Book Review

The Four Agreements, By Don Miguel Ruiz

This book is a book of Toltec wisdom written by a man who was trained in these ways by his mother, and a teacher in the Mexican desert. He at first shunned the practice but then came back to it after a near death experience.

The book challenges us to look at everything we know and believe and to examine those belief structures. We are all made up of our life experiences and the things that we have been taught. Examining these can help us to achieve a better understanding of ourselves.

The first of the four agreements is to be impeccable with your word. This agreement is comprised of many facets. It goes beyond the mere traditional definition of mere honesty and pushes into everything we do. He states that this agreement, alone, would be enough to deliver heaven on earth if we follow it closely enough.

He challenges us to realize the power of the words spoken with our mouth. He tells the story of a little girl, whose mother has had a very hard day. The mother comes home with a headache and is very distracted. The little girl is having a fabulous day, she is singing and dancing and carrying on. She gets louder and louder singing and expressing her joy. Her mother finally tells her to quit and that she has an ugly voice. The little girl never sings again.

This takes us beyond honesty and integrity and really exposes the power of our spoken word in bright light. The little girl suffers so much loss through this because she never gets to express herself through a medium that she found so natural. As she progresses through life she is constantly refusing this expression and possibly not even remembering why. She simply feels the pain and represses her urge.

The mother, on the other hand, may not remember what she did either. But she is robbed of a most precious gift as well, that of hearing the most beautiful sound from a person that she loves more than life itself. Not only that, but these words spoken in passion and haste, crushed something in her daughter. Something not easy to repair.

We must do what we say. We must hold to our promises. We must not lie. Ever. We must watch what we say. This is the toughest of the four agreements and the most liberating. It is through our word, and our words, that we are known.

The second agreement is not to take anything personally. For instance, if someone tells you that you are fat, or stupid, this has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. Many times we belittle those around us, even those we love, to make ourselves feel better. Don’t take it personally. Don’t take it at all. Conversely, if someone tells you that you are smart, beautiful, or wonderful, it is still not about you. You know you are those things and don’t need others to ratify that for you. Besides, they may be telling you that to make themselves feel worse, to engage you in their pity party. Or they may be trying to lift you up by spouting these things.

The third agreement is to never make assumptions. We create a lot of problems just by assuming that someone feels a certain way about us, or is mad at us, or thinks of us a certain way. We should never make these assumptions because they simply may not be true. In making them we start to believe in them and deal with them as if they are reality. We start to poison our thinking and our reactions to these people with things that may not even be factual.

Another area that we make assumptions is by giving in to our own agreements that we have made with ourselves. We assume that we cannot succeed, that we cannot do this thing or that. We will never know until we try. Many of us have these destructive and limiting agreements with ourselves. I could never understand calculus. I could never climb Mt. Everest. I could never be a good parent, etc., etc. By placing these limitations upon ourselves we miss out on so much.

The fourth agreement is to always do our best. For anything we have agreed to do, work, projects, clubs, marriage, parenting, everything, we need to put forth our best effort at all times. One thing that liberates in this concept is the realization of the reality that our best will vary at times. We may wake up in the morning ready to go and deliver a great effort on a project. At other times, we may be sick, or tired, and unable to deliver our most impressive, but we still give the best we can.

If we continually are unable to deliver we need to assess the circumstances and see what the block is. Are we too overcommitted? Are there other factors involved? Using the first agreement we can adjust and be honest with ourselves and the others involved.

This book has had a profound impact on me. It has challenged me to question and examine the agreements I have made with myself. My only frustration with it is that it offers little to guide one on this path. It offers tantalizing secret but does not go into depth or detail. I am sure that is somewhat because the work and details need to come from within.

Talin