Four Agreements That Will Change Your Life | By Don Miguel Ruiz

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

About The Author:

Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of Toltec spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. His work is best-received among members of the New Thought movement that focuses on ancient teachings as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Ruiz is listed as one of the Watkins 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2018. Some have associated Ruiz's work with Carlos Castaneda, author of The Teachings of Don Juan.

Summary of the book:

When we were kids we were type of person who listens to anyone and follow them and agree what he/she is saying and believe them too without knowing that it is right or wrong. If your parent says you are handsome or beautiful you agree to them and if they say you are dumb and not beautiful we make an agreement to our-self without knowing the truth and if it is right or not. This agreement continues until we find someone who will prove us that whatever you have agreed is not correct. These types of agreement continue when we grow too, some agreement because of our parents, some by friends and mostly because of our society in which we live. We consider these agreements as truth like: If you have to be successful you can only become by either becoming a doctor or engineer, black people are not good, we should make fun of fat people or people who is dwarf and many more wrong agreements. Four Agreements is a wonderful book for stress management and personal growth. In this book there are four agreements depicted by author which can be done to make yourself to become successful and enjoy life at the fullest.

1.    1. Be impeccable with your words:

We sometimes so not realize how our words for someone in front of us have impacted that person mentally. We don’t see the harm that can be caused by speaking carelessly, thoughtlessly or aggressively.  There was a lady with caring nature, she was working in an IT firm. One day when she returned from his office stressed and with headache because of work. Her daughter was unaware of her pain and stress and was singing with headphones on, her mom got very annoyed by this act and shouted and told her she is not a good singer where as she loved to listen  to her daughter singing. After listening to these words her daughter started believing that she is not a good singer and thought her voice is terrible and started to stop talking with people and she thought if she will not open her felling then people will accept her and because of this agreement her life was changed.  We can learn from this that we should avoid ways that can cause problems by our words.

2.    2. Never take anything personally:

This is a very good advice for helping you to become less reactive, defensive and retaliatory but keep you in balance. Suppose you are going somewhere and some random person stops you and say you are so stupid! So what will be your reaction? You will have a fight with him or just ignore him and start walking to your destiny? You should think in a different way that reason of speaking those words is because of his feeling and his thinking capability. Everyone has their biases and there is no such thing as true objectivity, by never taking anything personally, you can really limit your ability to see your own negative patterns and biased thinking and work on developing more healthy patterns and clear-sighted thinking. We should not take anyone else’s opinion on our actions as entirely accurate.

3.    3. Don’t make assumptions:

One day Stephen covey who is a great author of book: 7 habits of highly effective people was travelling by train. It was a good day and there was less gathering and there was silence. On next station a man with his children boarded the and sit next to him, his children’s were very notorious and were making loud noise and  everyone was disturbed by them but their dad wasn’t doing anything and was shut with head down. After watching this everyone including Stephen got angry and was assuming how irresponsible dad he is and this is the reason why kids are spoiled. He asked him very aggressively you should know how to take care of your children, he had a look in his surrounding and tried to understand and said after having a pause I am extremely sorry and yes you are right I should do something about this, actually I am coming from hospital and just before an hour my wife died and I am unable to understand what should I do and I think these kids are unaware of this fact. After listening this Stephen’s anger got vanished. We have a very bad habit to assume things very quickly without knowing if properly, we think we know everything but actually are not aware of them all. Author says this agreement can change your life completely because it teaches us to have courage to ask question to themselves and our-self too.  

4.    4. Always do your best:

H.V kaltenborn is an American who came to Paris after travelling from different cities and countries. He was in need of money and started a salesman job. As he was American and do not know how to speak French which was a roadblock for him to sell. But he did something that he managed to get five thousand dollars as a commission from that job in a year and awarded as the highest salesman of the year in his company. When asked how did he do it he told them it is true that I don’t know how to speak French but it never become a roadblock for me, I written down by taking help from our boss and learned each word that I have to say in French when I will go to customer’s place. Whenever I go to some customer’s place after greeting them I start to repeat whatever I have learned those French words sounds so funny when I speak so that they started laughing at me and become comfortable and that’s how I made the sale. Some days, your best isn't as good as other days, and that's okay. As long as you put an honest effort into life, you will have nothing to be ashamed of, and won't beat yourself up over a less-than-stellar performance in retrospect.

 

In this book some agreement are oversimplified and if followed generally and not fanatically, these suggestions can help you reduce a great amount of stress by helping you avoid thought and behavior patterns that create frustration, blame, hurt feelings, and other negative emotions.