The Four Agreements , by Miguel Ruiz, is one of my bedside books because thanks to reading it I have been able to better understand certain behaviours (both my own and those of others), and this knowledge has helped me to gain much more self-confidence and peace of mind.

I don’t want to disembowel you in the book; what I do want is to make you want to read it, and for that I am going to highlight the main points that this wonderful book deals with .

Four commitments to grow up

In summary, the four agreements that give name to this work are the following.

1. Be impeccable with your words

Along the lines of this work, the author explains to us the power that words really have : both those we say to others, and those we receive and those we silently dedicate to ourselves.

Words have an impact on us. What we tell ourselves we are is what makes us who we really are, not the other way around. That is why we must be very careful about how we treat ourselves and what we sincerely think of ourselves.

“Say only what you mean,” recommends Don Miguel Ruiz. Avoid saying things you don’t mean just because you fit in with a group , because it seems “normal”. Also, don’t speak for the sake of speaking, because as I explained earlier, words have a real impact on others and what may mean nothing to one person may have a lot of value to another, both in a positive sense and in the opposite.

2. Don’t take anything personally

This section of the book is revealing, since it tells us how what others say and think about us only defines them , since “what others say and do is a projection of their own reality”.

Remember if you’ve ever heard what others thought of you. It hurts to be criticized, we are affected by the opinion that others have about us, but we must be aware that what others think of us is not the reality of who we are, because their opinions are distorted by their own reality , their perspective and their judgment.

Understanding this can be somewhat simple, but putting it into practice requires a lot of daily effort, and a lot of patience. Like any healthy habit we want to adopt, we must be patient and consistent until we see results.

Perhaps there will come a day when we don’t care about other people’s opinions, that day is when we will be truly free, masters of ourselves and able to be who we really are.

3. Don’t make assumptions.

As the author says, “find the courage to ask and express what you really want”.

How many times have you drawn your own conclusions without even asking? How many times have you been misunderstood, and by not clarifying things you have created misunderstandings? As easy as it is to ask questions to clarify a matter, we try to draw our own conclusions in a hurry and they are usually dire.

Why is it that when a friend stops calling us, we tend to think that he is no longer interested in us or has forgotten about us? What if he is under a lot of stress at work and has “forgotten” even his mother? If we ask, we get answers, and these are usually much closer to reality than our own conclusions.

“We tend to make assumptions about everything. The problem is that, in doing so, we believe that what we assume is true. We’d swear it’s real. We make assumptions about what others do or think. That’s why whenever we make assumptions, we’re asking for trouble.

On the other hand, this section of the book also explains the importance of saying what we think , of not keeping our feelings to ourselves, of not being afraid to express ourselves.
How many relationships have not happened because of the fear of rejection? Think even of the things you have stopped saying for fear of being laughed at, not knowing how to explain yourself well, or even out of shame.

4. Always do your best.

The most one can do will always depend on the circumstances, for one cannot do the same thing on a day when one wakes up with energy as one does when one has the flu. Nor can we do the same at the end of the day when we are mentally exhausted as we are when we have just woken up; it even depends on our state of mind. But what Miguel Ruiz explains to us is that we should always do the maximum we can, understanding our circumstances and adapting to them, but the maximum we can in each case.

When you do your best you avoid regrets. You know that thing about being involved? Well, yes, that’s what’s important, but knowing that you did your best, that you gave everything you had to give, because thanks to that you’ll avoid judging yourself and even mistreating yourself with phrases like “I’m a failure”, “I should have tried harder”, “I’m lazy”…

And these are, in short, the four agreements that define this book . It is a book that in my opinion we should all read, because it learns a lot about human behavior and goes deeper into the way we act that by general law people learn.