Don Miguel Ruiz draws upon the ancient Toltec religion to share The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. He argues that most of us live our lives trapped in a hell of hundreds of large and small agreements, some of which we were taught explicitly, and some of which we osmosed through our live experience. He encourages us to simply our internal guideposts by establishing a foundation of four key agreements that govern who we are, what we feel, what we believe, and how we behave. They pave the way to happiness and freedom.

The First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word. The word is a powerful creative force through which we manifest everything. It can bring forth beauty and love or foment destruction. It plants seeds that grow into thoughts and actions. It can hook attention and cast spells. To be impeccable with words means taking responsibility for them and using them in service of truth, love, and life. It’s a difficult agreement to enact as there are substantive rewards for playing loose with the truth – politically, economically, socially. We may get guilty pleasures from trafficking in gossip or denigrating others to make ourselves feel better. Ruiz says: “If we adopt the first agreement, and become impeccable with our word, any emotional poison will eventually be cleaned from our mind and from our communication in our personal relationships.” We also become immune to others’ spells.

The Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally. We needn’t get hooked by what others do or say, whether it’s favorable or unfavorable. We are not obliged to react or defend ourselves. They have their beliefs and journeys; we have our own. Ruiz says: “When you make it a strong habit not to take anything personally, you avoid many upsets in your life… You can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you.”

The Third Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions. The human mind makes assumptions very quickly, often unconsciously. While this faculty has helped us survive, it can also cause suffering when we become overly committed to them and defend them rigorously. We can do damage to ourselves and others and to our relationships. It is better to keep an open mind, ask questions, gather facts, hold impressions lightly, and course correct as needed. Ruiz says: “The day you stop making assumptions you will communicate cleanly and clearly, free of emotional poison. Without making assumptions your word becomes impeccable.”

The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best. Circumstances may affect the “best” that might be offered at a given moment, but the intent for right effort should be paramount. It is done for its own sake, not for the promise of reward. It frees the mind of guilt even of the effort proved faulty; it was done with at its best in the moment. Ruiz says: “Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy.”