review by Sam Suska
"The Four Agreements" is by Don Miguel Ruiz
My project this afternoon was to read, consider and begin applying the principles of this book. However, I decided to take my own personal approach and apply my own thoughtfulness to this meaningful book. i highly recommend that you sit down and take a few hours to read this book. but if you don't believe you have the time (you do) or are simply unwilling (and that's OK) then you can read my interpretation of this little book.
words can lift spirits or they can cause deep wounds. we have to be thoughtful and considerate of how our words affect others. think of words as a direct way that we can express our intentions.
first, we can all agree that taking our time to consider our words is a useful strategy. becoming mindful with our words starts with investigating how our intentions create and express themselves as words. these intentions are often times the result of feelings. these feelings may not always be so apparent to us, but with patience we can gather insight on these.
the potentially powerful feelings are formed by thoughts and perceptions we have of ourselves and the world around us. our thoughts and perceptions are most powerfully influenced by the outlook we have and the thought process we employ.
so, outlook + thought process>perceptions>thoughts>feelings>intentions.....which are then expressed by our words.
there is no exact, fail-proof strategy to use; but simple awareness can play a great role.so, we have to be aware that our approach to life in general is reflected by our words. if we approach life with a positive attitude complete with patience and a thought process like rational-thinking we can have a profound effect on our words. these words need a purpose; helpfulness, love, care and truth are inarguably good intentions and goals in life which can become our mission statement or purpose in life.
we don't need extreme or dramatic events for us to express ourselves in a meaningful manner. nearly all of our words can have a meaningfulness to them, it just takes a mindful 'life approach'. we can start right now by employing a 'life approach' aimed to help others with loving, care-giving truthful intentions that are expressed with our words
smile right now, because this is not as difficult as it seems.
we are all capable of this, especially you. you have done so much good for others with so many helpful intentions thus far, and you have yet to employ this type of semi-organized approach to your life. what i'm saying is that you are capable of so much without using a strategy, you may be dangerously loving, caring and successful with a strategy!
this strategy is not written in stone, just employ it slowly into your life and follow the basic principles as much as possible.
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
we all have interactions with people, however short or meaningless they appear to be, that are stressful, challenging and leave us feeling upset in some way. we are not the cause of these problems in any way! what other people say and do is just their own way to express and project themselves, however misguided or unguided these may be.
we should not internalize anything happens to us because we are only in control of ourselves and nothing else and nobody else. when we truly buy into the realization that the world does not revolve around us we can become immune to the opinions and actions of other people. i am not responsible for your actions and you are not responsible for mine
trust is an important characteristic, if we trust a person their words generally have more weight with us. but this is a misconception, when in reality our confidence and trust is with ourselves because we know we are making the responsible choice in listening to this other person; you see the actual trust is that we made a good decision in selecting the people we surround ourselves with.
so, we need to become immune to others and this starts by surrounding ourselves with those we trust while becoming comfortable that we are only in control of ourselves. what others do and say is a reflection of who they are on the inside and how well they have adjusted to society and the problems they encounter.
i will never be a victim and neither will you when we both truly understand that nothing others do is because of us. their actions, their words are a projection of themselves and they need to deal with that. we cannot invest our precious time and energy into dealing with what others say and do to us; we are capable of using that for much more meaningful stuff like giving love to others!
love is something deep and beyond our conscious thought formed by our intuition and lying within our heart. we can only follow our intuition and express what's in our heart when we no longer take what others say and do personally. there is no struggle when we don't take anything personally; we are finally able to say "i love you" without fear because we followed our intuition and expressed our heart!
3. Don't Make Assumptions
uncertainty and fear of the unknown are two of the most potentially damaging feelings we can experience. uncertainty and fear manifest in our mind, create over-thinking and cause us to worry . however, these feelings result from assumptions we so readily, easily and often time unknowingly make.
we generally assume that other people are judging us, misunderstanding us or even know exactly what we think. yes, we can assume that another person feels just like us or completely different from how we feel or we can even assume they think we are crazy for our feelings. but we don't know this!
we have to communicate with other to know how they feel, avoid misunderstandings and prevent fear and uncertainty. the only way to know something about someone is to communicate with them. we can do this by asking broad questions, then indirect questions and when they appear to have a focused thought process we have to ask this person direct questions. and when we have already instituted the previous two agreements, we are ready, willing and able to properly reflect and respond to the answers, whatever they may be.
when we willingly communicate with others, don't take what they say personally and properly/mindfully express ourselves we will cease to make assumptions and be free of worry, fear and overall anxiety.
4. Always Do Your Best
we begin the process of making these 4 agreements by slowly instituting the previous three into our daily lives, but we will truly take a powerful step over creating our reality by committing to always doing our best. when we make the commitment to do our best all four of the agreements will become habits and we will desire and need this profoundly thoughtful way of living.
our best is subjective, it is so subjective that it changes from moment to moment. what was our best at midnight will not be our best at mid-afternoon; in fact no two moments are ever the exact same. so we have nothing to compare our effort to because there is no other moment in time like right now. this prevents us from casting judgment on ourselves and creating shame and guilt, which have the potential to paralyze us and damage ourselves mentally and physically.
the most important thing here is not to try too hard. we must try appropriately, and this knowledge lies within us, when we get in touch with our intuition we can get a good idea of just how much energy we can expend in making the four agreements and committing to them.
there will be challenges, there will be times we forget the four agreements and there will even be times we willingly throw them out the door. all we have to do at these moments is step up, brush ourselves off, be honest with ourselves and do our best. we either do the four agreements or we do not; it is that black and white.
when we do the four agreements we are allowed to perform differently at all times, because our best is always changing from time to time. when we do the four agreements we are expecting things to constantly be changing in us and around us; we grasp and appreciate the dynamic quality, the ever-changing quality that life contains. life is precious and when we are always doing our best we are giving back to the higher power that created us and enables the plentiful, precious world around us.
we can and will give ourselves loving care and proper, healthy attention when we make the four agreements. as we keep this up we will grow, learn life lessons and be in a better situation with better skills to cope with any issues and give help and love to others. after all, it is hard to argue with making helping other people a life goal.
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