The Four Agreements
BY: Don Miguel Ruiz
Chapter 1: Domestication and the Dream of the Planet
what you are seeing and hearing right now is nothing but a dream — you are dreaming right now in this moment — you are dreaming with the brain awake (1)
we are born with the capacity to learn how to dream, and the humans who live before us teach us this to dream the way society dreams (2)
attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive (3)
by using our attention we learned a whole reality, a whole dream — we learned how to behave in society (3)
we never had the opportunity to choose what to believe or what not to believe (5)
the only way to store information is by agreement — the outside dream may hook our attention, but if we don’t agree, we don’t store that information — as soon as we agree, we believe it, and this is called faith (5)
to have faith is to believe unconditionally — that’s how children learn — they believe everything adults say, we agree with them, and our faith is so strong that the belief system controls our whole dream of life (5)
the result is surrender to the beliefs with our agreement (6)
domestication of humans — through this domestication we learn how to live and how to dream — the outside dream teaches us how to be a human (6)
a system of punishment and reward (6)
the reward is the attention that we got from our parents or others like teachers, siblings, and friends — soon develop a need to hook other people’s attention in order to to get the reward (7)
there is something in our minds that judges everybody and everything — the inner judge uses what is in our book of law to judge everything we do and don’t do, everything we think and don’t think and everything we feel and don’t feel (9)
breaking the rules in the book of law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison — because everything in the book has to be true, anything that challenges it makes you feel unsafe (11)
that’s why you need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs (11)
true injustice is paying more than once for each mistake (12)
humans are the only animals that pays a thousand times for the same mistake — we have a powerful memory, we make mistakes, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves (12)
if we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear (13)
we keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us (15)
to be alive is the biggest fear humans have — death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — to be alive and express what we really are (17)
we dishonour ourselves just to please other people (18)
humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be (19)
in your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself — 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 that relationship and tolerate it endlessly (20)
The Prelude to a New Dream
the most important agreements are the ones you made with yourself — you tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you believe, and how to behave — the result is what you call personality (21)
if you want to live a life of joy and fulfillment, you have to find the courage to break those agreements that are fear-based and claim your personal power (22)
there are four very powerful agreements that will help us to break those agreements that come from fear and deplete our energy (23)
Chapter 2: The First Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word
your word is the power that you have to create — it is through the word that you manifest everything (26)
the word is a force — it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life (26)
the human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted — the seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts — you plant a seed, a thought, and it grows (28)
the word can enter our mind and change a whole belief for better or worse — for example, if you believe you are stupid, and you may have believed this for a long as you can remember — this agreement can be tricky causing you to do a lot of thing just to ensure that you are stupid (30)
impeccability means ‘without sin’, everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin — you go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything — self rejection is the biggest sin that you commit (31)
if I love myself I will express that love in my interactions with you — I am being impeccable with the word, because that action will produce a like reaction (32)
whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system (35)
the truth is the most important part of being impeccable with your word — only the truth will set us free (37)
misery likes company — people who are suffering in hell don’t want to be all alone (38)
we receive the gossip and spells from the words of others, but also from the way we use our word with ourselves — must understand what the word is and what the word does (42)
your opinion is nothing but your point of view — it is not necessarily true — your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dreams (43)
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, you feel good, you feel happy and at peace (44)
be impeccable with your word (44)
use the word to break all those teeny, tiny agreements that make you suffer (45)
Chapter 3: The Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally
as soon as you agree, the poison goes through you — personal importance or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about ‘me’ (48)
when you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts (50)
nothing personal because everybody is dealing with themselves — everyone will have their own opinion according to their belief system (51)
when you love everything around you, you are loving yourself — because you like the way you are, because you are content with you, because you are happy with your life (53)
the mind sees with the eyes and perceives without the eyes — the mind lives in more than one direction (54)
there are conflicting agreements that go against other agreements and on and on until it becomes a big war in the mind — the mitote (lots of voices) is the reason humans hardly know what they want, how they want it, or when they want it — they don’t agree with themselves because there are parts of the mind that want one thing, and other parts that want exactly the opposite (56)
humans are addicted to suffering at different levels age to different degrees, age we support each other in maintaining these addictions (57)
if you need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others — their addiction to suffering will is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day (57)
you will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices (58)
as you make a habit of kit taking anything personally, you won’t need to place your trust in what others do or say — only need to trust yourself to make responsible choices (60)
Chapter 4: The Third Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions
the problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth (63)
all sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally (64)
it is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suffering (65)
we only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear, we don’t perceive things the way they are — have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality (65)
making assumptions in relationships leads to a lot of fights, a lot of difficulties, a lot of misunderstanding with people we supposedly love (67)
we make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions (68)
we make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do — we assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse (69)
because we think everyone else will judge us, victimize us, abuse us, and blame us as we do ourselves, we already rejected ourselves (69)
we also make assumptions about ourselves — this creates inner conflict — need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want (69)
often when you go into a relationship with someone you like, you have to justify why you like that person — you only see what you want to see and you deny there are things you don’t like about that person (70)
your love will not change anybody — if others change, it’s because they want to change, not because you can change them (70)
real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them — if we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them (70)
