The Four Agreements - book discussion

bored

not bitter but bored
My favourite book is The Four Agreements. It is by Don Miguel Ruiz.

The book outlines four agreements that you make with yourself. If you can live by these you will find a lot of peace in the things that happen to you and the things that have happened to you.

I use them as filters for all situations and I check to see if I broke any of the four. If I didn't then I know I cannot feel responsible or negative about any situation.

Here they are in no particular order:

Take nothing personal
Make no assumptions
Be impeccable with your word
Always do your best

Now let me talk about what they mean to me.

Take nothing personal:

It's not about you. It's about the other person. If someone says you're a fat loser that is about them. It was something that their life and experiences led them to have such a thought manifest in their own mind and something led them to say those words out loud. It isn't about you. The same holds true if someone says, "Wow, you are beautiful/gorgeous/hot." That's not about you either. Only you get to decide how you feel about yourself.

Make no assumptions:

People are terrible at this one. People are always making assumptions about what other people mean or what other people will do or how they will react when the truth is we don't know. Most of these assumptions are founded in fear. When you are constantly making assumptions you are living in fear. If you allow assumptions to control you then you will suffer.

Be impeccable with your word:

This one is pretty self-explanatory but to expand on it a little bit I'd like to say that it not only has to do with the promises you make to others but also to the promises you make to yourself. Additionally, being impeccable with your word includes not exaggerating stories or telling lies so that people will like you. If you mean the things you say you will not have to retract, backtrack or correct yourself. Speak in very concise language that is not ambiguous. Being able to say, "I said I would do X and I did X" will prevent you from feeling guilty about your actions.

Always do your best:

Again, this one is self-explanatory but the power of it is not so obvious. If you always do your best and a situation turns out in a way that you find unfavourable you ask yourself if you did your best. If you did, then there was nothing else you could have done and you don't have to have regrets. If you realize you could have done better then you work at not breaking this agreement in the future.

If you make and keep all four of these agreements you will be able to ask yourself 4 simple questions. Did I take anything personally? Did I make any assumptions? Was I impeccable with my word? Did I do my best?

If you can say that you make and kept all four agreements with yourself then you can be at peace with the outcome. You don't have to like it but you will be sure that there was nothing else you could have done.

Keeping these agreements is hard and if you choose to make them with yourself you will fail. Over time you will fail less and less as you see the results of breaking them. No one will ever achieve perfection but the closer you come to that mark the happier you will be.
 
There is the argument that all people ever do is their best in any given situation. However it turns out. To be able to feel a lack of regret is a liberation to those with good intention. But a way of absolving self from responsibility for the self-absorbed.
There is learning to be had from regret in some instances.

Forgive me for going off-topic, but if there is something Morrissey is criticised for it is not explaining or apologising. Interesting that some see this as a strength, others as a weakness.

I see from Wiki that other books by the author touch on more spiritual subjects. Do you find anything of further interest in these? I've not read any, but am curious..
 
There is the argument that all people ever do is their best in any given situation. However it turns out. To be able to feel a lack of regret is a liberation to those with good intention. But a way of absolving self from responsibility for the self-absorbed.
There is learning to be had from regret in some instances.

Forgive me for going off-topic, but if there is something Morrissey is criticised for it is not explaining or apologising. Interesting that some see this as a strength, others as a weakness.

I see from Wiki that other books by the author touch on more spiritual subjects. Do you find anything of further interest in these? I've not read any, but am curious..

We don't always do our best.

Whether it's going out in sweat pants or slacking off on an assignment and waiting until the last minute there are times where we could have done better.

There are many times that there are no repercussions to these things but sometimes there are.

The goal is to minimize the number of times that we face these repercussions. In our failures, as you mentioned, we do learn and as I said above, we will never reach perfection on this.

By making the agreement with yourself and trying to hold yourself to a higher standard you will find that you are more likely to suck it up and take the extra time to do better than you were going to do if you weren't holding yourself accountable.

As far as the spiritual side of things, yes, it is in there but I have my own form of spirituality. I believe our spirituality is nothing more than our purpose in life. Some people find that in serving God. Some find it in charity. Some find it in loving, providing for and protecting their family. Some find it in self-fulfillment.

Beyond the four agreements there are a lot of metaphors that the author uses and he has concepts about always doing things from the standpoint of love and that love is the opposite of fear.

The book does not require you to be "spiritual" or religious to help you deal with the things that happen.

There was a comment that this is a bunch of new age crap. Some people might call it that, such as the book store but I view this book as self-help/personal growth.

The hardest part about this book is that without someone else to point out when you are breaking the agreements the learning curve is slow or even nil. You read it and forget it. It's better to read this book with friends and call each other out when they are breaking an agreement.
 
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