The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz.

2/5 rating. 129 pages.

Book #19 of 2021. Read February 22, 2021.

This book is a mixture of useful advice surrounded by such over-the-top spiritual talk and bullshit that I just couldn’t enjoy it.

The main premise is to live in the present moment and to follow the 4 below pieces of great advice:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best

You have now read just about the only worthwhile parts of the book, while avoiding such sappy, new-agy cliches as: “You can choose to believe in anything, and that includes believing in yourself.”

I know that there are tons of people who love this book and ones like it, but even with as open-minded as I try to be, I just can’t deal with this much woo-woo in one book. Take his advice for following the four agreements above, and don’t read this unless you are really ready to get into a new-age self-help workshop.

Quotes:

“We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected. The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone that we are not. We become a copy of Mamma’s beliefs, Daddy’s beliefs, society’s beliefs, and religion’s beliefs.”

“The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have powerful memory.”

“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.”

“We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves.”

“Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.”

“If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life.”

“We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice.”

“What the angel of death can teach us is how to be truly alive. We become aware that we can die at any moment; we have just the present to be alive.”

#thefouragreements #selfhelp #woowoo #newage #bookreviews #books

IG Link.