The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz | (Detailed Book Summary)

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz these are four simple agreements that have the power to change your life we're gonna be doing a detailed breakdown of the book and I'm going to share with you all the insights and takeaways you can get from it stick around for the next 30 minutes because by the end of this video you're gonna have a super clear understanding how these four simple agreements can change your life let's jump in [Music] ok let's get straight into the book so the first agreement is to be impeccable with your word this Agreement sounds so simple but it is a very powerful agreement it is also the most difficult of the four agreements to honor so it is through our words that we manifest everything that happens in our lives and this has nothing to do with the language that you speak your intonation or how you speak however this is to do with your intent so what is your intention when you're communicating with others and with yourself you can kind of think of the word as a type of force that creates the events that unfold in your life so the first thing you need to realize is that your words are powerful says here in the book the word is the most powerful tool you have as a human it is a tool of magic but like a sword with two edges your word can create the most beautiful dream or your work and destroy everything around you so it's important to really respect the power of the word and understand how your word can change your reality and the reality of others you know we only need to look at the first half of the last century to see how one man's word was able to change the course of history and create so much destruction hatred genocide the work can enter our mind and change a whole belief for better or for worse so understand that our minds are very susceptible to the words and ideas of others quote from the book you plant a seed a thought and it grows the word is like a seed and the human mind is so fertile so this is not only the words and opinions of others but also you know the words that you use to talk to yourself okay so if you're the kind of person that does daily affirmations maybe order suggestion or in general you just have a positive outlook on on yourself okay you're kind to yourself then you will be sowing the seeds of positivity in your mind but unfortunately our minds are all too often fertile too these seeds of negativity sow seeds of doubt fear hatred and you know not to seeds of love happiness abundance things like this okay next the word casts spells so the book goes into this concept of us all casting spells on each other through the use of our words and I'll give a I'll tell you a short story just to illustrate this point here so a kind-hearted man comes home from work long hours at a stressful job and he has an excruciating migraine he walks into the house his son is jumping around and singing and expressing his joy in that moment the father turns around and says shut up just shut up you have a terrible voice now of course the father never meant these words that came out of his mouth but due to the migraine any kind of sound in that moment would trigger him to say these these words to his son but it was already too late and the spell had been cast in the days weeks and years that followed the boy would never sing again and he even became shy and dejected in social situations he wouldn't like to talk to people because he felt like his voice was unattractive and all too often even the ones that love us the most and care about us the most are the ones that cast these spells on us but you know this doesn't mean that we should blame them for this because you know they don't realize the power of their words and we can only forgive them again we cast spells all the time with our opinions another quick story to illustrate you wake up one morning you're feeling great and you go and sit down in front of the mirror and you're sitting there putting on your makeup and doing your hair for 2-3 hours and after that you put on your new clothes that you've just bought and you're feeling amazing and your friend walks in and says what nothing wearing and what did you do to your face today it looks so so weird now if you accept the opinion as truth as we also often do then you're otherwise amazing day has just become one of your worst and for the rest of your day it will just be consumed by these negative thoughts so you know we don't know your friends motivation for this opinion you know maybe she was trying to hurt you maybe she was envious because you were looking great you know maybe she wanted to be the best-looking one at the party that day and she saw you as a threat or something like that we can never know but whenever we hear an opinion and believe it we make an agreement and it becomes part of our belief system so these agreements that we make over the days weeks months decades even that unfold in your life these agreements can you know they can really compound and take over your life for the better off worse so you know people the opinions of others far too easily and the more you know the more heightened your awareness becomes of these opinions being just that an opinion the more easily you can choose to not make an agreement with these opinions of others now it doesn't explicitly cover this in the book but it does touch on this concept and that is that you are what you consume or your inputs equal to your outputs so if you're someone that consumes negative information you know maybe you're always watching the news or you're always associated yourself with negative people or maybe you're just someone that always likes to beat up on yourself so you're always telling yourself you know I'm stupid and fat and unintelligent whatever whatever it may be then if you're someone that does these things what you're gonna find is that your life is going to attract more negativity and this all all happens without you even consciously being aware of it because what is actually happening is your subconscious mind is taking in all this negative stimulus and manifesting it into all aspects of your life so it's important to never underestimate the power of your subconscious mind and always be mindful of what you are consuming on a daily basis yeah so be aware of what consuming because this is something that you can proactively control you know you can control what you consume so maybe you need to change your environment or change who you associate with maybe you know maybe