The world is full of misery and suffering. We are hard on each other, but even harder on ourselves. Too many of us are unfulfilled, unhappy, joyless.
Why?
The framework of our world has been handed down to us. We were trained just like dogs. We learned how to behave, what is acceptable and not, what to believe, what’s right and wrong. None of this was taught to us by our choice. We learned a language that was not our choice. We didn’t even choose our own names. This process is called “the domestication of humans.”
We then use this belief system (that we never chose) to criticize ourselves and others. No wonder we feel powerlessly unhappy at times!
Everything we accept as “the way it is” is an agreement. But too many of these agreements hurt ourselves and others. For example, think of the teenager who starves herself to fit in. Think of someone who stays in an unhappy relationship because it’s all they know.
If we want a life of joy, we must break these harmful agreements that promote suffering and failure. But how? We feel powerless because creating and keeping all these negative agreements has sucked our personal power.
The answer is that we must change the agreements.
There are four powerful agreements that will bring back our personal power and help us break the dangerous cycle we’re in. It won’t be easy, and we’ll need a strong will to make these new agreements, but when we succeed we will transform our lives.
The First Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word
Words have the power to create and the power to destroy. When you are “impeccable with your word,” you:
Following this agreement helps you become happy and at peace. As you become impeccable with your word, love replaces fear. You diminish the number of conflicts in your life.
The Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally
When someone gives you negative input, it speaks more about the other person, not about you. In fact, whether it’s good or bad, just don’t accept others’ judgment of you (or even your own judgment).
When we’re immune to the careless comments and actions of others, our hearts can open up, allowing us to be vulnerable and open to love.
The Third Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions
We make assumptions and believe they’re true. But making assumptions inevitably leads to problems. Assumptions cause misunderstandings between people. We then argue, get offended, and take the issue personally. Cue the drama.
So how do you stop making assumptions and jumping to conclusions?
When we stop making assumptions, we stop overanalyzing situations and we start understanding the truth. And once we know the truth, we can make better decisions.
The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best
This final agreement will allow the other three to become more deeply ingrained and effective. After all, the first three agreements can truly work only if you do your best, day in and day out.
But it’s important to know that your best can change from moment to moment. Your best when you’re tired or sick will be different from your best when you’re healthy. That’s OK.
How do you do your best? Some tips:
The Four Agreements gives us a new, positive blueprint by which to live our lives. But we still have to break away from the harmful old agreements to gain freedom.
There are three ways to do this:
When we follow the Four Agreements, we have the tools to create our own version of “heaven” in our lives, using imagination and a new set of eyes to visualize a happy life.
When we do so, we gain the following:
The Four Agreements is based on beliefs in Mexican indigenous (Toltec) culture.
Toltec lore has it that 3,000 years ago, a human studying to be a medicine man awoke to the soul-altering realization that he was made of light and stars, and he existed in between those stars. He called the stars the tonal and the light between the stars the nagual. He realized that life is what creates the harmony between the two. Life is the force of the Creator.
The medicine man came to some profound conclusions:
Unfortunately, when he tried to share this knowledge with others, they didn’t understand. They agreed that he was an incarnation of God, but when he tried to explain that they too were just as sacred, they didn’t believe him. They couldn’t see it.
The medicine man likened everything to a mirror. We all have the ability to see ourselves in everything else, but our human existence – termed a “dream” – clouds our vision. Picture a wall of smoke or fog between mirrors. We humans are the mirrors, but the wall of smoke stops us from seeing ourselves in everyone and everything else.
The medicine man called himself the “Smoky Mirror” to convey the idea that he could see himself in everyone else, but people don’t recognize each other because of the smoke in between them.
All this can be a bit confusing, but the point is this: the Smoky Mirror symbolizes that we are not seeing who and what we really are. We’re not seeing others for who they really are. We’re not seeing that, deep down, we’re all the same.
By adopting the four agreements outlined in this book, we blow away the fog and begin to see ourselves – and others – clearly and with more understanding.
So how did humans get in such a predicament? Toltec wisdom explains how we got stuck conforming to society’s rules and stunting our true selves.
We all have individual, personal dreams. But those who came before us created a bigger dream – the “dream of the planet.” This dream created everything we see as normal in our existence: family, community, city, and the world. It encompasses laws, religion, cultures, and all of society’s rules.
Our parents are the first to teach us about this outside dream. As we grow, school, the media, churches, and other aspects of our environment hook our attention and tell us what proper behavior is.
All these rules and understandings of how the world works, everything we accept as true, is an agreement. We agree what’s good and what’s bad. We agree to a religion or a set of beliefs. We agree what constitutes proper behavior.
