The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

by Miguel Ruiz

Being impeccable with your word is not using the word against yourself. If I see you in the street and I call you stupid, it appears that I’m using the word against you. But really I’m using my word against myself, because you’re going to hate me for this, and your hating me is not good for me.

Only the truth will set us free.

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

word with ourselves. We talk to ourselves constantly and most of the time we say things like, “Oh, I look fat, I look ugly. I’m getting old, I’m losing my hair. I’m stupid, I never understand anything. I will never be good enough, and I’m never going to be perfect.” Do you see how we use the word against ourselves? We must begin to understand what the word is and what the word does. If you understand the first agreement, be impeccable with your word, you begin to see all the changes that can happen in your life. Changes first in the way you deal with yourself, and later in the way you deal with other people, especially those you love the most.

Consider how many times you have gossiped about the person you love the most to gain the support of others for your point of view. How many times have you hooked other people’s attention, and spread poison about your loved one in order to make your opinion right? 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.

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.

Be impeccable with your word.

The second agreement is don’t take anything personally.

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Using an earlier example, if I see you on the street and I say, “Hey, you are so stupid,” without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself,

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

take it personally when people

Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me.

hurting yourself. There is no way that I can take this personally. Not because I don’t believe

right to believe or not believe these voices and the right not to take what they say personally. We have a choice whether

The whole world can gossip about you, and if you don’t take it personally you are immune.

You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you. When you truly understand this, and refuse to take things personally, you can hardly be hurt by the careless comments or actions of others. If you

The third agreement is don’t make assumptions. We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real.

about what others are doing or thinking — we take it personally — then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we’re asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing. All the sadness and drama you have lived

personally, because usually we start gossiping about our assumptions. Remember, gossiping is the way we communicate to each other in the dream of hell and transfer poison to one another.

It is very interesting how the human mind works. We have the need to justify everything, to explain and understand everything, in order to feel safe. We have millions of questions that need answers because there are so many things that the reasoning mind cannot explain. It is not important if the answer is correct; just the answer itself makes us feel safe. This is why we make assumptions. If others tell us something, we make

We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do. We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. This is the biggest assumption that humans make. And this is why we have a fear of being ourselves around others. Because we think everyone else will judge us, victimize us, abuse us, and blame us as we do ourselves. So even before others have a chance to reject us, we have already rejected ourselves. That is the way the human mind works.

The Master replied, “You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to

example of this comes from the story about Forrest Gump. He didn’t have great ideas, but he took action. He was

with your life. Your happiness, your freedom, your entire way of living depends on it. The warrior’s goal is to transcend this world, to escape from this hell, and never