Book Review: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
I have been doing these book reviews for a few years now and besides my gym friends a lot of my other friends know that I am always on the lookout for a good book to read for these reviews. The Four Agreements is a book that a very good friend of mine has been trying to get me to read for a couple of years now. It came up again recently and the same day that she mentioned it to me again, another person also told me I should read it, so I took that as a sign.
Don Miguel Ruiz was raised in rural Mexico by his mother who was a curandera (healer) and his grandfather who was a nagual (shaman). Ruiz attended medical school and became a surgeon but after surviving a near fatal car crash, he became devoted to mastering the ancient ancestral wisdom. He studied with his mother and completed an apprenticeship with a shaman to become a nagual. In The Four Agreements, Ruiz shares the teachings of the ancient Toltec to help people find personal freedom. Ruiz has written several follow ups to this book and since I checked one of those out from the library instead of the actual book that I needed, you might be seeing one of those show up here sometime.
The premise of the book is that as adults we have learned behaviors and thoughts that are keeping us from being happy. By incorporating the four agreements into our lives we will become a happier better version of ourselves. I think that Ruiz refers to these as agreements because these are things that we need to agree to do.
The first agreement is, “Be impeccable with your word”. For this agreement we need first to remember that words have power, they have the power to hurt ourselves and others or they have the power to uplift ourselves and others. Ruiz states that being impeccable with our words means that we are truthful with our words. It also means to not use our words against ourselves or for gossip. Instead, we should use our words for truth and love.
The second agreement is, “Don’t take anything personally”. Remember that how other people act is about them and not about you. We can only control how we act or react to a situation, and we need to learn to try to not care so much about the opinions and actions of others.
The third agreement is, “Don’t make assumptions”. This goes along with the second agreement. Instead of assuming why someone else has acted the way that they have, we should ask them. When we make assumptions about others, we will probably be getting it wrong which ends up causing more problems. If the situation isn’t one that we can let go of, we need to ask questions of the other person so that we can have a true understanding of the situation.
The fourth agreement is, “Always do your best”. Remembering that your best will be different depending on the situation. Ruiz advises that when we do our best, we avoid self-criticism and regret.
Full disclosure everything so far in this review you can find in the front cover of the book. While the book is short and a very quick read, Ruiz does go into more detail about each of the four agreements and how incorporating them into your life can help you to live a happier life. He also acknowledges that these four agreements are very similar to other teachings that you might find around the world. The final chapter of the book discusses how to incorporate the agreements into your life. Here he describes, Mastery of Awareness, Mastery of Transformation and Mastery of Intent.
I have so many thoughts bouncing around about this book. I’ll start with that it is not necessarily an easy book to read. It is short but I had a little trouble with the language of it at first. Once I got used to how the author was speaking through his writing it got easier for me.
I absolutely loved the fourth agreement. When I was teaching, we always spent the first week of school making our class rules. I would let the kids start by listing everything they could possibly think of that we might need as a rule. Then we started sorting, categorizing and cutting. We always ended up with three rules, Be kind, Be safe, Do your best. As I was reading the fourth agreement it made me realize that while I expected it of my students, it is not something I have always expected of myself. It is a good reminder to myself that moving forward I need to do my best, and my best will be different from everyone else’s best.
That leads right into my next thought. This book is about how you perceive yourself. How are you talking to yourself? Are you judging yourself against other people? The message of taking care of yourself and letting others take care of themselves comes through the book.
I mentioned that this book was recommended to me by two different people on the same day, in separate conversations. One was a longtime friend, the other was a person I had just met the day before. We were in Mexico for a yoga retreat. (Shout out to Alicia here, the retreat was amazing. Talk to her about going on her next one in December, you won’t regret it.) At the end of the week as I was reflecting on the ride back to the airport, I put these notes in my phone. “Things I need to work on: being less judgmental, no gossiping, assume that others are doing the best that they can.” Funny how the universe talks to you sometimes.