When we accept an agreement, we believe it unconditionally. Our belief systems and our personalities are made up of thousands of these little agreements. We surrender to these beliefs.
We are born into this system of beliefs – this societal dream – through no choice of our own. We’ve been exposed to it for so long that we can’t fathom living or thinking any different way.
Domestication of Humans
The process of surrendering to these outside beliefs is called “the domestication of humans.”
As children, through this domestication process, we’re trained just like dogs. We’re rewarded for doing what Mom and Dad want us to do. We’re punished when we go against the rules. We fear punishment, but moreso we fear being rejected and not being good enough.
In this process we become someone different from our natural selves. We lose our normal, innate tendencies in this process of domestication. This is why adults behave differently than kids – adults are more efficient and productive perhaps, but also less joyful, inquisitive, and free.
At a certain point we become our own domesticators. We don’t even need an authority to threaten or punish us. Our belief system – the Book of Law – rules our minds. The Book of Law consists of all the agreements we’ve accepted as truth.
Despite its limitations, the Book of Law makes us feel safe. It’s our understanding of how the world works, and it represents order in a world of chaos. We may not have chosen these agreements, but we agreed to them. And they don’t change easily – challenging our own beliefs takes courage.
Judge and Victim
The agreements we’ve accepted create an inner Judge and inner Victim.
There is no true justice in this system. True justice would be paying for a mistake once and moving on. But our inner Judge creates guilt, a continuous punisher, so we pay for our failings over and over again.
This inner turmoil is the cause of a lot of inner tension, and it spills into the outside world through our behavior. (For instance, because of some internal conflict, you can lash out at someone who doesn’t deserve it.)
And we too may judge other people – we make our family and colleagues pay for the same mistake over and over when we find them guilty.
Mitote
The outside dream – the world – is full of unpleasantness, drama, violence, fear, war and injustice. Fear and false beliefs control the outside dream.
Because we’re integrated strongly into this outside dream, our personal dream is also ruled by fear. The agreements and beliefs we store in our heads stop us from seeing the truth – that justice, beauty, joy, and freedom can be our personal dream
This inability to see the truth is a fog of perception the Toltecs called a mitote. The mitote clouds our vision, so we can’t see who we really are. We can’t see that we’re not free. We create an image of who we should be in order to be liked, loved and good enough. But this image isn’t real.
We even harm ourselves to be accepted by others. (Think of the teenager who takes drugs or starves herself to be accepted, or of someone who stays in an abusive relationship.) When we accept self-abuse, we learn to tolerate abuse from others because of an inner belief: “I deserve it.” A false image of perfection makes us reject ourselves and others.
Prelude to a New Dream
We have tons of agreements with the outside world, but the most important are the internal ones we have with ourselves – telling us who we are and what we can do. These internal agreements create and limit our reality.
If we want a life of joy, we must break these harmful agreements that promote suffering and failure. We must adopt four new agreements to replace the old, harmful ones.
In this book summary we’ll cover each of the new agreements in detail, and then talk about how to dismantle the old agreements.
These four agreements will give us the tools to create a healthy, positive new dream.
Words are incredibly powerful. They can be used for good or to hurt others or ourselves. In this way, we can think of them as Black Magic or White Magic.
Words are like seeds in a fertile human mind: We can plant goodness or fear.
This first agreement asks us to be “impeccable” with our words. This is the agreement on which all the other agreements rest. Abiding by this agreement alone can change your life.
So what does it mean to be impeccable with your word?
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But being impeccable with your word is also the hardest agreement to honor. We’ve learned to do exactly the opposite.
What We’ve Been Doing Wrong
We are careless with our words far too often. We usually don’t set out to hurt someone, but we forget the power words hold. The truth is, something cruel said once in an offhand manner can have a lasting impact on someone’s life. (Similarly, something said with truth and beauty and kindness will also have a lasting impact.)
Here are some examples of words creating fear and doubt:
As you can see from the examples above, when we hear an opinion and believe it, we form an agreement. The opinion gains power. The judgment becomes part of us. Black Magic has created a spell that’s hard to break.
And it’s not just a problem with using our words to hurt others, intentionally or unintentionally. We too often use the power of the word against ourselves. How often do you say these types of things to yourself?
Little by little, these agreements weaken you, like a toxin.
The worst Black Magic of the word is gossip. Gossip is spreading around information about other people that may or may not be true. Gossip is pure poison, but ever so popular and even fun at times. After all, it makes us feel better to put someone else down and to see them in a worse predicament than us.
