Trigger Warning: You might feel triggered by what you read in this blog. It’s okay to navigate away from this page and experience your emotions, to feel what you’re feeling. It’s okay to not be okay. When you’re ready, I encourage you to click back to this article and start anew. You are a warrior, and you are strong enough to win the war in your head.

In the spring of 2022, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, a book from Don Miguel Ruiz, changed my life forever. In many ways, I believe it also saved my life.

We all experience trauma in our own way. Something happens to us that we perceive as an injustice, something that goes against our personal book of law, and we feel pain from this experience. The pain can be physical, emotional, or spiritual; the scars left behind can be visible, invisible, or both.

If we manage this trauma effectively, and within the appropriate timeframe, we might just avoid being traumatized by this event for the rest of our lives. If we fail to check every box in our coping checklist, we might begin to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression.

Many different events can open wounds. There is no point in comparing your trauma to others - trauma is trauma. Some people witness death and dying, while others experience sexual harassment, assault, or rape that causes them to question their trust and faith in humanity. Some people experienced one negative relationship that scarred them forever.

People who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, like myself, all have one thing in common. We continue to traumatize ourselves. You might think you are suffering from an event which happened five years ago, but you are actually suffering from a thought that occurred five seconds ago. A memory of the event caused you to judge yourself, your internal victim accepted this judgement, and you punished yourself accordingly.

Life continues to shape us, as our internal book of law expands, one page after another. You might not even know a trigger exists, until your hand starts to shake, your breathing quickens, and you feel the walls of the room closing in around you. I’ve been there - more times than I’d like to remember.

My First Steps

On a warm, sunny day in the middle of March, which is somewhat of a rarity where I lived in Germany, I walked into my new therapist’s office and poured as many thoughts as I could from my brain. I had regularly visited another therapist in Champaign-Urbana, since returning home from Afghanistan, and I felt it necessary to get this new ally up to speed.

I opened by describing lessons learned from my childhood, divorce and deployment, while sharing my current strategies for managing PTSD-related panic attacks and anger. By the time this concluded, only twenty minutes remained for a targeted question and answer session.

Near the end of our dialogue, my therapist asked a blunt, yet fair question. “Dylan, are you thinking about hurting yourself?” His eyes appeared sincere. For the first time during that hour, I began to worry that I had said too much.

“No,” I replied. We sat in silence for what felt like five minutes before I continued. “I just don’t really know how to be happy anymore. I wake up, I do my job, and repeat. I eat healthily, and I exercise every day, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I enjoy it. I used to write fiction, play video games, and do other hobbies, but I just don’t enjoy those things anymore.

After hearing this, my therapist offered me one recommendation: read The Four Agreements. While he believed I possessed healthy ways of coping with stress, my current perspective on life wasn’t allowing me to enjoy the act of living.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I read The Four Agreements, along with The Mastery of Love - another classic from Don Miguel Ruiz.

I did not read these books casually, as one would read Harry Potter or an Agatha Christie classic. When I arrived home from work every evening, I read and reread each chapter. As I consumed each line, I journaled.

I wrote down important quotations and I created a personal inventory of my top negative agreements I believed about myself. Under each agreement, I described why I believed it and why it was not actually true. Sometimes, I even wrote little notes to myself, because it’s what I needed at the time.

My journey to personal freedom did not conclude after two weeks in the spring of 2022. In fact, over two years later, I still believe I have yet to fully reach the end of my voyage. However, I believe I am in a much healthier place after reading The Four Agreements and other books on Toltec wisdom.

The Four Agreements

As the title of the book suggests, Ruiz presents his readers with The Four Agreements - a set of principles for gaining personal freedom, derived from ancient Toltec wisdom. The Toltec designed these agreements to challenge self-limiting beliefs, which rob humans of joy and create needless suffering.

The Four Agreements are: Be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. According to Ruiz, adopting and practicing these guidelines encourages individual growth and happiness by fostering freedom, peace, and love in our lives.

Additionally, The Four Agreements describes the importance of challenging the negative, and often poisonous, beliefs we’ve made with ourselves throughout our lives. While the four agreements serve as a tool in their own right, achieving true personal freedom requires ridding ourselves of harmful agreements and attachments.

The Four Agreements in Detail

The first agreement is: “Be Impeccable With Your Word.” Speak with integrity and say only what you mean. Avoid using words to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

The second agreement is: “Don’t Take Anything Personally.” Nothing others do is because of you - it’s because of them. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

The third agreement is: “Don’t Make Assumptions.” Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

The fourth agreement is: “Always Do Your Best.” Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

As Don Miguel states repeatedly in his books, you cannot truly adopt these four agreements without first ridding yourself of your negative agreements. There are multiple strategies to accomplish this feat. For example, you could create a literal inventory, as I did, or you can confront each agreement one by one, as you recognize them challenging you in your daily life.

There is a fifth agreement, “Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen,” but I will cover that in a future post. Once one rids themselves of their old agreements and adopts the four agreements, it’s time to learn the fifth agreement.

Who are the Toltecs?

The Toltecs, an ancient Mesoamerican culture, are often regarded as a civilization that predated and influenced later cultures, including the Aztecs. Toltec civilization thrived between the 10th and mid-12th century CE. Historically, they are associated with the city of Tula, located in the present-day state of Hidalgo, Mexico.

Later Mesoamerican cultures often described the Toltecs as a sort of “golden age” civilization, which set many precedents in art, politics, and society. They are revered in Aztec narratives, where they are often depicted as the originators of many cultural practices and as exemplary artisans, particularly in metalwork and pottery.

Historians distinguish Toltec art by its skillful work in sculptures, particularly in stone columns and gigantic Atlantean figures - large stone sculptures representing warriors. These figures and monumental architecture, like pyramids and palaces, indicate a highly organized society with significant resources.

The Toltecs practiced a polytheistic religion with a pantheon that included gods like Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, who plays a significant role in their mythology and is revered as a god of wind, air and learning. According to myth, Quetzalcoatl was a Toltec priest-king who was forced into exile, due to the machinations of a rival deity, Tezcatlipoca.

The influence and legacy of the Toltecs extends well beyond their immediate geographic area and time period, influencing many aspects of Mesoamerican culture. Their artistic styles, religious practices, and architectural techniques were adopted and adapted by succeeding cultures, most notably the Aztecs, who considered the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors.

The Toltecs’ history lies somewhat shrouded in mystery, due to the blend of archaeological evidence and the mythologized accounts from later cultures, which sometimes blur the lines between historical fact and cultural legend. Nonetheless, their contributions to Mesoamerican cultural and historical landscapes are undeniable.

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