The Four Agreements

Miguel Ruiz

📚 GENRE: Personal Development

📃 PAGES:  160

✅ COMPLETED: December 1, 2021

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Love is the answer. Miguel Ruiz explains why in one of the best personal development books of all time. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. Ruiz explains why everything starts with self-love and an understanding that tomorrow is never promised. 

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Love Yourself — Self-love is the key to everything in life and should serve as your foundation. When you love yourself, and constantly encourage yourself, you unlock the freedom to be yourself. You can do what you want, act like you want, and be who you want without fearing what others may or may not think of you. When you love yourself fully, your self-worth isn’t at the mercy of other people’s opinions. 

2️⃣ Tomorrow Isn’t Promised — You never know when your next breath will be your last. When you understand this, and live with it at the top of your mind, everything becomes more enjoyable and the small, insignificant things that are bothering you lose their power. You naturally enjoy every moment of your life, and the people in it, more.

3️⃣ It’s Never About You — Everybody is different and people form their own interpretation of the world based on their own unique journey and personal background. When somebody “doesn’t like you,” it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with them and their own personal lens of life. Again, if you love yourself, what other people might think of you becomes completely insignificant. 

Favorite Quote

"Love will give you inner peace. It will change your perception of everything. You can see everything with the eyes of love."

Book Notes 📑

Introduction

  • The teachings of this book are based on ancient Toltec wisdom.
    • The Toltecs were a group of artists and scientists that roamed Mexico in the 1500s. 
    • They formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge of the ancient people.
  • Toltec knowledge is essentially a code of conduct to follow that eliminates self-limiting beliefs. 
  • The Toltecs strived to show us that the ultimate reward is to transcend human suffering to become the embodiment of God.
  • Everything a person does is based on agreements they have made with themselves, with others, with God, and with life itself.
    • In these agreements, we tell ourselves who we are, how to behave, what is possible, and what is impossible. 
    • Some agreements may not cause issues, but there are certain agreements that come from a place of fear and have the power to deplete one’s emotional energy as well as diminish self-worth.
  • Everything in existence is a manifestation of God.
    • The real us is pure love and light. 
  • Attention is the ability to discriminate and focus only on what we want to perceive.
    • We can perceive millions of things simultaneously, but by using attention, we can hold whatever we want to perceive in the front of our mind. 
  • The only way to store information is by agreement. We may encounter many things in a day, but we don’t store the information unless we believe it.
    • When we believe it, we have faith.
    • To have faith is to believe unconditionally. 
  • We adopt agreements during our upbringing. Our parents and teachers use a reward and punishment system to show us what is right and wrong and how to see the world.
    • This shapes our worldview and the agreements we come to believe in. 
    • This system encourages us to seek rewards, which in many cases is another person’s attention. We grew up wanting to gain Mom and Dad’s attention.
      • When we grow older, we will do anything to avoid punishment and get the “reward” of attention. We will become someone we aren’t just to please people and gain their attention. 
      • We fear being rejected and not being good enough for other people, so we will pretend to be someone we aren’t to avoid that pain. 
  • The Book of Laws is our own personal belief system.
    • When we go against these internal beliefs, the JUDGE inside of us makes us feel guilty, ashamed and makes us feel like we should be punished.
    • The VICTIM inside of us receives the judgements and responds by carrying the blame, shame, and guilt. The victim part of us is why we get down on ourselves.
      • You have to challenge your belief system — 95% of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are lies, but we suffer because of these lies.
  • Quote (P. 12): â€œTrue justice is paying once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.”
    • The human species is the only species on the planet that routinely beats itself up for a mistake. 
    • We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves.
      • This would be fine if it happened just once. But we routinely repeat the mistake in our minds and repeatedly beat ourselves up for the mistake, over and over. 
  • If you consider hell a state of mind, we are all living in hell.
    • Hell is described in religious texts as a place of punishment, fear, pain, and a place where fire burns you. 
    • Fire is generated from emotions that come from fear — jealousy, envy, hate, anger.
      • Many people are living with these emotions 24/7. They are living in hell. 
    • It is possible to be in a pleasant state of mind. 
  • Quote (P. 17): â€œOur biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to express who we really are. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and not being good enough for someone else.”
    • The fear of not being good enough for others is driven by the fact that we don’t accept ourselves.
      • If you accept yourself and love yourself, you’re OK no matter what others think of you. 
    • At my core, this is my issue. I am far too concerned about what other people think about me and it drives my behavior and fuels my anxiety. 
  • Humans punish themselves for not being what they believe they SHOULD be rather than accepting themselves for how they truly are.
  • Quote (P. 19): â€œThe way we judge ourselves is the worst judge that ever existed.”
    • We abuse ourselves more than anybody else has ever abused us. 
    • The Judge endlessly makes us feel guilty, ashamed, weak, and insufficient.
  • Quote (P. 20): â€œThe more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse.”
    • Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from not living up to our image of perfection.
    • Our image of perfection is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are and why we don’t accept others the way they are. 
  • If you don’t like the way things are going, you have to change the agreements you have with yourself.
    • Your agreements shape your personality — they tell you what you can and cannot do. 
    • Changing your agreements starts with the Four Agreements in this book. If you can adopt these four, you can change the rest of them.
  • Mitote â€” The Toltecs used this to describe the mental “fog” that comes when you have a million different voices in your head telling you a million different things.
    • It’s the inner conflict in the mind that occurs when you have conflicting agreements and thoughts. 
    • A Mitote is why humans are very indecisive and don’t know what they want. 

