haven’t the capacity for discernment yet. We watch the gossip shows and reality television with our kids, giving implicit approval of the behavior. We gossip among friends and family; setting the illusion that misuse of the word the word is perfectly acceptable. Instead of teaching kids to create with the power of their word, we teach them to destroy.

Pertaining to business, the little white lie has snowballed down the slippery slope, so much so that we don’t even realize it in our day to day life. Listen closely to what is spoken in the work place. Seemingly innocuous lies permeate the work place and organizations. We lie about stupid things; “I’ll be there in 10 minutes”, knowing full well we’re ½ hour away. “The car broke down, there’s an accident on the freeway, I was out sick and couldn’t get you the paperwork, I never got the email, I didn’t get your message” are all common excuses for our lack of responsibility.

It simply makes it that much easier to misuse our word about the bigger things. The slippery slope. Ultimately authenticity disappears with misuse of the word. 

Misuse of our word poisons our mind like a computer virus. Seeds are planted, and if you’re building an organization, you are setting a destructive example and building a culture of misuse of your word.

Although people are numb to misuse of the word in our culture, and mindlessly embrace it, they find they feel good around someone who is impeccable with their word. They know what to expect, and it feeds their soul to be around someone who treats their word impeccably. 

People need hope these days. People who are desperately looking for a home business are trying to escape from the life they fell into and live the life they expected when they were young and virile and full of hope. Being a leader who is impeccable with your word creates authenticity and hope. If a task is difficult, say it’s difficult, share your story and tell them “I know you can do it, though, because I did.”

If you were once hopeless and in despair, and lost everything, say so, don’t lie about it. Let people see how you fought for what you now have, how you first changed the way you dealt with yourself, and later changed the way you dealt with others. It starts with you first loving yourself, because as Don Miguel Ruiz writes “You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word.”

Be impeccable with your word, build an organization that duplicates your example, and watch both you and your team thrive.

P.S. If you’re tired of the hype and old school way of doing business, and are looking for an organization that values integrity and authenticity, and can teach you to thrive in your business, go right now to Empower Network. The name says it all. Quit wasting time and get all in. or click on the windows to the left or below. You have my word, you will thrive like nothing else you’ve experienced.