How to live a balanced life? The 4 Agreements explained to children

During a women’s circle, one of the people introduced me to the 4 Agreements. I immediately wanted to dive into this world and started listening to the audiobook to better understand them. It’s a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz

If you are not familiar with this work, it consists of 4 major laws to apply in everyday life to find a better balance and transform one’s life positively.

✨ The 4 agreements are:

• Let your word be impeccable: which means that we should avoid speaking ill of others and also of ourselves (sometimes the most challenging part).
• Don’t take anything personally: things happen around us, people also have their challenges, and nothing is specifically directed against us.
• Don’t make assumptions: a significant challenge as well because I often tend to quickly build stories in my head, trying to interpret what the other person is saying or not saying… The key to this agreement was not to prevent me from making assumptions but rather to make many of them, which allowed me not to fixate on a single idea.
• Always do your best: which also means that our best can vary completely from one day to another. One day, you may feel like a conqueror, and the next day, the best thing may be to drag yourself to the couch! and that’s okay 😊 we are the only ones to judge what “best” means for us.

After discovering these laws and starting to apply them in my daily life, I couldn’t help but discuss them with my daughter. I wondered how I could create something visually that could help her better understand these concepts.

I found this video (at the end of this post) of Olivier Clerc in French explaining the agreements while making an analogy with knights, and I really liked that parallel. So I decided to draw inspiration from it to translate these 4 agreements to children.

✨ Here’s a quick explanation of the different principles:

• Let your word be impeccable: the sword ⚔️. Your words, like a sword, can hurt, so the goal is to learn to use them for good.
• Don’t take anything personally: the shield 🛡️.
• Don’t make assumptions: a winged helmet, because it prevents us from getting stuck on our ideas and allows us to regain lightness.
• Always do your best: the knight’s banner, it’s their motto, their creed!

I hope this poster will help you introduce this wonderful concept to your children! You can download it for free by joining my Newsletter.