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word

  • The most important one and the most difficult one to follow. 
  • The word is how you express your creative power.
  • It is through the word that you manifest everything.
  • The word is the most powerful tool we have as humans. It is a tool of magic.
    • Misusing it is black magic. You can really hurt people — and yourself — with your words. 
    • You can also really build people up — and yourself — with your words.
  • Depending on how they are used, words can set you free, or they can enslave you.
    • Use your words and your thoughts to create beauty, love, and heaven on earth.
  • Impeccability — Without sin.
    • A sin is anything you do that goes against yourself. 
      • Everything that you do, say, think, feel, or believe that goes against yourself is a sin. 
      • You go against yourself when you judge yourself!
      • Never cross yourself. Be your own No. 1 Fan.
    • Sin begins with rejection of yourself. Self-rejection is the biggest sin you can commit. 
    • Being impeccable means NOT going against yourself. 
    • When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you DO NOT judge yourself. 
    • To be impeccable with your word means to use your energy to express truth and love for yourself.
  • Quote (P. 33): “If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you.”
    • Lesson: Make an agreement with yourself to use your words and thoughts to express love for yourself. You need to actually make an agreement with yourself and make it a conscious priority. 
    • Make self-love a priority every day! 💖
  • Stop crossing yourself. Stop doubting yourself. Stop judging yourself. Stop beating yourself up. These are sins.
    • Instead, be your No. 1 fan. Never doubt yourself. Be impeccable with your words and thoughts about yourself. 
    • If you do make a mistake, DO NOT JUDGE YOURSELF. 
    • Believe in yourself always! No matter the task. 
  • Whenever we hear an opinion about ourselves from another person and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.
    • We have the power to not believe these lies. The power is in our choice. 
  • Over time, humans have used words to gossip, which is pure poison.
    • Gossip has become the primary form of communication in today’s society.
    • People gossip because they feel bad about themselves and want to hurt others to bring them down.
    • When someone tells you something negative about somebody else, you shouldn’t automatically assume it’s true. Instead, question the person’s motivation. 
  • We also use words to gossip about ourselves.
    • “I look fat. I look ugly. I’m old. I’m stupid. I’ll never be good enough., etc.”
    • If you understand this first agreement — to be impeccable with your words and thoughts — you can really change your life through self-love.
    • When you first love yourself, that love then spreads in how you treat others. 
  • How do you measure the impeccability of your word?
    • By the level of your 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 happy and at peace.  
  • Again, the first step in this process is to MAKE THE AGREEMENT WITH YOURSELF.
    • Make it a priority to love yourself and build yourself up. Agree to it and do it. 
    • Tell yourself how wonderful you are and how great you are. Tell yourself how much you love yourself. 
  • Use your words and thoughts for LOVE, always. 
  • This one agreement can change your whole life.
  • Being impeccable with your word can eliminate fear and transform it into joy and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally

