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"Here&amp;#039;s another in the series of &amp;quot;books that have helped me&amp;quot;:  The Four Agreements  by Don Miguel Ruiz. I had several friends recommend this book to me, and while I found it kind of hard to get into at first (the first few chapters are a bit &amp;quot;new-agey&amp;quot;, for lack of a better term) I soon got into reading the meat and bones of the book \u2013 the agreements we make within ourselves. No one can hurt you with their words if you don&amp;#039;t agree with what they&amp;#039;re saying. Someone can tell me my hair is gray and I wouldn&amp;#039;t feel older for hearing that, because it&amp;#039;s not. Not yet, anyway. But if someone tells a bulimic girl that the dress she&amp;#039;s wearing doesn&amp;#039;t flatter her, she&amp;#039;ll hear in those words that she&amp;#039;s fat, because that&amp;#039;s an agreement she has with herself. She believes in her poor body image, therefore, she supports that statement. The book goes on to detail four new agreements you should make with yourself. I&amp;#039;m not going to write a book report, here \u2013 you really should read the book yourself because it&amp;#039;s amazing \u2013 but one of the agreements I really want to share: Always do your very best Don Miguel qualifies this, though. Your very best will not be the same every day, or even every hour within that day. Some days, your very best will be &amp;quot;I got out of bed, ate sensibly all day, went to work, worked out, did the laundry, paid the bills, shared quality time with my family and got a good night&amp;#039;s sleep.&amp;quot; And some days, your best is &amp;quot;I got out of bed&amp;quot;. Only you know what you can truly accomplish, and how much it will cost you to do it today. Give yourself permission to be the best you can be, within the confines of what you&amp;#039;re truly capable of at the moment.  During the course of this separation and divorce time, I&amp;#039;ve had more than a few &amp;quot;I got out of bed&amp;quot; days. And I&amp;#039;ve felt like I&amp;#039;m not good enough because of them. I need to let that go, and realize that nothing about this is easy, and it&amp;#039;s OK to feel overwhelmed sometimes. What do you have trouble letting go of? And why do we have such a hard time accepting our occasional limitations, do you think? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a44767/the-four-agreements-2330/>