find someone whom you don’t have to change at all — that person must love you just the way you are (71)
we have to be what we are, so we don’t have to present a false image (71)
find your voice to ask for what you want — everybody has the right to tell you yes or no, but you have the right to ask (72)
with clear communication, all your relationships will change — everything becomes clear — this is what I want and this is what you want (73)
when you transform your whole dream, magic just happens in your life — what you need comes to you easily because spirit moves freely through you — mastery of intent, mastery of the spirit, mastery of love, mastery of gratitude and mastery of life (74)
Chapter 5: The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best
your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next — everything is alive and changing all the time — your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good (76)
if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself — if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment (77)
doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you’re expecting a reward — most people do exactly the opposite; they only take action when they expect a reward, and they don’t enjoy the action (79)
doing your best really doesn’t feel like work because you enjoy whatever you are doing (81)
expressing what you are is taking action — you can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action (82)
letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now (84)
we don’t need to know or prove anything, just to be, to take a risk and enjoy your life, us all that matters (84)
be tough with yourself — stand up and make the agreement again; today I will be impeccable with my word, I will not take anything personally, I will not make any assumptions, and I am going to do my best (90)
Chapter 6: The Toltec Path to Freedom: Breaking Old Agreements
true freedom has to do with the human spirit — it is the freedom to be who we really are — who stops us from being free? ourselves (94)
if we observe humans who are two years old, we find that most of the time these humans have a big smile on their face and they’re having fun — they are exploring the world — they live in the present moment (95)
but there is something that changes all that: we call them responsibilities (97)
the freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves — but if we look at our lives we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others, rather than living our lives to please ourselves (98)
we need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free (98)
your life is the manifestation of your dream — it is an art and you can change your life anytime if you aren’t enjoying the dream (99)
no leaders and no followers — where you have your own truth and live your own truth (100)
mastery of awareness: aware of who you really are, with all the possibilities (100)
mastery of transformation: how to change and how to be free of domestication (100)
mastery of intent: transformation of energy, it is the one living being that seamlessly encompasses all energy = unconditional love = mastery of love (100)
just like hell, heaven is a place that exists within our mind — it is a place of joy, a place where we are happy, where we are free to love and to be who we really are — we can reach heaven while we are alive; we don’t have to wait until we die (104)
the art of transformation: the dream of the second attention
the dream you are living now is the result of the outside dream hooking your attention and feeding you all your beliefs — this process is the dream of the first attention; it was how your attention was used for the first time to create the first dream of your life (105)
one way to change your beliefs is to focus your attention on all those agreements and beliefs, and change the agreements with yourself — you are using your attention for the second time creating the dream of the second attention or the new dream (106)
now it’s up to you to chose what to believe and what not to believe — you can choose to believe in anything, and that includes believing in yourself (106)
you have to know which agreements you want to change before you can change them — develop the awareness of all self-limiting, fear based beliefs that make you unhappy (107)
for every agreement you break that makes you suffer, you will need to replace it with a new agreement that makes you happy — this will keep the old agreement from coming back (109)
we need the same amount of power to change an agreement — we cannot change an agreement with less power than we used to make the agreement, and almost all our personal power is invested in keeping the agreements we have with ourselves — that’s because our agreements are actually like a strong addiction (110)
The Discipline of the Warrior: Controlling Your Own Behaviour
every day we awake with a certain amount of mental, emotional, and physical energy that we spend throughout the day — if we allow our emotions to deplete our energy, we have no energy to change our lives or to give to others (111)
every human has an emotional body completely covered with infected wounds — each wound is infected with emotional poison; the poison of all the emotions that makes us suffer, such as hate, anger, envy, and sadness — so sounded that we describe it as normal (113)
if we can see our state of mind as a disease, we find there is a cure — we don’t have to suffer any longer (114)
forgiveness is the only way to heal — we can choose to forgive because we feel compassion for ourselves (114)
you will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction (115)
discipline to be ourselves, no matter what — control over one’s own emotions, control over one’s own self (117)
refrain vs repress — repress is when they are afraid to say what they want or say vs refrain is to hold emotions and to express them in the right moment, not before, not later — have complete control of their emotions and therefore over their own behaviour (117)
The Initiation of The Dead: Embracing The Angel of Death
take death itself as our teacher — if we had one week to live, what are we going to do? Suffer or use every moment to be happy and really enjoy (118)
I am awake, I see the sun and I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone because I am still alive (119)
what makes me happy now is to let you know how much I love you (120)
the angel of death comes to us and says “you see everything that exists here us mine, it is not yours, your house, your spouse, your children, your car, your career, your money — everything is mine and I can take it away when it want to, but for now you can use it” (121)
if we surrender to the angel of death we will be happy forever and ever — because death takes the past away in order to make it possible for life to continue (122)
Chapter 7: The New Dream: Heaven on Earth
I want you to forget everything you have learned in your whole life — this is the beginning of a new understanding, a new dream (123)
just use your imagination and a tremendous thing will happen — imagine that you have the ability to see the world with different eyes, whenever you choose — each time you open your eyes, you see the world around you in a different way (124)
you will perceive live from everything around you — this is the state of bliss (124)
a life where you don’t need to justify your existence and you are free to be ego you really are (124)
imagine that you have permission to be happy and to really enjoy your life (125)
imagine living your life without fear if expressing your dreams — you know what you want, what you don’t want, and when you want it — you are free to change your life the way you really want to (125)
imagine living without the fear of loving and not being loved — you are no longer afraid to be rejected, and you don’t have the need to be accepted (126)
only love has the ability to put you in that state of bliss — being in bliss is like being in love — being in love is like being in bliss; you are floating in the clouds — you are perceiving love wherever you go (127)
you can be loving all the time — this is your choice (128)
the only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer — sane with happy; only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy (129)