  • The next three agreements build on the first one. 
  • Do not take anything personally. 
    • When you take something personally, you have agreed with what the other person said or did.
  • Personal Importance — this is defined as taking things personally. 
    • This is the maximum form 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. 
    • The fact is, every single person is living in their own little world, including us. Their world is completely different than our world. 
      • Ultimately, they are caught up in themselves and their lives. They aren’t thinking about you. To think that what they are doing is because of you is completely false. 
      • The opinions they give are in alignment with their agreements and beliefs, and have nothing to do with you. 
      • I have noticed this in my own life. My family and I can be very judgmental towards others. I have found, in interacting with other people, that nobody else is anywhere as judgmental. My worldview was shaped to be judgmental and now I see things out of that lens. But others do not see things anywhere as judgmentally.  
    • When we take things personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.
      • When we take something personally, we have accepted the poison they tried to pass on.
  • Quote (P. 50): “It’s not important to me what you think about me, and I don’t take what you think personally. Either way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I do not have the need to be accepted.”
    • Whether people are praising you or demonizing you, you cannot take it personally.
    • You need to be independent in your opinion of yourself. Your opinion of yourself should never be derived from the opinion of others. 
      • This is my weakness. I do things to try to please others constantly because I want to be praised and I want to be liked. 
      • I have noticed that both my view of myself and my emotions are tied to what I think other people are thinking of me and whether or not they are accepting me. This is bad! 
        • The key is to love yourself and build yourself up. And what other people think about you — good or bad — is irrelevant. You don’t take their opinions or thoughts personally. 
        • Regardless, you accept yourself and love yourself. This is what keeps you and your emotions centered. This should be the rock of your existence. Nothing can knock you off your rock. 
  • Even your own thoughts aren’t true at times. Don’t take them personally either.
    • Just as you have a choice not to take other people’s opinions personally, you have the choice to not take your false thoughts personally.
  • Humans are addicted to suffering at different levels. Addiction to negative thinking is a real thing. 
  • People lie because they are afraid of others finding out that they aren’t perfect.
    • Actions always speak louder than words. Focus on a person’s actions. 
  • Trust yourself — not others — to make the right choices for your own life.
  • Quote (P. 58): “When you make it a strong habit not to take anything personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your anger, jealousy, envy, and even sadness will disappear.” 
    • There is huge freedom that comes when you take nothing personally. 
      • You are freed up to be yourself and say and do the things you want to do because you aren’t afraid of not being accepted. 
      • You aren’t afraid of the sting of rejection because you know it’s not about you, it’s just how that person is due to their beliefs and agreements.
  • When you understand this and don’t take anything personally, you can:
    • Say “I love you” without fear of being ridiculed or rejected.
    • Ask for what you need.
    • Say “yes” or “no” without guilt or self-judgement.
    • Follow your heart, always.
  • Again, you have to make an agreement with yourself to do this. Make it a habit and a priority — Don’t take anything personally! 
    • People are living in their own worlds their actions/words/thoughts come from their own belief system and agreements they have with themselves.

3. Don't Make Assumptions

  • We have the tendency to make assumptions about EVERYTHING. And we always believe these assumptions are true, even if they are absolutely bat shit crazy assumptions.
    • This is discussed in Daniel Kanehman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow.
      • System 1 makes assumptions when it doesn’t have enough information. It likes to close the story gap by making something up.
  • When the mind can’t explain something or there is a gap in information, it fills that gap with its own made up story.
    • You can’t believe these assumptions! 
  • Typical Process: We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking, we then take it personally, we then react by doing or thinking something hurtful about the person.
    • This whole cycle happens because we make some shit up in our minds and believe it!! 
    • It’s crazy that you can end up hating a person in your mind because you made up some completely untrue assumptions and believed them.
      • It happens though — I have experience with this. 
  • Quote (P. 64): “All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.”
    • Facts!
  • Example: We see someone in the mall that we like and that person smiles at us and then walks away.
    • We immediately go into assumption-land and assume that person really likes us, when they could have been simply being friendly towards us. 
    • We go into fantasy-land and start picturing a life together, just from one random smile. 
    • This is crazy, but this is what happens in the mind. 
  • One way to avoid assumptions is to simply ask question. Clarify. 
  • As the page above explains, we assume everyone THINKS exactly like we do. Being very judgmental myself, I ASSUME others are being as hard on me as I am on myself or as hard as I can be on others. This just isn’t how it works. MOST PEOPLE DON’T SEE YOU ANYWHERE CLOSE TO HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF.
    • This means that the stuff I’m hard on myself about isn’t seen by others. 
    • Ex. My first ToastMasters speech. I was very nervous and assumed people could see that. Many told me afterwards that they didn’t sense that at all. I made an assumption. 
  • Quote (P. 70): “Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.”
  • Ask for what you want. Don’t assume a “yes” or a “no”. 
    • People have the right to say either, but you need to ask people for what you want.
  • Always be clear about what you want. This is the key to great communication with people and in relationships. 

