Coffee Talk #217: Be Impeccable with Your Word

The Four Agreements: Be Impeccable with your Word

Grab your cup and let’s start chattin’.

If we were having coffee together this week, I’d tell you that it’s the first week of a NEW series on Coffee Talk. We’re diving into The Four Agreements, tackling one agreement each week.

This week, we’re taking a deep dive into The First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word.

It sounds very simple, but it’s VERY powerful. Through the word, we express our creative power, we manifest everything. Our word is the power that we have to communicate, written or spoken. With this power, we can create and manifest the most beautiful dream, or we can destroy things around us.

The book describes the former (the most beautiful dream) as pure magic, and the latter (destroying things) as black magic. Our words are our spells.

As we grow up, we are given words from our loved ones to describe things around us. We get truth and we also get opinions. We have the tendency to accept those opinions as our own – why would we question something told to us by trusted loved ones?

Let’s dive into the word ‘impeccable’ – the action we are supposed to take with our word. Impeccable means ‘without sin.’ Growing up Catholic, I was taught that humans are awful creatures, that we sin so much, and that we must always repent what we have done. Even as a young child in the Catholic church, we go to confession. I remember one week we had to go to confession and I truly did not remember doing anything ‘wrong’ that week, so I made up a story about pulling my sister’s hair. I had done that before, but not in that week, and I was told that I must have something I need to confess, so I told a lie. How ridiculous is that?

I certainly was not being impeccable with my word. By telling a lie, I started to create a pattern of using the word against myself. When you use the word against yourself, you can more easily use it against others. This creates some bad energy.

The best use of our energy when it comes to words is to use them properly – first, with ourselves and second, with others. Think of all the words you’ve used improperly – to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy, to express anger, doubt, envy, and hate. Think of the times that words have been used against us – when someone says something unkind or when someone shares an opinion with you about yourself that you think is untrue, but then you start to doubt yourself—is your jaw getting a little tighter? Are your hands forming fists? Is there a strange taste in your mouth, recalling all of these instances?

When we use words in this way, we’re creating an agreement. When we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement. These agreements are hard to break, especially when we hear them over and over again. The ONLY thing that can break these agreements is pure magic – truth.

When I think of the ‘black magic’ that Ruiz refers to in ‘Be Impeccable with Your Word,’ I immediately think about gossip. As a young girl, I remember hearing my family members share gossip ALL the time, so I thought it couldn’t be that bad, right? ‘Did you HEAR what happened to so-and-so?’ ‘Did you SEE what was printed in the paper?’ (I experienced my formative years before the internet, thank GOODNESS) and even ones that seem less gossip-y ‘Oh! You have THAT teacher? Woof, good luck.’

“Your opinion is nothing without your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dream. We create all this poison [gossip] and spread it to others just so we can feel right about our own point of view.”

Why do we spread these items? Why are we so excited to share our findings like this with others? My mom used to say ‘misery loves company’ and it seems to apply here. We allow the experiences and opinions of others to have value above truth.

And that’s not even the worst of it. The way we speak to ourselves is the worst kind of black magic.

What if we started a new chain of being impeccable with our words? What if we said statements like “You are strong. You are beautiful. You matter” in the mirror to ourselves every day? What if we did this so much that we started to believe it? What if we believed it so much that little pings of black magic from others (‘DANNNG you look tired!’ ‘Oh man you look rough’ ‘Your hair is a mess’) wouldn’t matter so much? What if we started believing in ourselves SO much and resisted the negative words of others SO much that we helped them also discover becoming impeccable with their words?

Being Impeccable with Your Word means using your thoughts and words to feel GOOD. You deserve to feel good. Thoughts and words are choices; learning how to think and speak on purpose to deliberately create what you desire can add immense value to your life.

When we learn to become impeccable with our word, we can see all the changes that can happen in our lives. Any emotional poison can eventually be cleaned from our mind and our communication. It will also give you an immunity from anyone trying to put negativity toward you.