Gossip is like a computer virus. After the malware has been introduced, your computer doesn’t work correctly. It’s slower, vulnerable, in danger. When you listen to the gossip, you become infected just like the computer. You see the subject of the gossip in a different light, and you become a conduit to spread the gossip virus yourself.
We have to be aware that gossip is full of someone else’s motivations and point of view. This can bias you to see the world incorrectly without your realizing it.
Here’s an example: A student is looking forward to a new class with a new professor. But on her way to class, she runs into a friend who tells her this professor is a jerk. He’s awful! Our student listens and now looks at the professor through the eyes of the other person. Every harmless mistake the professor makes looks like it just confirms the gossip. She has no idea of her friend’s motivations, but now she’s infected to see the world through the friend’s eyes. If she hadn’t heard the gossip, she would see the professor more neutrally.
Gossip spreads, whether it’s being mindlessly repeated or spread intentionally as a calculated effort to bring someone down. The contagious poison of gossip creates what the Toltecs called the mitote. The mitote is defined as “the chaos of 1,000 voices all trying to talk at once in the mind.”
When You Become Impeccable With Your Words
So what do you do to stop using the word as a toxin?
When you are “impeccable with your word,” you:
Practicing this yields two benefits, in different directions:
Using your words for good can plant new seeds in yourself and others – breaking old, bad agreements and creating positive, new ones. For example, telling a child she’s hard-working plants a seed of pride. If you hear someone singing and you tell him his voice is lovely, you may be helping to break a spell previously cast by someone else’s careless words.
Following this agreement helps you become happy and at peace. As you become impeccable with your word, more seeds of love will replace seeds of fear – in yourself and others.
As a result, you begin to form NEW agreements. When you understand this first agreement, you change the way you deal with yourself first the way you deal with others follows naturally.
Use these questions to reflect on how your own words can have a powerful effect on yourself and others.
What negative words do you say to yourself most? (Are you critical of your body? Your intelligence? Your success?)
What will you say to yourself the next time you find yourself engaged in negative self-talk? Write out the actual NEW words you’ll say to yourself.
How could you use the power of your words to lift someone else up? Think of one simple example and write it down here. Then do it immediately.
After you’ve used your words to lift up someone, how do you feel? Should you do this more often?
Being impeccable with your words means speaking with integrity. Let’s think about how gossip fits into this.
When is a recent time you’ve gossiped about someone, or said something negative about someone behind their back? What did you say, and what motivated you to share that gossip?
How did you feel about that gossip now? Do you think you should have shared the gossip?
If you don’t think you should have gossiped, how could you have stopped yourself from gossiping that time, even if others were participating? Will this help in the future?
The second agreement sounds deceptively simple: “Don’t take anything personally.” But so many of us are sensitive and defensive, primed to ward off the negativity the world throws at us.
But as we begin to adopt the first agreement, “Be Impeccable With Your Word,” we become happier and more at peace, more in control. When we have more internal strength, taking on this second agreement becomes easier.
These first two agreements free you from many of the bad agreements that have been disrupting your life. After all, careless words combined with highly offended people will inevitably bring drama.
Bad Things Happen When We Take Things Personally
No good comes from taking things personally. In fact, it’s a chain reaction of bad:
Someone says something about you => You take it personally => You’re offended => You defend yourself and your position => You fire back something about the other person => The other person takes THAT personally, gets offended, and says something meaner =>...
It goes on and on. Does this remind you of any arguments you’ve had in the past?
When you take things personally, you can resent it and simmer for much more time than is appropriate. You also take what might otherwise be helpful advice and reject it out of anger.
How Do We Go About Not Taking Things Personally?
How do we refrain from taking things personally? Here’s the simple belief to put this into action: Any negative input is about the other person, not you.
Whenever someone says something to us or about us, pause and remember the following:
Here’s an example: Someone calls you ugly. This isn’t about you at all. It’s about the opinions and beliefs they have incorporated. Calling you ugly comes from their own wounds. If they were feeling great about life, they’d probably be calling you beautiful. They certainly wouldn’t take pleasure in putting you down.
And whether the other person calls you beautiful or ugly, their input about you is unimportant. The only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. Whether it’s good or bad, just don’t accept others’ judgment of you.
And it’s not just other people’s opinions and judgments that are harmful; you shouldn’t even take your own opinions about yourself personally!
It gets crowded in our minds, dealing with the opinions of others and with our judgments of ourselves. It’s a real problem when our internal dialogue gets too loud, crowded, and negative. Our overcrowded mind becomes a giant marketplace of agreements that don’t all agree with each other; too many voices are speaking at once, clouding our thinking.