4. Always Do Your Best

  • In all circumstances, do your very best. 
    • Your best is going to vary in quality from moment to moment throughout a day, month, year, etc.
      • Your best will be high quality in some moments and not as high quality in other moments, like when you are sick or tired at night. 
  • As you practice and execute the four agreements, you will find yourself in better spirits and your best will naturally be better than it was in the past. 
  • If you do less than your best, you open yourself up to frustrations, self-judgement, guilt, and regrets.
    • You won’t judge yourself if you are giving your all at all times no matter how you are feeling.
  • When you always do your best, you live intensely. You are productive and you are good to yourself because you are giving your all to yourself, your family, your community, and everything else.
  • When you always do your best, you take action. You make moves, you make progress. 
    • Over the long haul, this level of effort brings huge rewards. 
  • Live in the present moment. Not living in the present is being only half-alive.
  • Quote (P. 84): “You were born with the right to love, to enjoy, and to share your love.”
  • Your existence proves the existence of God.
    • It’s an expression of God to say, “Hey, I love you.”
    • Your own body is a manifestation of God.
    • When you love YOURSELF and OTHERS, you are loving God.
  • Say “no” when you want to say “no” and say “yes” when you want to say “yes”. It’s your choice.
  • You do not need the acceptance of others! Get that through your mind. 
  • These four agreements are the key to life — agree to them, live them, and do always do your best to practice them.

Breaking Old Agreements

  • Most of the time, we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others, rather than living our lives to please ourselves.
  • The problem with most people is that they never understand that the Judge and Victim rule their minds.
    • They don’t have that awareness as they live their lives.
    • The first step to living better is to understand this process.
  • Quote (P. 106): “It’s now up to you to choose what you believe and what you don’t believe. You can choose to believe in anything, and that includes believing in yourself.”
  • Replace old agreements that make you suffer with new agreements that make you happy, such as the Four Agreements discussed in this book. 
  • We are actually addicted to old agreements and thinking negatively.
    • It takes repetition to break old agreements and form new ones. 
    • Quote (P. 110): “All of these old agreements which rule our dream of life are the result of repeating them over and over again. Therefore, to adopt the Four Agreements, you need to put repetition in action. Practicing the new agreements in your life is how your best becomes better. Repetition makes the master.” 
  • Forgiveness is the only way to heal. 
  • You have the power and choice to say “That’s enough! I will no longer be the big Judge and go against myself. I will no longer beat myself up and abuse myself. I will no longer be the Victim.”
    • Quote (P. 124): “Why not use your mind, your imagination, and your emotions to dream heaven?”
  • ACCEPT YOURSELF AS YOU ARE
    • This is the beginning of the free human.
  • Become a warrior. A warrior has two things:
      1. Awareness
      • We are aware that we are at war in the mind and need to be disciplined to change. 
      1. Control
      • The ability to control your own emotions. Control over one’s self.
      • It is the emotions that control human behavior. We have to be able to control the emotions so we have enough personal power to change our old fear-based agreements.
  • Only love has the ability to put you in a state of bliss.
    • Quote (P. 128): “Love will give you inner peace. It will change your perception of everything. You can see everything with the eyes of love.”
  • Love starts with YOURSELF. You have to love yourself wholeheartedly and then you can spread your love all over.
    • Always remember, you are a creation of God. Love yourself as you are because that’s how he made you. 
  • When you follow these Four Agreements, you can love without being fearful of not being loved back. You are no longer afraid to be rejected, and you don’t have the need to be accepted. 
  • When you follow these Four Agreements, you are able to live your life without the fear of being judged by others. You no longer rule your behavior according to what they might think about you.

Embrace the Angel of Death

  • The truth is, we can die at any moment. God has the ability to reel us in at any moment.
  • Any breath could be your last.
  • By knowing this and LIVING WITH THIS IN MIND ALWAYS, we are free to be ourselves and say and do the things we want.
    • You don’t worry about telling people that you love them. 
    • You don’t worry about what somebody might think about you.
    • You enjoy the people and places you get to interact with each day.
    • You let go of the past and the worries about the future that might bother you. 
  • Living with this mentality encourages LOVE AND GRATITUDE for everyone and everything. 
    • It is the best way to live. 
    • Live enjoying the preciousness of every moment, because you don’t know when your time is going to be up. You just don’t.
  • Again, live and love everyday as if it’s your last.
    • When you do this, you love yourself, you love others, and you love your life, including all the small things.
    • The little shit that used to bother you just doesn’t seem significant anymore. 
    • You’re operating at a higher level of love when you have this mentality. 
  • Quote (P. 119): “I treat people I love with love because this may be the last day that I can tell you how much I love you.”