The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

by Miguel Ruiz

Only the truth will set us free.

gossip can be compared to a computer virus.

this poisonous virus is what the Toltec called the mitote, the chaos of a thousand different voices all trying to talk at once in the mind.

We must begin to understand what the word is and what the word does.

Your opinion is nothing but your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dream. We create all this poison and spread it to others just so we can feel right about our own point of view.

It is up to you to make this agreement with yourself: I am impeccable with my word. Nurture this seed, and as it grows in your mind, it will generate more seeds of love to replace the seeds of fear.

Tell yourself how wonderful you are, how great you are. Tell yourself how much you love yourself. Use the word to break all those teeny, tiny agreements that make you suffer.

Step 1 (2)

it’s not about you; it’s about me.

Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”

the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own feelings, beliefs, and opinions.

I know what I am. I don’t have the need to be accepted. I don’t have the need to have someone tell me, “Miguel, you are doing so good!” or “How dare you do that!”

create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie.

if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear.

We have a choice whether or not to believe the voices we hear within our own minds,

There are conflicting agreements that go against other agreements and on and on until it becomes a big war in the mind. The mitote is the reason humans hardly know what they want, how they want it, or when they want it.

Only by making an inventory of our agreements will we uncover all of the conflicts in the mind and eventually make order out of the chaos of the mitote.

Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you.

Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal.

You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

Write this agreement on paper, and put it on your refrigerator to remind you all the time: Don’t take anything personally.

You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you.

All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.

Because we are afraid to ask for clarification, we make assumptions, and believe we are right about the assumptions; then we defend our assumptions and try to make someone else wrong.

always better to ask questions

We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality.

Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don’t have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, “You should have known.”

If they don’t do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, “How could you do that? You should know.”

We have agreed that it is not safe to ask questions; we have agreed that if people love us, they should know what we want or how we feel. When we believe something, we assume we are right about it to the point that we will destroy relationships in order to defend our position.

Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them.

The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear.

This is what I want; this is what you want. If we communicate in this way, our word becomes impeccable.

No hidden agendas

Becoming aware of these habits and understanding the importance of this agreement is the first step.

your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good.

The Master replied, “You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won’t enjoy your life. Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy.”

When you do your best, you don’t give the Judge the opportunity to find you guilty or to blame you.

you have to be aware and learn from your mistakes.

Growth mindset

you practice, look honestly at the results, and keep practicing. This increases your awareness.

You do your best because you want to do it, not because you have to do it, not because you are trying to please

Expressing what you are is taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action.

Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now.

The first three agreements will only work if you do your best.

Practice makes the master. By doing your best you become a master.

You have to honor the man or woman that you are. Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exercise and do what makes your body feel good.

Your own body is a manifestation of God, and if you honor your body everything will change for you.

If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life. You are going to control your life one hundred percent.

But, you must have a very strong will, a very strong will to keep these agreements. Why? Because wherever we go we find that our path is full of obstacles.

We are no longer free because the Judge, the Victim, and the belief system don’t allow us to be who we really are. Once our minds have been programmed with all that garbage, we are no longer happy.

The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free.

There is no reason to suffer.