you have some toxic relationships that you need to just get rid of and yeah the things that you watch and listen to as well okay and finally the last insight from this Agreement gossip is black magic and pure poison unfortunately gossip nowadays has become it seems like the favorite pastime of far too many people and you may have heard this quote before and it's also used in the book misery likes company so people who are suffering they don't want to be all alone in their suffering so they misuse their word with harmful intent other night otherwise known as gossiping and they try to harm someone and bring them down to that same level of suffering and there's a book I love which is called the seven Habits of Highly Effective People and in the book Stephen Covey talks about this concept to like not gossiping about others he refers to it as being loyal to the absent also not talking about people behind their backs and I also did a summary on that book so if you'd like to check it out I will leave a link in the description below gossip can be compared to a computer virus so another short story it's a new semester you're walking to your first class and you have a new professor you bump into your friend and your friend says hey man be careful that guy's a real jerk and he's also a pervert so you walk off to class you sit down and as soon as the professor walks into the class you feel this emotional poison rising up within you and you lean over to your friend and you say to your friend hey be careful man this guy's a jerk and I hear he's a pervert okay now before too long this is spread throughout the whole class like a virus and then through half of the school okay and it all originated from one person's word and we really can't know what your friends motive was for saying these these words you know maybe maybe he just wants to blame that professor instead of taking responsibility for the bad grades that he got in that class you know we can never know but imagine every time someone gossips to you it's like someone is inserting a tiny little code of virus into your mind which is making you just think a little bit less clearly and the more of these gossip virus codes that you take into your mind the more clogs your brain becomes until eventually you can't think clearly at all and the other main reason why we should never gossip is that if you use the word to gossip and cause harm or to cast spells on others they will use the word to cast spells on you so what you put out into the universe you will also get back so to recap this agreement respect the power of your word your work can cause great destruction or great positivity understand how easily the work can affect our minds and our belief systems we are always casting spells with our word you are what you consume the subconscious is very powerful and don't gossip because gossip is pure poison so on a daily basis we are getting stimulus from the outside world this can be positive or negative stimulus and how you choose to respond or interpret internalize that stimulus is what we will talk about here which brings us to the second agreement don't take anything personally so if I was to walk up to you on the street and say something like hey you look so stupid or you'll never succeed with your business or hey you have a weird-looking eyebrows now if I was to say these things to you and you were to agree with them you were to agree with my opinions then that is what it means to take something personally so it says here in the book you take something personally because you agree with whatever was said as soon as you agree the poison goes through you and you are trapped now in my opinion what the author is referring to as emotional poison throughout the book the negative identities that we form within ourselves when we take things personally and we make agreements in our minds and these agreements can start as small agreements but over time these grim agreements can compound and they can start to consume your life for better or for worse and very importantly like we touched on earlier your subconscious is always working away in the background and it listens to all these agreements and it gets to work at making them a reality so if your inner dialogue is filled with a lot of negative self-talk like I can't do it I'm a loser I'm not worthy then these notions compound and your subconscious is going to find ways to put put you in situations which validate these beliefs and then furthermore compound the belief about them verse about you so others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system so nothing they think about me is really about me but it is about them and you may know the saying your perception of me is the reflection of you another quote from the book nothing other people do is because of you it is because of themselves all people live in their own dream in their own mind they are in completely different they are in a completely different world from the one we live in when we take something personally we make the assumption that they know what is in our world and we try to impose our world on their world now whenever someone gives you an opinion of you positive or negative we must never take it personally so all opinions do is give you a glimpse into this person's reality or their dream as the book refers to it so you know we're all striving to operate at a higher frequency but you know all people are at different levels higher and lower and you'll notice this when you communicate with different people the words that they use how they communicate all of these things give you insights into their reality their you know their paradigm so don't take the things that others say to you personally because you know different realities different belief systems and different frequencies so he says in the book and I like this was um don't make someone else's emotional garbage your emotional garbage whatever someone says about you is the reflection of them so it's not about you but it's about them next when everything around you is great everything makes you happy so your outer world is a reflection of your inner world and if you're someone that likes to beat up on yourself you know mister miss use the word on yourself and you easily agree to the opinions of others then the chances are the the filter or the lens through which you see the world will be tainted with negativity and this negativity will seep into all facets of your life and you will always be finding yourself in these negative situations and cheating yourself with negative