Monday, December 14, 2015

Book - The Four Agreements

I've read hundreds of books about Self-Enrichment, Self-Help, Spirituality, ...etc among the books I read was the book "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz, a Mexican author of Toltec spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. It's one of the greatest books in this category. It’s no surprise if you see authors and famous public figures such as Oprah Winfrey use quotes from this book. The Four Agreements focus on four elements with details, examples, motivational and inspirational quotes, ...etc The Four Agreements are: 1. Be Impeccable With Your Word. 2. Don't Take Anything Personally. 3. Don't Make Assumptions. 4. Always Do Your Best. "The book advocates personal freedom from beliefs and agreements that we have made with ourselves and others that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives" in the photo is a collection box consisting of three books worth reading by the same author, they are: 1. The Four Agreement. 2. The Voice of Knowledge. 3. The Mastery of Love.

There are probably hundreds of reviews out there regarding this book, one of the reviews I liked was the review of Jim Mitchell. Here is what Jim said: “I am reading this book, and even though it is a small book, when I finish page 129, I start over again on page 1. I have been reading it for about five years twelve years now, and I suspect I will continue reading it for as long as I can read. A few pages at a time is more than enough to give me something to kick around in my head for a few days. The book could be tagged as a self-growth book, but that is too limiting. It is a book that challenges one to live up to four simple truths, and offers transformational results as a result if one could live a life completely engaged in the four agreements. They are so concise that I can state them here. 1) Be impeccable with your word. 2) Don't take anything personally. 3) Don't make assumptions. 4) Always do your best. Simple huh? Track a day and see how many times you break an agreement (in your actions or your mind). To my constant amazement, I find myself stumbling over one or another of these agreements with some regularity. So it helps to remind myself by the constant reread.I am not reading with a hope that I will attain some mystical state, but I read because I find the author's explanation of how our mind, our society, and importantly, our relationships work to be insightful even though it is based on a paradigm that is completely outside my heritage of growing up in a small New England town. I don't like hypothetical questions, but there is no doubt that this is one powerful and wonderful book that deserves a wide reading audience by anyone who is interested in one of the old ones: "What is the meaning of life?" Reading this book, I have started to formulate a good answer to that question. It's about time I would say. I have had a chance to live long enough that I should be able to answer that question by looking at my life as an example. It is 2015, twelve years after I wrote this first review, and the book is still on my nightstand by my bed. It is a good read”

Some beautiful quotes from the book that shows how wise is the author. Don Miguel Said: “Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves”. Then there is one of my favourite quotes of all time: “If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfil our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.” and one last quote: “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”


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