By practicing the Five Agreements, what you are really doing is respecting everything in creation. You are respecting your dream; you are respecting everybody else's dream. If you use these tools, your effort is really for everyone, because your joy, your happiness, your peace, and your heaven are contagious. When you are happy, the people around you are happy too, and it inspires them to change their own world.
Miguel Angel RuizWe learn to be right and to make everyone else wrong. The need to be right is the result of trying to protects the image we want to project to the outside. We have to impose our way of thinking, not just onto other humans, but even upon ourselves.
Miguel Angel RuizBe skeptical, but not as a social position, not claiming to be so intelligent that you cannot believe what other people say. It's not about being right and making everybody else wrong. No, you are skeptical because you know without a doubt that everybody lives in their own story, and in their story they have their own truth. But it's only truth in their mind, just as your truth is only truth in your mind, and nobody else's.
Miguel Angel RuizRespect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.
Miguel Angel RuizDoing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward
Miguel Angel RuizWhen you love without conditions, you the human and you the God, align with the spirit of life moving through you.
Miguel Angel RuizAs a kid, I succumbed to peer pressure; I created an image of myself that was not true. But that belief system ended with the death of a close friend. It was then that I reached out for help from my father. It wasn't the teachings of The Four Agreements exactly, it was just my father's teachings in general. And because of this, I am grateful to continue my family's legacy. In this way, I say "thank you" to my family and teachers before me.
Miguel Angel Ruiz