people and the opposite of that is also true so when everything when everything around you is great everything makes you happy if the things you can Shoom are positive the people who you associate with are positive you love yourself and you use the word impeccably to talk towards others and yourself and your world in general will become more positive and just to say it again so your outer world is a reflection of your inner world we make agreements to help each other suffer misery likes company and some quotes from the book here humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees and we support each other in maintaining these addictions people are asking for justification for their suffering it is as if they have a note on the back that says please kick me they are saying they are asking for justification for their suffering so you know people want validation for their suffering they want to know that they aren't all alone in these negative beliefs and suffering and what usually happens is that negative attracts negative or negative people attract other negative people and they congregate around these negative beliefs and further justify and compound this suffering and for me I like to think of it like like an echo chamber of negativity and you know people get stuck in these chambers of negativity all the time so much so that they can't even see that different realities possible and in just the same way that congregations of negative people can you know compound the misuse of the word and cause greater levels of suffering positive congregations can do the opposite so let's take for example in business if you get a roomful of you know positive entrepreneurs get them all together that's where ideas will flourish and you know abundance mindsets will collaborate and amazing outcomes can be achieved finally for this agreement keep the agreement with yourself if you keep this agreement you can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you you can say I love you without fear of being ridiculed or rejected so with practice over time you will become immune to the opinions of others and you won't allow others to easily impose their opinions on you if you need to put it on your fridge or stick it up on your wall somewhere don't take anything personally you really need to remind yourself of this and practice it day in and day out so so let's do a quick recap of this agreement if you agree with someone's opinion then you have made an agreement to take it personally emotional poison is forming negative identities within yourself nothing someone says is about you but it is about them negative people tend to attract more negative people whereas positive people attract positive people and always remind yourself to not take things personally the third agreement is don't make assumptions so a good rule of thumb if you need to make assumptions always assume the positive so as humans we have the tendency to make assumptions about everything and here's a quote from the book we make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking we take it personally then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word that is why whenever we make assumptions we're asking for problems so if you're someone that usually operates in a negative state of mind or you're always in negative environments your assumptions will tend to be negative however the more empowered you become as a human the more proactively you live your life and when you begin to love yourself and the others around you the more your assumptions will become positive so a short story you're in a relationship your partner hasn't replied for a few hours now you could make positive assumptions you know maybe his phone battery is dead he got caught up in a video game or he has an important deadline at work but you're not someone who makes positive assumptions you tend to make negative assumptions so you know he's out doing something behind my back or he's out with another woman I know it so you start to believe your assumptions as the truth and you start looking for ways to validate this negative thinking maybe you start searching his social media for clues to where he might be or who this mysterious woman is that he is singing when all along you could have just saved yourself all this drama by just assuming the positive negative assumptions lead to blaming and resentment which is another form of the emotional poison we spoke about and the more you think about it the more it compounds positive assumptions on the other hand put you in a position of power and you can see things more clearly and you're better able to overcome and handle situations the next insight why we shouldn't make assumptions so quote from the book all the sadness and drama in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally so that's a pretty powerful statement think about any time in your life where you've had drama maybe in a relationship or at work with a co-worker and the drama can be rooted in one of these either taking something personally so maybe someone said something to you that hurt your feelings and made you emotional or you made assumptions which led to drama so by at least being aware and honing these two agreements you can eliminate a lot of the drama that occurs in your left okay so the next inside we make the assumption that we know what the other person wants so all too often in relationships we assume that we know what the other person wants and weeks months years can go by and you can think that you're doing everything to make your partner happy only to find out that you know maybe nothing that you're doing is actually what they want and he or she breaks up with you and that's why it's so important to set clear expectations and never assume to know what the other person wants you know you may never become a hundred percent aligned in your expectations and once of each other but through not assuming you can get those once and expectations to you know ninety five percent in alignment assuming to know what your partner wants is like trying to find buried treasure in the middle of the jungle and you have no map and you're just mindlessly wandering around through the jungle hoping that you'll find this treasure or in this case just aimlessly you know hoping that your once and expect expectations align by chance or sheer luck but we do this all the time and that's why so many relationships and marriages and prematurely okay next what is real love here is a quote from the book real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them