Book Review: The Four Agreements

Introduction

This book is magnificent for managing stress and personal growth. Though the book is written in easy language, but involves complicated themes which would help people bring some big changes to their lives. Don Miguel has Ruiz's has given 4 codes to live life. Some of the codes can be too extreme if taken literally and can cause great problems. Miguel's four agreements are:

Be impeccable with your word

Don't take anything seriously

Don't make assumptions

Always do your best

Discussion

Let us look at each of these and understand them:

Be Impeccable With Your Word

The broad scope of this “agreement” is to speak with integrity i.e. say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself. These can be: putting ourselves down, lies, empty promises, gossiping about others, or putting others down because you disagree with their opinions or thoughts. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. Many of us do not realize this power of words and by speaking carelessly and aggressively we harm others more than we imagine and by harming others, we hurt ourselves. The story of the little girl was very touching. Our actions and words should compliment each other in order to be impeccable with our words. Ruiz says that our perception about others just reflection of our personalities. By being impeccable with words we mean the proper use of energy in the direction of love and truth for you.

Don't take anything seriously

This point discusses with us the fact that how a person behaves with others is a reflection of his own reality. We should keep in mind that whenever someone gives us an opinion it's not necessarily factual every time, because each person has its own set of criteria for evaluating others and making decisions. People see the world from their own eyes, and everyone has its own view about this world.

This is a very healthy advice for making one feel better but there's a twist in it. On one hand every person has its own filters but on the other hand if we constantly turn our ahead against what is being said, we will badly damage our ability measure our own negative patterns, we won't be able to identify our mistakes and rectify it. As Scott Peck stated in his book The Road Less Traveled, “The problem of distinguishing what we ...