But each time we’re able to hear someone’s “insult” and not take it personally, a new process begins:
Good Things Happen When We Don’t Take Things Personally
When you have the ability not to take things personally, here’s what happens:
When you’re immune to the careless comments and actions of others, your heart can open up, allowing you to be more vulnerable and open to love. You’re not afraid of being hurt by others, because you can’t be hurt by others.
When you don’t take anything personally, you are free to be happy with your life. You find it easy to create love. You are at peace.
Use these questions to reflect on the damage that taking things personally can inflict on your self-esteem.
Think about a recent time when someone’s words hurt you. What was said? Why did it hurt you?
Let’s try to overcome this feeling of being attacked and offended. How can you not take this type of comment personally? (Remember: Nothing they think about you is really about you. If someone gets upset at you, they’re dealing with their own issues. You don’t need to accept their emotional garbage.)
The third agreement is “Don’t make assumptions.”Remember the old saying about the word “assume” – it makes an “ass” out of “u” and me? This agreement is the same idea with a more spiritual bent.
Making assumptions is dangerous because we often have no idea what is really going on in a situation. We fill in the blanks in our minds without enough information, and then we’re pretty convinced we know what’s going on. Spoiler alert: We don’t. We’re prone to mistaken beliefs, and acting on these mistakes will cause more trouble.
This is a hard agreement to follow because we make assumptions so often, and making assumptions comes so naturally. We’re usually pretty impressed with our own insight. We think our assumptions are true.
Bad Stuff Happens When We Make Assumptions
Making assumptions can lead to a cycle of conflict:
Assumptions => Misunderstanding => We’re offended and take it personally => We lash back => Big drama ensues
Making assumptions and taking things personally (agreements two and three) go hand in hand, leading to gossip, conflict and suffering.
What’s the biggest assumption of all? We think everyone sees life exactly as we do. In fact, everyone sees the world through their own unique way. If you don’t communicate with someone else about how each of you is seeing the world, you create misunderstanding.
Mitote, the chaos in our minds, leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. We simply don’t perceive things the way they truly are.
Assumptions are particularly dangerous in relationships. We have to be clear in communicating what we want because no one knows what we’re thinking.
The danger isn’t only in making assumptions about others. We make assumptions about ourselves. We underestimate (assume we’re less capable than we are) or overestimate ourselves, leading to disappointment, self-doubt and recriminations.
How Do We Stop Making Assumptions? Communication and Clarification
So how do you stop making assumptions and jumping to conclusions? Ask questions! Have the courage to seek the truth. If you know the truth, you don’t need to make assumptions. And if you don’t make assumptions, you don’t make mistakes.
(Shortform note: be comfortable asking questions you’re afraid might be too simple or dumb, like “why do you feel that way?” “What motivated you to do that?” “What would you do in my situation?” If you ask these in the right tone, these are fantastic questions to get rid of assumptions on both sides.)
To stop making assumptions we must:
When we stop making assumptions, we take the blinders off. We understand what is truly happening in our lives. You’re on the same page as your spouse, children, friends, etc., with honesty and open communication. You’re less likely to be blindsided by unpleasant truths because you already have a clear understanding of a situation.
Use this exercise to reflect on how assumptions can hurt you and others.
Think about a time you made a way-off-base assumption that turned out to be wrong. What was the assumption you made?
What problems resulted because of your assumption? For example, you might have behaved differently or said something you didn’t mean.
If you were to go back to that time, how could you have clarified the situation to find the truth? (Remember: Ask questions and communicate.)
This agreement is also a simple concept, but it will allow the other three agreements to become more deeply ingrained and effective. After all, the first three agreements can truly work only if you do your best.
Doing your best frees you from guilt and shame. You feel great about yourself when you’ve given your best effort.
What Is “Your Best”?
First, it’s important to understand that your best isn’t a constant; it will vary. Sometimes you’re fresh and vital; other times you’re tired. Sometimes you’re healthy and sometimes you're sick. Your best is the best you can do under your current circumstances.
In fact, your best can change even from moment to moment. And that’s OK.
Your best doesn’t mean trying to do more than you’re capable of in the moment (the old “giving 110 percent”). Doing more than your best depletes your personal energy. But doing less than your best leaves you with guilt and regret.
When you’re giving your best, you’re taking action without expecting a reward. The rewards will come, but they’re not your end goal. You simply enjoy performing at the peak of your ability.
Good Things Happen When You Do Your Best
When you do your best, good things happen:
Doing your best isn’t about being perfect. You will make mistakes, but that’s OK. You learn from your mistakes, keep practicing, and look honestly at your results. Doing your best helps you feel good about yourself.
