The Four Agreements

So i was recommended this book by a close friend of mine and I couldn't put it down. The most beautiful words ever combined together and bound. The author is Don Miguel Ruiz a surgeon who has devoted himself to learning and teaching the Toltec practices.
Excellent read and only 140 pages.

The first agreement is:
Be Impeccable with Your Word
" The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. You can speak. What other animal on the planet can speak? The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you." - excerpt from the book

The second agreement is:
Don't Take Anything Personally
" Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about "me." During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me, always me!
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 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." "When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong. You also try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. In the same way, whatever you feel and do is just a projection of your own personal dream, a reflection of your own agreements. What you say, what you do, and the opinions youhave are according to the agreements you have made- and these opinions have nothing to do with me. " - excerpts from book

The third agreement is:
Don't Make Assumptions
"We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking- we take it personally - than we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing. All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally. Take a moment to consider the truth of this statement. The whole world of control between humans is about making assumptions and taking things personally. Our whole dream of hell is based on that. We create a lot of emotional poison just by making assumptions and taking it personally, because usually we start gossiping about our assumptions. Remember, gossiping is the way we communicate to each other in the dream of hell and transfer poison to one another. Because we are afraid to ask for clarification, we make assumptions, and believe we are right about the assumptions; then we defend our assumption and try to make someone else wrong. It is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suferring. The big mitote in the human mind creates alot of chaos which causes us to misinterpret everything and misunderstand everything. We only see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. We don't percieve things the way they are. We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality. We literally dream things up in our imaginations. Because we don't understand something, we make an assumption about the meaning, and when the truth comes out, the bubble of our dream pops and we find out it was not what we thought it was at all."- excerpt from the book

The fourth agreement is:
Always Do Your Best
" Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep on mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy, or upset, angry, or jealous." "Regardless of the quality, keep doing your best- no more and no less that your best. If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustrations, self judgement, guilt and regrets. Just do your best- in any circumstance in your life. It doesn't matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don't judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under." - excerpts from the book

And there you have it. Practice these four agreements and you are on your way to self happiness and self fulfillment. You will walk around like it's heaven on earth. The weight of the world will no longer be on your shoulders and you will breath, work, play and sleep alot better!!

Also READ THE BOOK!! So much more in there that I can't even begin to explain.

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short
again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and
spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at
the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor
defeat."
~Theodore Roosevelt
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910