Books I like: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills is an insightful and empowering book that provides readers with a set of practical principles for living a happy and fulfilling life. The four agreements - Be impeccable with your word, Don't take anything personally, Don't make assumptions, and Always do your best - are presented in a clear and concise manner, and are accompanied by real-life examples and anecdotes that make them easy to understand and apply.
Ruiz's writing style is engaging and accessible, and his teachings draw on a range of spiritual traditions to create a framework for personal growth and transformation. By following the four agreements, readers can learn to break free from limiting beliefs, destructive patterns, and negative emotions, and cultivate greater self-awareness, compassion, and authenticity.
Overall, The Four Agreements is a must-read for anyone seeking to improve their relationships, boost their self-esteem, and live a more fulfilling life. With its practical advice and inspiring message, this book has the power to transform the way readers think, act, and relate to the world around them.
There’s a reason this is considered a classic. Some of my personal highlights from the book can be found below:
We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough; we don’t need to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again. If we have a wife or husband he or she also reminds us of the mistake, so we can judge ourselves again, punish ourselves again, and find ourselves guilty again. Is this fair?
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.
Instead of living in a dream of hell, you will be creating a new dream — your personal dream of heaven.
The truth is that the mother’s tolerance for any noise was nonexistent; it was not that the little girl’s voice was ugly. But the daughter believed what her mother said, and in that moment she made an agreement with herself. After that she no longer sang, because she believed her voice was ugly and would bother anyone who heard it. She became shy at school, and if she was asked to sing, she refused. Even speaking to others became difficult for her. Everything changed in the little girl because of this new agreement: She believed she must repress her emotions in order to be accepted and loved.
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.
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.
When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts.
Write this agreement on paper, and put it on your refrigerator to remind you all the time: Don’t take anything personally.
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.
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.
Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive.
If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life. You are going to control your life one hundred percent.
The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem.
The angel of death can teach us to live every day as if it is the last day of our lives, as if there may be no tomorrow. We can begin each day by saying, “I am awake, I see the sun. I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone, because I am still alive. One more day to be myself.”
That is the way I see life, that is what the angel of death taught me — to be completely open, to know that there is nothing to be afraid of. And of course I treat the people I love with love because this may be the last day that I can tell you how much I love you. I don’t know if I am going to see you again, so I don’t want to fight with you.