According to my friend and fellow Hay House author Dr. Neha Sangwan, who recently gave a killer speech at the Hay House I Can Do It Ignite conference in San Jose, breakdowns in communication lie at the root of many illnesses. We make agreements with people - often unconscious agreements - and when our agreements don’t align, we experience conflict, which leads to triggering of the body’s stress responses, which causes the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms to switch off, then VOILA! We get sick… Neha says that many of the conflicts come when we aren’t in alignment with our agreements with others, especially regarding “Yes” or “No” agreements.

The Doctor Wants It STAT!

She gave an example from her work consulting with operating room staffs that aren’t getting along. Take Dr. X who screams, “Someone get me 2 units of packed red blood cells STAT!” Twenty minutes later, when the patient is hemorrhaging and there’s no blood, Dr. X bellows, “You all are totally incompetent!” Is it the OR staff’s fault for being incompetent? Or Dr. X’s fault for failing to communicate properly? According to Neha, it a case of misalignment of agreements.  It was the doctor’s responsibility to ensure that the order had been acknowledged (a Level 1 agreement) and a plan had been made. Ideally, he would have made sure Nurse Sharon agreed to run to the blood bank and have the blood back in the OR in 10 minutes (a Level 5 agreement.) But instead, the doctor just barked an order that nobody acknowledged.

The 5 Levels of Agreement