The Four Agreements

I have an addiction to reading. I spend a ton of money on Amazon Prime to satisfy this addiction. Maybe a better word for it is habit. It’s something I’ve created over the past several years, and it has completely transformed my life. I’ve nearly replaced watching TV with reading good books.

On the topic of good books, I want to share with you one of my all-time favorites, and I’ve blogged about this before, but let me share with you again. The book is called The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz.

This book was first recommended to me about ten years ago by my friend and life coach, Dr. Tom Hill, and I’m so glad he recommended it as I now recommend it to my friends and my coaching clients.

In this book, The Four Agreements, the author writes about four simple principles that can help shape a life of peace, true happiness, and contentment. Those are some pretty big things to achieve, right?

A life of peace, and true happiness, and contentment sounds great to me.

I find that when I follow these simple yet profound philosophies, I’m a better human being. I’m somehow able to live a better life, and to see more beauty in the life all around me.

Here are Miguel’s four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean, and don’t use your words to speak negatively against yourself or anyone else. Don’t gossip, ever.

2. Don’t take things personally. Nothing that other people do is ever about you anyway. What other people say or do is a projection of their own reality, not yours. When you’re free from the opinion of other people, you’re free from needless suffering and anxiety.

3. Don’t make assumptions. You simply don’t know what other people are going through in their lives, so you shouldn’t assume things, which, by the way, often times are completely wrong.

4. Always do your best. Don’t do more than your best, because if you do, you’ll burn out. Don’t do less than your best, because if you do that, you’re lazy. Just simply do your best.

Think about it for a second.

If in every interaction with another person, you are impeccable with the words coming out of your mouth, you don’t take things personally that other people say or do, you don’t make assumptions about other people, and you always do your best? What more could you ask?

If you finish each day following each of these simple rules, these agreements for how to live your life, you’re doing the best you possibly could. This will not only lead to huge happiness, but also success in your life, and also allow you to live a life completely free of regret.

I think that this book is amazing, and I think the author was a genius in writing it. I challenge each of you to make these four agreements the basic rule book by how you live your life. If you do, I predict you’ll like the way that your life unfolds as a result.