Personal Agreements for Alignment & Growth

This ritual will help you create personal agreements so that you can tailor your actions to be in alignment with your morals. You will get clear on actions that support your beliefs as well as those that compromise them. The new moon is a powerful time to do this ritual and I invite you to revisit this personal code of conduct throughout the moon cycle and revise as necessary.

Time commitment: 30 minutes

Items needed:

Crystal of your choosing (clear quartz, orange aventurine, citrine, carnelian, or other clear, yellow, or orange stones are recommended)

Pen

Paper

Lighter or match

Bowl of water

To begin, spend about five minutes considering your core beliefs. You might find that you are very aware of the values that are driving your life or you might realize that you’ve been operating based on what caregivers ingrained in you when you were young. Try to do this from a place of curiosity rather than judgment of what you think “should” be important to you.

Next, start to list the principles that feel most significant to you and that you are confident you can honor through your actions. I recommend no more than five principles to start so that you don’t get overwhelmed. If the list feels incomplete, you can return to it later on. It can be helpful to begin each bullet point with “I believe” to get in touch with what truly resonates. For example, you might write something like, “I believe that everyone is worthy of love and having their basic needs met” or “I believe that I have a right to feel pleasure in my body.” If you’re having trouble coming up with a list of personal agreements to follow, look up “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and use those until you feel confident developing your own.

After your list is complete, spend some time considering your regular behaviors and habits and how they either support or compromise each belief. On a separate sheet of paper, list two supportive habits for each belief. For example, you might write “Volunteering time to a community organization once a month” and “A daily gratitude practice” to reinforce a belief that everyone is worthy of love and having their basic needs met. Whatever supportive habits you write down should either already be in practice or you must be willing to put them into practice. It’s important not to be too ambitious, you want to list habits that you can commit to doing with some regularity. After all, these are morals that will guide the course of your life.

Once you are finished listing supportive actions for each belief, get another piece of paper and write down one or two habits that you currently engage in that compromise or contradict each belief. For example, you might write something like “Judging people before I’ve had a chance to get to know them,” as an action that contradicts your belief that everyone is worthy of love and having their basic needs met.

After you are done with all three lists, take the paper with the behaviors you want to eliminate or reduce along with your lighter or match and your bowl of water. Before you burn the paper, affirm to yourself, “I am ready to let go of the behaviors, habits, and thoughts that contradict or compromise my values. I recognize that these behaviors once served a purpose and I thank them and release them with love.” Burn the paper and allow it to fall into the bowl of water.

Place the two remaining pages along with the crystal that you have chosen for this ritual in a window to charge under the new moon or waxing moon phases. As you nestle the pages under the crystal, affirm to yourself, “I am ready to step into alignment with my morals and values. I commit to actions, thoughts, and behaviors that support my deepest held beliefs.”

The following morning, take the pages and hang them somewhere you will encounter them at least once daily. Place the crystal on an altar or you may choose to keep it with you to remind you of these moral commitments.

If you do this ritual on the new moon, you can check in on your progress at the first quarter moon (a week after the new moon), the full moon (2 weeks after the new moon), the last quarter moon (3 weeks after the new moon) and the dark moon (28 after the new moon). Feel free to edit, eliminate, or add to your code of conduct as your values shift and you become more aware of them. The purpose of this ritual is to ensure that as you move through your daily life, you are connected to your moral principles and acting from a place of intention.