I recently finished reading The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz, a self-help book about overcoming your self-limiting beliefs to radically transform your life ✨
I really enjoyed the book and I can say without any doubt that is has valuable lessons that can help you to cultivate self-love, improve your relationships, eradicate fear & self-doubt, and boost your self-esteem.
Therefore, in this blogpost I will share with you the key takeaways of the book by quickly summarizing it and then diving deep into its 4 main principles.
Finally, I will list my favorite quotes from the book, which capture Don Miguel Ruiz’ pearls of wisdom 🪐
Summary ✨
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz is a self-help book based on ancient Toltec tradition.
The book is founded on the idea that our life is dictated by beliefs – also referred to as “agreements” – that we make throughout our life.
Indeed, according to the author, every time we create a new belief we do so by agreeing with the information that was passed to us.
In other words, we accept it as the truth.
The problem with these beliefs is that they are often false and, therefore, they make us see the world in a distorted way.
Based on this, the author states that everyone is living in their own dream, which makes people see reality in different ways, leading to a world of chaos – also referred to as “mitote“.
The author states that whenever someone or something questions our beliefs, they trigger fear within ourselves.
Therefore, challenging and getting rid of negative and limiting beliefs is fundamental to not only see the world more objectively, but to also free ourselves from fear.
To achieve this objective, the author shares 4 fundamental principles – or “agreements” – to follow:
- Be impeccable with your word
- Don’t take anything personally
- Don’t make assumptions
- Always do your best
Let’s explore them together.
The 4 main principles ✨
1. Be impeccable with your word
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word.
The term “impeccable” comes from the Latin word “pecatus”, which means sin.
According to the Ruiz (1997), “a sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself” and “self-rejection is the biggest sin that you can commit”.
Therefore, being impeccable with your word – i.e., not saying, doing, or believing in anything that goes against yourself – is essential.
When you are impeccable, you take accountability for your actions, but you never judge or blame yourself.
2. Don’t take anything personally
The second agreement to achieve personal freedom is to not take anything personally.
As the author explains, most of the times both positive and negative comments you receive from others tell you more about them than yourself.
This is because nothing that people do is because of you, but rather because of themselves.
You are never responsible for other people’s actions.
As Ruiz states, everyone lives in their own dream, which completely differs from the one you live in.
Thus, “you should not take anything personally, not because you should not believe or trust others, but simply because they see the world with different eyes, not with yours” (Ruiz, 1997).
When you take something personally, you make the assumption that another person knows what is in your world, and you try to impose your world on their world, which is something that cannot be done.
Not taking anything personally will not only allow you to better understand others, but to also never be hurt by what they say or do.
3. Don’t make assumptions
The third agreement is to never make assumptions.
This is crucial because when you make assumptions, most of the times you believe in them and you create misunderstandings and drama for nothing.
As the Ruiz says, asking questions is always better than making assumptions because the latter set us up for suffering.
This is especially the case for assumptions regarding our needs.
When we assume that oher people know what we want, we are prone to creating drama “because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on top of it” (Ruiz, 1997).
Therefore, do not be afraid to ask questions.
“Have the courage to ask questons until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation” (Ruiz, 1997).
4. Always do your best
The last agreement to reach personal freedom is to always do your best.
This will help you to stick to the first agreement – being impeccable with your word – because by always doing your best, there is no way you can judge yourself.
Consequently, you cannot suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment.
Besides helping you to be impeccable with your word, always doing your best will also contribute to your happiness.
This is because, according to Ruiz, action is what ultimately makes you feel happy.
When you give your maximum, you take action because you love what you’re doing, not because you are expecting a reward.
On the contrary, when you do something because you expect a reward in return, you do not enjoy your actions and thus do not do your best.
So that was is for the summary of The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz.
If you want to discover some of the best quotes from the book, keep reading 🙂
My top 6 quotes ✨
Below you find some of the best quotes from The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz.
“Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them”.
(Ruiz, 1997)
“Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results and no reward.”
(Ruiz, 1997)
“If we compare the dream of human society with the description of hell that religions all around the world have promulgated, we find they are exactly the same. Religions say that hell is a place of punishment, a place of fear, pain, and suffering, a place where the fire burns you. Fire is generated by emotions that come from fear. Whenever we feel the emotions of anger, jealousy, envy, or hate, we experience a fire burning within us. We are living in a dream of hell. If you consider hell as a state of mind, then hell is all around us. Others may warn us that if we don’t do what they say we should do, we will go to hell. Bad news! We are already in hell, including the people who tell us that. No human can condemn another to hell because we are already there. Others can put us into a deeper hell, true. But only if we allow this to happen. Every human has his or her own personal dream, and just like the society dream, it is often ruled by fear. We learn to dream hell in our own life, in our personal dream.”
(Ruiz, 1997)
“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.”
(Ruiz, 1997)
“Even if others lie to you, it is ok. They are lying to your because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover they are not perfect. It is painful to take that social mask off. If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you.”
(Ruiz, 1997)
“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. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will hate me. If you are not afraid, there is no way your will be jealous or sad.”
(Ruiz, 1997)
I hope that you enjoyed this summary of The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom ✨
If you have any comments, feedbacks or wishes, please let me know in the box below!
Also, if you’re interested in self development, feel free to check out other posts from my blog.