Don Miguel Ruiz is a Mexican author who shares with us ancient Toltec wisdom that has been passed down for generations. The Toltec were a group of people in Mexico that existed during the Mesoamerican time period. They were known as “women and men of knowledge,” and they had a huge impact on the Aztecs.
Ruiz has a whole line of books called “Toltec Wisdom Books,” that includes The Four Agreements, The Voice of Knowledge, The Mastery of Self, and The Mastery Of Love (which I’m working on now!).
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz was the very first book I read for my Yoga Teacher Training. However, the main lessons that it teaches can really be applied to anyone’s life!
I’ll be honest – this book was a little too “woo-woo” for me at first. (This is the term my mom coined for all the things I began talking about during my yoga journey, like chakras, mantras, crystals, etc. that were a little out there). Ruiz says the whole world is an illusion called “the Dream,” which is basically just hell. And he says that all of us are living with our minds in a fog called a “mitote” that clouds you from seeing who you really are.
But don’t let the woo-woo stuff put you off! If you can look past it (or treat it just as simple metaphor), Ruiz’s writing has some great meaning and teaches some really important lessons.
The “four agreements” are basically agreements that we are supposed to make with ourselves in order to live better lives.
All of the agreements are interconnected, and Ruiz says that they will bring us happiness and allow us to be free from the excess suffering we often experience when we do not follow them. They allow us to transcend the level of hell that he believes most humans live in.
1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
We all know the power of words. We’ve heard the phrase: “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Words have the power to hurt and to heal, to express love or express hate.
“the word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you” (Ruiz, 26).
Being impeccable with your word involves saying what you really mean, and taking responsibility for what you say.
On a very literally note, the main thing this means is: don’t lie. Lying is bad. We all learned that when we were back in diapers. But being impeccable with your word goes beyond just simply not telling the truth.
One important subcategory of this is gossip. One thing I’ve learned in my 21 years of life is that gossip isn’t just an epidemic in high schools – it’s EVERYWHERE! In workplaces, within families, in small towns and cities alike.
Ruiz uses an analogy comparing the human mind to a computer, and gossip to a computer virus. When a virus attacks your computer, it is unexpected and usually you aren’t aware of it until it is too late. It starts making everything act wacky, or perhaps your computer stops functioning altogether.
When it comes to gossip, rumors can infiltrate your mind and make you start thinking differently about people. Maybe you’re interested in someone based on what you know of them, but then someone tells you that that person is a jerk, suddenly you’re uninterested just because of that one thing that you heard, which might not even be true. You’d have to get to know the person to find out for yourself.
This global epidemic of only being able to process information through a virus-riddled mind leads to the “mitote” or brain fog that Ruiz believes we all live in.
Once our minds are tangled up this virus, it can also affect our self-talk. Have you ever caught yourself saying something along the lines of: “I look so ugly. I’m way too fat. I can’t do this. I’m not smart enough. etc.?” That’s called negative self-talk.
When you say bad things to yourself about yourself, you begin to believe them, even if they aren’t true. Words are powerful, remember? Just as you shouldn’t say bad things about other people, you shouldn’t say bad things about yourself.
“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. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace” (Ruiz, 44).
Molly’s take: Just to put my two cents in here – this agreement (well, all of them really) may feel impossible or unattainable. It’s hard to imagine never lying (I mean, we all know that sometimes a white lie seems necessary to get out of a hairy situation) but the point is that we have to try.
Take small steps to become more impeccable with your word. Try to catch yourself when you start gossiping or telling a lie. It’s a slow process, but if we can learn to catch ourselves before we say something we don’t mean, we’ll feel much better. You don’t want to be sitting on a throne of lies, do you?
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
This is my favorite agreement, hands down.
The idea is that anything anyone says or does to you should not be taken personally. Those things are a reflection of the other person, NOT of you.
Let’s go back to the first agreement for a second: when people are not impeccable with their word (they gossip about you or lie to you), you should not take it personally. It has nothing to do with you. You may feel like they are attacking you because there is something wrong with you. But it is just the opposite. The problem is with them.
“Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they live in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world , and we try to impose our world on their world” (Ruiz, 48).
