The Four Agreements

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Halfdome

Time has been flying by in 2017, we’re already halfway through the year! With time going by so fast, it’s nice to take a deep breath, pause and check-up on yourself. This mental pause may involve taking a step back and looking at building on successes and strengthening weak habits. There are four simple tools, known as “The Four Agreements 1 ” which can help with creating peace and focus in life.
Here are the Four Agreements:

1. Don’t Make Assumptions

Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings and potential drama. Ask questions to try to fully understand where someone is coming from.

2. Be Impeccable with your Word


Speak with integrity and say only what you mean. Avoid using your word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth.

3. Don’t Take Anything Personally

What others say and do is a projection of their own point of view. When you see your ego inflating, take a step back from the issue and look at it from a neutral perspective.

4. Always Do Your Best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, which will help you avoid self-judgement and regret.

In theory, these are fairly straightforward and simple agreements to follow, but they can be a challenge to implement in daily life. (Try not taking road rage personally the next time someone cuts you off!) However, the Four Agreements can be a good guide for helping prevent conflict and decreasing stress with conflicts arise.

When you’re done taking a midway pause through your year and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, look at how the Four Agreements may be able to help you with them. It could be something like improving a strength by doing your absolute best at it, or smoothing over a conflict by not taking it personally.

If you’re interested in learning even more, read the book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (no affiliation with UWIB).

Check-Up On Your Personal Coverage

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Check Your Company’s Pulse

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Company's Pulse

TINYpulse provides tools to improve culture, employee engagement, and morale.  UWIB has been utilizing the Engage tool twice a month for the past several years.

Do you ever wonder what your employees or co-workers are thinking about? Sure, you know what they eat for lunch, (especially when they heat up salmon in the office microwave). But what are their thoughts for improving the business, how can their grievances be addressed, and how can they improve the company culture?

These are tough questions for both small businesses and Fortune 500 companies to tackle. Some companies like Facebook, Airbnb, IBM, (and UWIB!) have turned to TINYpulse for help. TINYpulse was designed to improve culture, employee engagement, and morale by using anonymous feedback from employees.

The words “anonymous” and “feedback” strike fear in the hearts of many employers who may say, “who the heck would want anonymous feedback from their employees?” While it is not always easy to listen to feedback from employees, there is a huge risk for an employer to hope that discontent will simply dissappear. Minor gripes can snowball into grievances, which can then grow into a number of different ugly things like lawsuits.

Ideas for improving a business don’t always come from visionary leaders, often times they come from employees themselves. At UWIB, we’ve been using TINYpulse’s Engage tool for several years, and meeting twice a month to review the results. The inspirations for improvement have been astounding, some of our best Customer Service, Sales, and Technology ideas have come from employees submitting TINYpulse feedback. Not to mention, our company’s culture and communication has improved even more.

Strengthening the company culture is at the heart of what TINYpulse is all about. Having team members come together for gatherings to discuss their suggestions and feedback is a great way to bring everyone together. In a world of emails, texts, and powerpoints, the facetime everyone gets is invaluable. At these meetings, the managers have opportunity to show their support for the staff, and remind everyone of the values the company stands for.

TINY Changes, Big Results

Watch Dana explain how TINYpulse has been a unique asset to UWIB: Visit