The Four Agreements – A Must Read

When I first ventured down my healing path, two books were recommended to me; The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and Infinite Possibilities by Mike Dooley. I read Infinite possibilities right away and it really helped me understand how the you make your own reality when you are in line with your soul purpose, which took me through some troubling times in the beginning. However, for some reason I only printed out the actual Four Agreements and hung them on my notice board. It took me until about 4 months later to take action and read the book itself; what a revelation that was.

The Four Agreements is a short book and I was able to take in the substance of the book quite easily, but it was when I got to towards the end that the entirety of it sank in. My heart chakra opened up and my whole heart space was filling with unconditional love. It was a profound experience; one I will never forget. Hence, I feel it deserves a little write up from me and hopefully you will pick it up as well and have the same experience.

It’s quite simple actually. In order to become fully embodied with your higher self you can base your attitudes and your actions in this life on four basic agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best

1. Be impeccable with your word

Without going into too much detail, we can all agree that everything, and I mean everything, is energy; the physical, intangible and metaphysical, it is all energy. We can also agree there are two types of energy; positive and negative. It is our individual responsibility to generate only positive energy in our thoughts, actions and interactions. So the idea of being impeccable with your word is to assure that any word that leave your lips do not create negative energy for yourself or others. If you say something in defence of yourself that you later come to regret, even if it had no impact on the other party, you have generated negative energy. Now if it generated a negative response with the other party, you double up, don’t you? Gear your attitude towards always using your words impeccably and it will come more and more naturally to you.

2. Don’t take anything personally

Unfortunately, not everybody follows number one on this list, so we have to take responsibility for not only our actions, but also our reactions. We need to approach every situation with love and compassion, however much it may seem unfair. By the way, guess what is determining fairness? You got it, our egos! Anyway, if you can defuse a negative interaction with positivity, we all win. In actual fact, getting that angry over a silly thing is just creating pain, isn’t it?

3. Don’t make assumptions

Unless you are a finely tuned psychic empath, you don’t actually know what a person’s motivation for a particular action is, do you? Why did that person cut you off in traffic or not say thank you when you were kind enough to hold up the door? I think this was one of the key points for me. I would always make assumptions about people’s motivations. Once I was able to remove that from my train of thought, the two previous points came easier as well. Now, whenever possible, instead of making the assumption, I ask the person what their motivation was. In the cases where I cannot do that, I just sweep it aside and consider it an inconsequential action in my sphere of influence and it just passes by. It makes it easier to deal with all the situations where my actions actually have an effect on my environment.

4. Always do you best

This point had me a little nervous when I read it at first (not following number 3). I was thinking, “Oh, crap. I can fail at this!”. Hello EGO, thanks for popping by, but it is time for you to go back to bed for your eternal slumber! Once I got through the chapter I felt at ease. If you always strive to do your best you cannot fail, since your best today is going to be very different from your best yesterday or your best tomorrow. Also, if you always strive to do your best, your average ‘best’ is going to improve gradually without you having to attach fear and anxiety to it.

I hope I have given the book and the concepts some justice here, but the main purpose is to get you to read the book and allow you to create more love, compassion and positivity in your own environment.

Below you will find links to buy ‘The Four Agreements’ and ‘Infinite Possibilities’ (NB. Links to Amazon are affiliate links and the publisher might earn a commission if you make a purchase):