The most important agreements are the ones you make with yourself: how you see yourself, what you allow, and the relationships you choose. These shape your day-to-day experience. Ruiz proposes four new agreements to help break free from society’s dream. Change takes time, courage, and the desire to live life on your own terms.
We often hear: “I am not responsible for how you react to what I’ve said; I’m only responsible for saying it.” Or: “How you respond is how you give power to what someone else has done or said.” Your reaction is your decision. This idea sits at the heart of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, a book I’ve now read twice, and it won’t be the last. Each time, it teaches me something new.
The book opens by explaining how human beings are “domesticated”, trained to accept belief systems, rules, and expectations from birth. Ruiz calls this collective worldview “the planet’s dream”. It includes religion, morality, culture, and our ideas of right and wrong.
In other words, we live according to a dream. But whose dream are we dreaming? Whose life are we living?
“The outside dream has so many rules,” Ruiz writes, “that when a new human is born, we hook the child’s attention and introduce these rules into his or her mind. The outside dream uses Mom and Dad, the schools, and religion to teach us how to dream.”
The domestication process becomes so ingrained that even as adults, we continue to police ourselves, repeating the same system of punishment and reward we experienced growing up, judging ourselves for doing what’s “right” or “wrong.”
Ruiz believes each of us has a personal dream, different from society’s. Yet, it often grows out of fear.
“We have learnt to live trying to satisfy other people’s demands… because of the fear of not being accepted or being good enough for someone else.”
These are the agreements we’ve made with the world around us.
The most important agreements are the ones you make with yourself. How you see yourself. What you allow. The relationships you choose. They shape your day-to-day experience. Ruiz proposes four new agreements to help break free from society’s dream. Change takes time, courage, and the desire to live life on your terms.
The first agreement: Be impeccable with your word. Like a sword with two edges, your words can heal or harm. They shape how you see yourself and how others experience you. Be kind with your words. Say what you mean. Be responsible for what you say.
“Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.” Ruiz suggests that how much you love and value yourself is directly connected to the integrity of your word.
The second agreement: Don’t take anything personally. It’s rarely about you. People act from their own beliefs, wounds, or fears. This one has helped me the most. When I start to overthink someone’s actions toward me, I come back to this.
Still, I’ve learnt that sometimes what we take personally isn’t just ego; it’s a sign that a boundary has been crossed. The key, I think, is knowing when to reflect and when to protect.
“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally... You will only need to trust yourself to make responsible choices.”
The third agreement: Don’t make assumptions. Asking questions that matter takes courage. It needs you to be vulnerable. It leaves you open about your inner thoughts, so you assume you'll get answers to soothe your curiosity. “The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real.”
To break free, ask questions. And do it again because these assumptions are the poison to many relationships. They are the primary cause of all the misunderstandings.
The fourth agreement: Do your best. This has been my mantra since I first read the book in 2021. “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less.” Your best will look different each day, but the point is to keep showing up. “When you don’t do your best, you are denying yourself the right to be you.”
These agreements sound simple, but living them is hard. They challenge what we’ve been taught. We think everything is about us. We avoid asking questions because we see vulnerability as a weakness. We speak carelessly to ourselves and others because we're unaware of the impact.
Go into this book with an open mind. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. That’s what reading is for. You test ideas. You stretch your worldview.
But one thing is clear: life is too fragile to live in fear. Too short to keep hiding how you feel or who you are. Say the things that matter. Tell people you love them. “I may die tomorrow, or you may die tomorrow. What makes me happy now is to let you know how much I love you.”
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Jane Shussa is a digital communication specialist who loves books, coffee, nature, and travel. She can be reached at [email protected].