if we try to change them this means we don't really like them of course if you decide to live with someone if you make that agreement it is always better to make that agreement with someone who is exactly the way you want him or her to be find someone whom you don't have to change at all it is much easier to find someone who is already the way you want him or her to be instead of trying to change that person so you may have been in a relationship in the past or maybe you know someone who's been in a relationship where you know this person probably isn't right for you you're seeing you know red flags from the start but you say hmm I'm gonna be this person's Savior I'm going to be the one to change this person for the better but what you're actually saying is that you don't currently like this person and you want to change and mold this person into someone that you do like or love but this is nothing but an uphill battle so try to find people in life who you can accept for who they are someone you don't need to change this is a much easier path to take lastly if you don't understand something ask questions quote from the book if you don't understand ask have the courage to ask questions until you're clear as you can be and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation once you hear the answer you will not have to make assumptions because you will know the truth so Stephen Covey covers this concept to one of the seven habits in the seven Habits of Highly Effective People is seek first to understand and then to be understood so people with big egos never seek to understand others but they just make sure that they are being understood you know they're too prideful to just ask questions which is a shame because asking questions puts you closer to certainty where as making assumptions leaves you in a state of ambiguity where you know you're always just guessing and asking for problems so if someone says something to you that you don't quite understand or if you don't understand why your partner or friend is behaving in a in a particular way put your ego aside for a moment and have the courage to ask never assume to know what your partner wants so you need to put your ego aside for a moment and have the courage to ask let's recap this Agreement negative minds breed negative assumptions that lead to blaming and resentment life's traumas are rooted in taking things personally and making assumptions never assume to know what your partner wants real love is finding someone that you don't have to change and always seek the truth through questions and don't make assumptions and the fourth agreement is always do your best your best will become better than it used to be so none of us are perfect we have bad days and good days but even our bad days over time can become better and better until we get to the level where our bad days now feel like our best days in the past and your bad days you know will become less bad so the more you practice the agreements pragmatically and ingrain them into your life the more you will continue to see improvements next action verse reward action vers reward when you always do your best you take action doing your best is taking the action because you love it not because you're expecting a reward most people do exactly the opposite they only take action when they expect a reward and they don't enjoy the action and that's the reason why they don't do their best so you always want to be taking action the opposite of action would be you know procrastination that's what we don't want you always want to be taking action but it's important to remember you want to be enjoying the actions that you take so do your best to help others but don't be expecting a reward be kind to yourself practice the agreements take massive action but always be mindful that you're not doing the action because you want to receive some kind of reward you're doing the action because you enjoy the journey now you may or may not have seen this movie Forrest Gump it's personally one of my favorite movies of all time the main character is Forrest Gump and Forrest Gump is far from intelligent he's somewhat of a simpleton with a low IQ however he always finds himself in amazing situations because he tries his best in everything that he does so he's too simple-minded to expect rewards for his efforts from other people but through always doing his best it takes him it takes his life on these amazing journeys and the universe rewards him greatly so when you don't expect the rewards that's when they will come next the first three rely on the fourth so like I mentioned earlier the the fourth agreement is like the engine that runs all of these four agreements says the first three agreements will only work if you do your best don't expect that you will always be able to be impeccable with your word your routine habits your routine habits are too strong and firmly rooted in your mind but you can do your best and the final insight I got from this agreement was Master through repetition so if you do your best always over and over again you will become a master of transformation practice makes the master by doing your best you become a master so it's like anything in life the more you repeat that action the more you practice it the better at it you will become and these four agreements are no different so you definitely need to make sure that you're practicing these on a daily basis so if you need to you know hang these agreements somewhere so that you're constantly reminded of them then go ahead and do that so just to quickly recap your bad days will now become less bad and your good days will become better put action over reward never do things just because you think you're gonna get a reward next the first three agreements rely on this fourth agreement and lastly repetition makes you a master so I hope you guys enjoyed this summary of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz I hope that you can take away some of these insights and implement them into your life and guys I'm gonna be making more videos like this in the future if you would like me to summarize a book that you found interesting or you would like like to be summarized please leave it in the comment section below and if you would like and subscribe to the channel that would really help me out thank you so much guys have a great week [Music]

Channel: Escaping Ordinary (B.C Marx)

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Length: 34min 10sec (2050 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020