"The Four Agreements": A Guide to Personal Liberation

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 behaviors (both mine and those of others). others), and this knowledge has helped me gain much more self-confidence and much tranquillity.

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

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Four commitments to mature

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

1. Be impeccable with your words

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

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

“Say only what you want to say”, recommends Don Miguel Ruiz. Avoid saying things you don't mean just to fit in with a groupfor looking "normal". Also, don't just talk, because as I explained before, words have a real impact on others and what they do. for one it may not mean anything, for another it can have a lot of value, both in a positive sense and in the opposite.

2. Don't take anything personally

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

Remember if you have ever found out what others thought of you. Perhaps it has made you feel bad, you have felt offended or offended... It hurts to be criticized, it affects us opinion that others have about us, but we must be aware that what others think of us one it is not the reality of who we are, because their opinions are distorted by their own reality, your perspective and your judgment.

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

Perhaps there will come a day when the opinions of others do not matter to us, that day is when we will be truly free, masters of ourselves and capable of being who we really are.

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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 they misunderstood you, and by not clarifying things, misunderstandings have been created? With how easy it is to ask to clarify a matter, we insist on drawing our own conclusions hastily and, in general, they tend to be disastrous.

Why, when a friend stops calling us, do we tend to think that he is no longer interested in us or that he has forgotten about us? What if he is suffering a lot of stress at work and has even “forgotten” 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, by doing so, we believe that what we assume is true. We would swear it's real. We make assumptions about what others do or think. [...] This is why whenever we make assumptions, we are asking for trouble.”

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

4. Always do the best you can.

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

When one does the most he can avoid regretting. Do you know that the important thing is to participate? Well yes, that is the important thing, but knowing that you did the best you could, that you gave everything that was in your power to give, well thanks to By doing this you will avoid judging yourself and even mistreating yourself with phrases such as "I am a failure", "I should have tried harder", "I am a lazy"...

And these are, in a nutshell, the four agreements that define this book.. It is a book that in my opinion we should all read, because you learn a lot about human behavior and delves into the way of acting that by general law people learn.