The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

by Miguel Ruiz

To have faith is to believe unconditionally.

We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected. The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone that we are not.

We keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us.

We don’t see the truth because we are blind. What blinds us are all those false beliefs we have in our mind.

To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

Not being perfect, we reject ourselves.

We judge others according to our image of perfection as well, and naturally they fall short of our expectations.

We dishonor ourselves just to please other people. We even do harm to our physical bodies just to be accepted by others.

In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly.

The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds very simple, but it is very, very powerful.

The human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fertile! The only problem is that too often it is fertile for the seeds of fear. Every human mind is fertile, but only for those kinds of seeds it is prepared for. What is important is to see which kind of seeds our mind is fertile for, and to prepare it to receive the seeds of love.

An example: I see a friend and give him an opinion that just popped into my mind. I say, “Hmmm! I see that kind of color in your face in people who are going to get cancer.” If he listens to the word, and if he agrees, he will have cancer in less than one year. That is the power of the word.

Is the human mind this powerful? Can we, in our minds, physically end up somewhat developing life changing medical issues!

sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.

Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself.

She believed she must repress her emotions in order to be accepted and loved.

If you understand the first agreement, be impeccable with your word, you begin to see all the changes that can happen in your life.

Impeccability of the word will also give you immunity from anyone putting a negative spell on you.

You will only receive a negative idea if your mind is fertile ground for that idea.

You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace.

Be impeccable with your word. This is the first agreement that you should make if you want to be free, if you want to be happy, if you want to transcend the level of existence that is hell. It is very powerful. Use the word in the correct way. Use the word to share your love. Use white magic, beginning with yourself. 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.

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

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.

You 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.

When you feel good, everything around you is good.

The mind has the ability to talk to itself, but it also has the ability to hear information that is available from other realms.

Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover that they are not perfect.

But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain.

Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you.

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don...

When you make it a strong habit not to take anything personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your anger, jealousy, and envy will disappear, and even your sadness will simp...

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

Someone can intentionally send emotional poison, and if you don’t take it personally, you will not eat it. When you don’t take the emotional poison, it becomes even worse in the sender, but not in you.

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.

It is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suffering.

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.

Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.

If you don’t understand something, it is better for you to ask and be clear, instead of making an assumption. The day you stop making assumptions you will communicate cleanly and clearly, free of emotional poison. Without making assumptions your word becomes impeccable.

With clear communication, all of your relationships will change, not only with your partner, but with everyone else. You won’t need to make assumptions because everything becomes so clear. This is what I want; this is what you want. If we communicate in this way, our word becomes impeccable. If all humans could communicate in this way, with impeccability of the word, there would be no wars, no violence, no misunderstandings.

Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less.

Say no when you want to say no, and yes when you want to say yes.