Background
Before you can begin to fix your life you must first see the problem. According to Ruiz, our whole life is a dream that we can control with enough practice. However, as your parents raise you, they leave their mark on you, and you're not entirely free. You live your life based on what you've been told as well as doing everything possible to get rewards for doing the right thing. This leaves you trapped in your mind. These rules that you base your life upon are referred to as agreements, and they are little things you might not even recognize. These agreements drain most of your energy, and in order to break them you must overcome them, which also uses energy. However, once they are broken, you regain the energy used to make the agreement, allowing you to use the energy on other things. In order to follow the Four Agreements, you must also slowly break all other agreements you have with yourself. This will allow you to be free and live your best life.
1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
This is arguably the hardest agreement, as we have been raised to do the exact opposite. Being impeccable with your word means using it for only good, and to help yourself and others. Ruiz refers to your word as magic. Most of the time we use our word to hurt other people and this in turn also hurts us. This is referred to as black magic and/or emotional poison as our words affect other people's opinions, as well as cause the victim of our words to make an agreement with themselves. This can also lead to that person treating us badly, which in turn hurts us. However, if we use our word to spread love and happiness, it is referred to as pure magic, because it helps others and causes them to treat us well also. Being impeccable with your word is the first step of the four agreements, and makes the others easier to accomplish.
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
This agreement isn't exactly as it sounds, and can sound kind of like a bad thing at first when applied to certain situations. However, it will allow us to do what was love without caring about the opinions about others, or even ourselves. Not taking anything personally means that when someone criticizes or compliments us, we understand that it has nothing to do with us. If someone criticizes us, it is because of their negative emotions that they said this, not any actions we did. The same applies to compliments. If someone tells us how great we're doing, it is because they are full of positive emotions, and in turn perceived something we did as great. This also applies to ourselves. If we say something to ourselves, it is not because of something we did, but rather a different version of us on a separate plane of existence talking to us. If we view all comments made to us in this light, we will be free from other's opinions and criticism, allowing us to do what makes us happy rather than pleases others.
3. Don't Make Assumptions
This goes hand in hand with the idea of not taking anything personally. In life, we are taught from a young age to figure things out ourselves and that asking questions is bad. As we learn, this theory develops into us assuming things, rather than clarifying them as we are afraid of asking questions. We then accept these assumptions as facts, when in reality they are anything but. This leads to miscommunication, which can ruin our relationships with friends, family, and partners. However, once we learn to stop making these assumptions and clarify things, we will be able to communicate much better. This also applies to if we're walking down the street and someone laughs, we assume they're laughing at us. Although this most likely isn't true, we accept it as a fact and later feel mad at that person for laughing at us.. Overall if you stop assuming things, it will be much easier to not take things personally and vice versa, as we normally take vague things as a personal attack.
4. Always Do Your Best
The final agreement is also the most important, as it's the key to releasing all other agreements we have with ourselves and focusing instead on these agreements. For example, if one day we fall short of the first agreement and use our words to spread emotional poison, by following this agreement we can conclude that we did our best. This relieves us from the guilt of failure, and allows us to recognize that we aren't perfect. Our best changes from day to day, depending on many things such as emotion, energy and time of day. However, if we always try our best, nothing more and nothing less, than we will always know that we tried our hardest, and that it's okay to mess up sometimes. Overall, this agreement is the key to achieving all the other agreements because if we always try our best, eventually our best will be near perfect as we continue improving. Even if we don't follow all the other agreements as well as we should, this agreement will allow us to forgive ourselves and others because it allows us to recognize we all make mistakes occasionally.
Follow These Agreements
If you would like to follow these agreements, but need a little help along the way you can visit thefouragreements.com to buy the online course. There are two separate options, a 5 step abridged version of the course or the 10 step course, the original. You can also find many articles about the Four Agreements, as well as an in-depth analysis of each agreement, featuring the fifth agreement (which wasn't in the book I read). If you'd like to hear more about the actual book, come back Wednesday, when I'll post my official review of the book! If you have any further questions feel free to ask in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them!
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