The author personally defines “doing his best” as ritual and honoring God. He feels God is life in action, and the best way to honor, love, and thank God is doing your best. (Shortform note: Of course, everyone will have their own inspiration for and definition of doing their best.)
Tips on Doing Your Best
Use this exercise to examine why you sometimes don’t give your best effort.
Think of the last time you know you didn’t do your best. What were you trying to do, and where did you fall short?
How did you feel about yourself when you know you didn’t do your best? Did this feeling cause any other problems?
Why didn’t you do your best? Part of it may be internal, part of it may be external.
Next time you run into a situation like this, what could you do differently to try to do your best? (These might be changes you make to your situation, or internal thoughts you say to yourself.)
Now we have a blueprint for how to live our lives in a better way. We know the new Four Agreements that will save us from living empty lives. We know how to transform our lives into a new experience of joy, happiness and love.
Except we still have all those old agreements lingering around. We have to fight through and discard them. How can we dismantle these old agreements that have created needless suffering in our lives? How do we free ourselves from the old agreements?
There are three ways to break with our old, bad agreements:
1. Facing Your Fears Takes Awareness
First, you have to be aware of the agreements you must fix.
Once we have this awareness, we can then focus our attention on what we want to change.
For example, remember the little girl who stopped singing when her mother snapped at her? How does she break that agreement? She can try to sing, even if it starts out badly. She can gain power back little by little.
But for every agreement you break, you have to replace it with a new one that makes you happy. The little girl might replace “if I sing, other people will get mad” with “I love singing and it makes me happy.”
This isn’t easy. There are a lot of old agreements to break and replace. But go step by step; don’t get discouraged.
2. “Starving the Parasite” by Forgiving Others for the Past
The Toltecs liken the old, bad agreements to a “parasitic” organism in control of our minds and thoughts. To get rid of the parasite, we have to starve it by not giving it attention. We have to stop dwelling on the old wounds in our minds so that we can heal.
The key to “starving the parasite” is forgiveness. We must forgive those who have wronged us. This is actually for our benefit – when we resent others, we’re the ones paying for the injustice. We feel the resentment and the anger.
Because we love ourselves, we must forgive whoever we perceive as having hurt us – God, others and ourselves.
You know you’ve successfully forgiven someone when seeing them no longer brings up an emotional reaction. You know you are no longer the victim. The old wound doesn’t hurt anymore.
Controlling our emotions is also an important part of forgiveness. When we lose control of our emotions, we say things we don’t want to say and do things we don’t want to do. When we learn to control our emotions, we gain personal power, making it easier to forgive those who have hurt us. We have more power to change our fear-based agreements.
3. “Initiation of the Dead” Means Living Each Day Like It’s Your Last
The Toltecs referred to this final step as the “initiation of the dead,” representing the symbolic death of the parasite within. But it’s easier to think about it this way: Be aware that we can die at any time. When you treat every day like it’s your last, you have a clearer vision of how you want to live today. You don’t want to waste time fretting over past injustices and worrying what others think of you. You want to live a free, happy life.
Keep these things in mind when you vow to live each day like it’s your last:
Surviving the Initiation of the Dead leads to a kind of resurrection – being alive again, like a child. Only this time our freedom is colored by wisdom, not innocence. We are free adults who can live life on our own terms.
When you use these three paths to break free from your old agreements, you are free to create a dream of the future without carrying the burdens of the past.
Use this exercise to identify specific steps you can take to wipe out some old agreements holding you back.
Think of a specific self-limiting, fear-based belief you think is holding your back. (You aren’t good at painting. You’re too clumsy to play a sport. You’re too old to take a challenging new job.) What’s yours?
Think of a way to face this fear. What concrete steps can you take? (Buy some paints and go for it. Join a softball team. Take the job and give it a whirl.)
Let go of old resentments
Think of a person who has wronged you. What did this person do or say that is still sticking with you today?
How does your anger toward this person affect you today? (Does it stop you from doing what you want to do? Does it affect your other relationships?)
Think about how you’d feel if you forgave this person. (Reflect on the Second Agreement: it was about them, not about you). How would letting go of your hurt and anger change you?
It’s time to take the messages of the Four Agreements forward. You now have the beginning of a new understanding for how you can live your life: a new dream.
You have the tools to create your own version of heaven in your life, using a new set of eyes to visualize a happy life. In this new life:
We now know that the world is beautiful and wonderful. Life can be easy when you love the way you’re living.
We have a choice: Suffer our destiny, or enjoy our destiny.