The latest book that we have read as part of our Holistic Ambition book club is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz’s. This is my second time reading the book. The first time I read the book I was blown away by the concepts and started implementing the agreements into my life. My stress, anxiety, sadness, and depression were helped significantly. The book depicts how much our mindset plays a role in our emotional landscape. Similar to the way people used to refer to cannabis as a gateway drug to harder drugs I think The Four Agreements is a gateway book for enlightenment and understanding life differently. I love this book for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that it can open up your mind beyond status quo and beyond the way we normally think.
THE AGREEMENTS
1. BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD
The book mentions that you should speak with integrity, say only what you mean, avoid using words to speak against yourself or gossip about others and to use the power of words in the direction of truth and love. I think this is such a powerful concept because words carry so much weight and have the ability to shape our lives. If you were to be impeccable with your word would you say the same things you said yesterday? What would you change? It’s good to reflect on these questions and determine if you are speaking with truth and love or are you speaking from a place of fear or frustration. It’s great to determine the pattern of your speech and what emotions live there. There's no person who will always speak in the direction of truth and love just because they read the book however it’s helpful to begin putting into practice. Question the areas where you could improve your word. During the current times of COVID and quarantine there could be many of us who can practice improving our word which isn’t a problem it’s just another opportunity to pay attention.
2. DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY
The book talks about how nothing that others say or do is because of you, it’s merely a projection of their own reality. Most people experience what others do as a personal meaning in their life. It’s worth thinking about that. Are you someone who struggles with taking things personally or are you someone who doesn’t take things personally? This can be applied to both good and bad scenarios. If you’re used to someone such as your mother providing great care for you and you believe it’s for you when it’s actually for her and fulfilling the need that she has to be a good mother then that can feel scary. It can challenge the way you think people feel about you and if they love you the same. For this particular concept I like to take what is useful and apply it. This doesn’t necessarily change your relationships with the people you love but it does create clarity and boundaries around waiting for other people to do things for you or provide you with a certain level of love and security. This isn’t necessary because it isn’t personal if they don’t do it. I think in this scenario it is more important to focus on the things that aren’t happening in our lives versus the things that are going well. When you apply this to areas where you find yourself in episodes of disappointment, stress or frustration then not taking things personally can be helpful.
3. DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
Ask questions and express what you want. Communicate with others clearly to avoid negative situations. This agreement has weight behind it because I think it pulls in the concept to be impeccable with your word. It puts communication as a personal responsibility. Sometimes this can be more of a hurdle for women in particular and I say that because there are some socialization practices that encourage us not to always communicate directly. Ask yourself if this is difficult for you or if you’re already applying this concept? I wouldn’t say I was taught to communicate directly but over the years and through self exploration I have found that I am happier when I do practice not making assumptions. I personally don’t like to waste energy on thinking about what others mean I’d rather ask them and save myself the time. This can be a bit of a tough concept to put into practice.
4. ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Your best is something that will constantly be changing due to a variety of factors such as your health. If you do your best in every situation you can avoid feelings of self judgement and regret. I think this is a fair agreement and I appreciate that the author mentioned that you shouldn’t expect your best to look the same everyday. This makes me think of a concept I have shared with my private therapy clients as well as with my Mindset Cultivation students. The concept is that the best you have to offer will vary from day to day. What I like to say is you’ll have your bronze days where you’ll just show up but things might not be perfect, your silver days where things are flowing and you’re hitting your momentum and your gold days where you are in full swing. Every type of day is valid.
THOUGHTS FROM THE BOOK CLUB
One comment that was made was about the concept of loving someone by accepting them completely as they are and by wanting to change them you don’t really love the person. This is a very beautiful point to be clear on especially if you are choosing to pursue someone or sharing your life with someone. Let go of the idea of trying to change someone or trying to mold someone into something you want them to be. Trying to change someone's character or personality traits will not work. No one is going to rebuild their cerebral patterns and concepts for anyone else’s behalf. If you find yourself in friendships or relationships where the person is continually getting on your nerves then we have to explore if they have more good that makes them worthy and realize that there are always going to be parts of people that you interact with that won’t always work for you. In our relationships we have to value others for who they are. We can make space for boundaries on how we interact with each other but as far as personality traits it is what it is and you cannot change someone's personality. If someone wants to change and grow then it’s their job to do so.
Another point that was brought up from one of the members was how the author touches on how we’ve been indoctrinated. The author talks about how each of us are born and taught to live in a version of reality called a dream. In this dream everything is happening on a stage. We live in the dream playing out the behaviors that are taught to us, reinforced and rewarded and we avoid the behaviors that are punishable because there is a socialization that happens from parents to children. Being indoctrinated and domesticated by other people in our social circle who are in the dream version of reality where we are all playing to the social norms that are expected of us based on our ages and stages of life. I struggled with this concept. I sat with it and mulled over why I liked and didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because it is what would happen. Parents will teach their children what they know for better or for worse. There are good parts of it too such as having social agreements such as we all agree to wear clothes when we go outside. We want to be able to override what we were taught and replace it with what we feel authentically. In the book it doesn’t really mention how that would fit in so I began asking myself things like if that were to happen how would it fit in to our lives? What would we go to feel more free? Would they be good or bad things? I would assume that it’s meant to do good things and let yourself be who you are. I remove the barriers from life that prevent me from being who I am.
A point was made in the book club which was questioning how we domesticate our children when they need to live in this society. To that I say figure out who you are and practice that. We don’t automatically know who we are, we have to figure that out. I also find that as far as domesticating our children we want to raise them to be self sustained and the highest possible quality of life but we also need to teach our children to be themselves. Are we creating space for them to find out who they are or are we overly directive? We would do this by telling them they need to be a doctor or a lawyer instead of allowing them to come to that conclusion on their own. Always evolving is a natural thing that happens. When we learn who we are there is less of a chance of imposter syndrome.
FAVORITE QUOTES
One of my favorite quotes from the book is “Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing”. I think this is powerful because this can apply to almost every situation. When we take things personally we attach our emotions which means our energy will be attached as well. That’s not how we want to live because then we realize we are out of energy before the day is even over.
“You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices”. I like this one because it returns your power and energy force back to you. You don’t have to worry about what everyone else is doing.
“You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life, you’re here to be happy and to live and do your best. If you intend to do two hours of meditation but do eight hours instead you will grow tired, miss the point and won’t enjoy your life”. I liked this one because you don’t want to get lost in a numbers game for your self care game but instead focus on what you physically and emotionally need and connect with that. In our Holistic Ambition community we are trying to better our lives but we don’t need to do ten self care tasks a day or have an intensive practice to improve our quality of life.
I think this book is a great book for anyone to read. The book is an easy read and concepts are easy to understand then apply to your life. I also plan on reading Don Miguel Ruiz’s other books such as The Mastery of Love and The Fifth Agreement. I think he is a very powerful author and I look forward to sharing any insights I’ll gain from the other books. If you’re interested in joining our book club we focus on books that feature black authors, health, wellness, nutrition, fitness as well as black sci fi. If you don’t know about black sci fi or afrofuturism then you have been missing out!
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