This month is the final article from The Four Agreements..  Always Do Your Best.

We always should do our best. No more and no less. However, we also need to keep in mind that our best changes from day to day. Your best will change with how you feel physically as well as mentally. On days that you feel refreshed and healthy, your best will be different than if you are tired and ill. It will also be different according to your mood: if you are happy as opposed to sad for example. Regardless of the situation still do your best.  

If you try too hard to do your best you are expending your energy way too much. You deplete yourself and take longer to get to the goal. If you do less than your best, you open yourself up to self-judgement, guilt, and regret. 

When you do your best you live your life to the fullest. You are giving to yourself and others. 

In doing your best you take action and this action is because you love it, not because you expect a reward. Some people do exactly the opposite. They take action only when they expect a reward and they don’t enjoy the action. And that’s the reason they don’t do their best.

In saying this, it’s true that yes we do go to work and expect payment for that work. However, there is a flip side to this. What if we did things just because we loved them and were not attached to any kind of reward? Rewards will come, but you are not attached to it. You are only attached to the doing. 

In doing your best you also learn to accept yourself. You have to be aware and learn from your mistakes. You have to be honest and admit that maybe your best wasn’t perfect but you are willing to practice and make it better.

Action is about living fully. Inaction is about fear and being unwilling to take the risk of owning who you are. “You can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you.”  You don’t need an exceptional education or great philosophical ideas. You don’t need acceptance. You express your own divinity by loving yourself and others.

By doing your best you will find that you can transform yourself and your world.  The other three agreements become easier to practice because you know that you are always doing your best in love.