The Four Agreements Book Review

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz is a Toltec Wisdom Book. It’s a deceptively short book, but contains some deeply challenging ideas!

I gained some useful insights into the way that both myself and other people are conditioned to think and act in our society, and how we can overcome this conditioning and learn to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life.

The first point I noted was that, through the indoctrination we experience in our youth into the collective beliefs of society, we develop an internal set of rules, which dictates how we should behave. We develop an internal “judge” and an internal “victim” who suffers the blame and guilt caused by our fear of failing to conform to these rules. We create an image of perfection then punish ourselves endlessly for not being what we believe we should be.

The book suggests that we can overcome these problems by finding the courage to break the many agreements that are fear based and that cause us to suffer, and by adopting four powerful new agreements:

The first, BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD, is based on the premise that our word is the most powerful tool that we have, which can either be very positive or very destructive. I took from this the importance of taking responsibility for my own actions, but yet not to beat myself up about things after they are done. I can fall into a pattern of endlessly blaming myself, allowing my “judge” to set up an internal barrage of criticism that causes suffering to my “victim”. If I can change how I deal with myself, I will then be in a better position to change how I deal with others.

With the second agreement, DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY, the attention is turned to our reaction to how we are treated by others. If we can appreciate that everyone sees the world in their own way, and that in their actions and reactions they are primarily dealing with their own issues, and that we are only responsible for our own actions, not for the actions of others, then we should not be hurt by the comments and actions of others. This brings back the old playground retort, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. An interesting point is the suggestion that we should take NOTHING personally, so we should not take praise personally any more than we do criticism. What I have often tried to do is “cherry pick” what I take personally, in seeking to get praise and approval from others and feel good about this, but to avoid feeling bad under criticism or even in an absence of praise. Adopting this agreement has the potential to create freedom from a great deal of the suffering caused by this previous approach, although I do find myself questioning how you can implement this without cutting yourself off from experiencing a lot of the normal interaction that we have with others.

The third agreement, DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS, brought home to me the suffering that we can experience because we misinterpret and misunderstand situations, we assume that everyone sees life as we do and then we make assumptions and take these personally. Often I can put my own inaccurate interpretation on the words or actions of others, and then make incorrect assumptions. I know it is always better to find the courage to ask questions and to seek clarification, but do not always put this into practice. It is also easy to assume that our partners and close friends know what we think and what we want, rather than actually communicating and asking for what we want.

The fourth agreement, ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST, relates to putting the first three agreements into action. It is important to realise that our “best” varies over time and according to our health and our feelings at a particular time. It was interesting for me to note the difference between doing your best and trying your hardest, in other words to strike a balance between trying too hard, which can deplete our energy, and doing less than your best, which can lead to frustration, guilt and regrets. If we can find the right balance in this, then we won’t be so prone to judging ourselves. It is suggested that it is important to have a focus on the enjoyment of the action itself, rather than a focus on the reward, which can lead to resistance to the task and therefore difficulty in doing your best. The suggestion that we should only do the things that we enjoy may in practice be difficult to achieve as there are always things that we need to do that we don’t necessarily enjoy.

True freedom is the freedom to be who we are, not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past, not driven by fear or by our imagined responsibility to please others. The first step to freedom is to become aware of the problem, namely the old belief system, together with the judge and the victim. The second step, arising from this awareness, is to understand how to change and the third step is recognise the various beliefs that we have and begin the transformation, so as to gain mastery of living life free of our old beliefs, which have been replaced with the new agreements. We can move from self rejection to self acceptance, be in control of our emotions and be in control of what we say and what we do, with the awareness and discipline to be ourselves, no matter what happens.

We can choose to enjoy our destiny rather than to suffer our destiny!

Click here to find out more about this fascinating book:
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Exploring new ideas about different forms of spirituality is an important aspect of Discovering Better Health