When someone lies to you, insults you, is rude to you – it really doesn’t have to do with who you are, but who they are. People may lie to you because they are afraid to tell the truth. They may attack you because they themselves are insecure.
People say and do mean things to others because they are acting out of their own beliefs (including their own negative self-talk). It’s the old “the bully is only mean to you because he feels bad about himself” speech. We all got it as kids. Why don’t we remember it as adults?
“Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but about them” (Ruiz, 51).
Molly’s take: I especially use this agreement when someone is rude to me, for example if someone flips me off while driving or yells at me for not putting the pedal to the metal to go through a yellow light. I’ve been known to say: “I feel bad for that person because they have nothing better to do than get mad at me for something so mundane. Their life must really suck.”
I don’t blame myself and say “oh, maybe I should have tried to make it through that light,” because I know that it wasn’t my fault the person is mad. It is theirs because they are in such a rush and they are not acting mindfully.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Because you know what happens when you ASSUME? You make an ASS out of U and ME!
No, but really, Ruiz tells us not to make assumptions about anything, because we tend to do so and then believe those assumptions to be truth. But they aren’t! Especially with this recent election, we have seen how everyone has beliefs that they think are the right ones. Everyone thinks that they know the truth. The real right thing.
Assumptions are things we make up in our imaginations. We don’t know how something works, so we create our own set of beliefs about it, and assume them to be truth. But they aren’t.
“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. This is the biggest assumption that humans make” (Ruiz, 69).
This is the absolute most dangerous assumption, because obviously not everyone thinks in the same way. We know that there are different styles of learning (some people are visual, some are verbal, etc.), people practice different religions, and people grow up in vastly different cultures with their own sets of values. All of these things make up the way a person thinks, and everyone has a slightly different combination of these things.
So how do we stop making assumptions?
Ask questions! Get clarification! Learn as much as you can about others! Instead of assuming you know how someone is thinking or feeling, try communicating with them.
Molly’s take: Having gone to Assumption College (no, really!) I’ve gotten a lot of jokes about making assumptions. But it really is a dangerous game. When we assume we know what others are thinking or feeling, we run the risk of speaking or acting in a way that is not in accordance with the truth. This will often lead to people taking things personally.
Here’s a simple, hypothetical example of the danger of making an assumption:
I’m at the grocery store and the old lady in front of my doesn’t hold the door open, effectively letting it slam in my face. I get mad and take it personally because I assume she saw me behind her, and my own set of beliefs tells me that it is rude not to hold the door open. I go and yell at her for not holding the door, and she tells me she is legally blind. OOPS. See that? I assumed she had seen me and was therefore being rude, so I got personally offended, when really my assumption was incorrect and the woman was not being rude.
4. Always Do Your Best
This is really what I was getting at in my take on agreement number one. No one is perfect. No one will ever be able to follow these four agreements to a T. They’re hard!
What matters is that we do our best to follow them, because as we practice them, we get better at them!
“Your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will be not as good. When you wake up in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy, or upset, angry, or jealous. In your everyday moods, your best can change from one moment to another, from one hour to the next, from one day to another. Your best will also change over time” (Ruiz, 76).
Don’t outdo yourself – then you’ll be depleted and unable to do your best in the future (hello self-care!), but also don’t underperform, because then you won’t be happy with the result.
Molly’s take: I completely believe in doing your best. I believe that if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right. I take great pride in everything I do and create, and I don’t like to half ass things. But I love how Ruiz pointed out that our “best” isn’t concrete. It is ever-changing, so we shouldn’t be hard on ourselves if we’re killing it one day and feel like we’re not doing as well the next.
Try incorporating these agreements into your life and watch how it affects you. I think they will allow you to be much more mindful and happy. They are all connected and, as I mentioned, “don’t take anything personally” has been a game changer for me, personally.
There is a great cheat sheet that you can print out like a poster to keep at your desk, on your fridge, or by your bed so you can read the agreements when you wake up or before you go to sleep. They are really great reminders!
Here is the cheat sheet:
And here is a link to it so you can print it out for yourself: Four Agreements
