Good Book #1- The Four Agreements
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
I love books! I love books so much that I recommend lots and lots of books to friends and clients. I want to tell you about a particularly special book to me. When I was in my early 30s, I was given The four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. At that time in my life, the questions that I had I felt like I needed complex answers. So when I read this book, the four agreements didn’t resonate with me. I didn’t like it, to be honest. I thought it was too simplistic and lacked depth. So I gave the book to someone else, figuring they might enjoy it, and never thought anything about it. Fast forward ten years and my girlfriend gives me this book as part of a birthday gift. I laughed when I saw it and said oh yeah, I’ve read this before. I didn’t like it. And she said read it again, and it might land differently this time. So I did, and boy was it like reading a completely different book. Only the book wasn’t different; I was different. Let me explain…
““Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. 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.” ”
Ten years have gone by in my life, I went through a divorce, and many changes in my family, and life has a way of leveling the playing field, as I say to people. What I mean by that is that when you live long enough, you go through enough hardship that it changes you. So I pulled out this book and began to read it. The four agreements are based on the premise that if you live your life following the four agreements as he outlines in the book, you will live a happier and more peaceful life based on Toltec wisdom.
Agreements number two and three struck me and hit a cord. The second and third agreements are don’t take things personally and don’t make assumptions. At that time, I was working to break free of the victim triangle and connect with my authentic power in my personal therapy. Additionally, one of the most significant areas I struggled with was taking things personally and making assumptions. And it caused me considerable emotional and mental pain and suffering. Not only did it cause pain to me, but it also profoundly affected my relationships and created problems where there weren’t any, i.e., drama.
I walked around in the world feeling incredibly sensitive and constantly hurt by the actions and behaviors of other people. I would get looped in my head with stories about what I did wrong, why the other person was mad at me, why I had been treated this way, etc and I had my own narrative in my head: you’ve done something wrong, you’ve angered someone, and someone doesn’t like you. Sometimes it would feel so consuming that I couldn’t tell fact from fiction. Something had to change. And this book came back into my life at the exact right time, at a time when I could connect with it in a new way and the message resonated with me entirely differently.
The four agreements is one of those books that I think everybody should have. Most people struggle with the very things that he talks about in there. If there is one book I recommend probably to every single one of the people I’ve ever worked with and my friends, it is this book. If you want greater peace of mind and happiness in your life, harmony, and authentic power, this is your book. I’m excited to share with you one of my favorite books, and I can’t wait to hear how it changes your life.
Happy reading,
River
River Healing Therapy
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