68 pages • 2 hours read
Don Miguel RuizThe Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best”
The fourth and final agreement—Always Do Your Best—allows the other three agreements to become habits that will change one’s life. Ruiz begins the chapter by explaining that one’s best always differs depending on life circumstances, energy levels, emotional states, sobriety, etc. Nevertheless, Ruiz advises people to keep doing their best—no more, no less. Those who try too hard expend more energy than necessary, and it still won’t be enough. On the other hand, those who do less than their best often feel frustrated, angry, and guilty.
To illustrate this point, Ruiz cites an example of a man studying at a Buddhist temple. The man wants to transcend suffering in this life quickly, so he asks his Buddhist master how long he ought to meditate. The master responds that if he meditates for six hours, he may transcend in 10 years. The man asks how soon he’ll transcend if he meditates for eight hours instead, and the master replies that it would take 20 years to transcend. The man is understandably confused. The master tells him that if he can do his best in two hours of meditation but spends eight, he’ll miss the point of the meditation and only grow frustrated and tired.
Ruiz adds that doing one’s best for its own sake is more beneficial than working for a reward. When people do their best, they’re taking action for the sake of action itself, not only for the reward it provides. Living this way, people will be productive, happy, and good to themselves and others. However, taking action only for the reward it provides leads to suffering. When someone acts because they feel that they must do it, they’re tired, frustrated, and unfulfilled. This is how most people view their jobs, working only for payment. This leads people to escapism, like getting drunk on the weekends because they dislike who they are or the life that they’re living. Acting is how people live fully, and when they’re doing their best, they take the action because they want to, not because they have to.
Doing one’s best also frees one from the Book of Law, the Judge, and the Victim. When people do their best, the Judge can no longer accuse them. Doing their best is their defense. In addition, it teaches people how to accept themselves and learn from mistakes without guilt—contrary to what the Book of Law teaches.
Ruiz encourages people to make doing their best a ritual, just like they make taking a shower or cooking dinner a ritual. As an example, he cites the Indian ritual called puja. In this ritual, the Indian people feed, bathe, and give affection to idols that represent God to them. This is their way of saying “I love you” to God. Ruiz advises people that the best way to tell their God, “I love you” is to live in the present and let go of the past by doing their best.
He then applies the concept to the previous three agreements. He claims that the first three agreements—being impeccable with your word, not taking anything personally, and not making assumptions—work only if people do their best. Years of domestication and habits ensure that people aren’t always impeccable with their word and still sometimes take things personally or make assumptions. However, when people do their best, they err less often—and even if they do, they won’t judge themselves or feel guilty, because they know they did their best. Ruiz advises people to practice the first three agreements and do their best in those practices. Repetition is the best way to learn.
Ruiz reminds people that they’re a manifestation of God. Just like the Indian ritual of puja, doing one’s best is a ritual of love for oneself. When people honor who they are, every thought and action comes from communion with God, and they’ll see their dream change right in front of them.
In concluding the chapter, Ruiz briefly reviews the four agreements and promises that those who choose to honor them can transform hell into heaven. He emphasizes that making this choice takes a strong will because obstacles are everywhere. He emphasizes that people must be warriors and defend the four agreements because their freedom and happiness depend on it. He closes the chapter by discouraging people from judging themselves if they fall short, and advises instead that they choose to honor the four agreements again and keep moving forward. It’s difficult at first, but if they continue to do their best, they’ll see their lives transform. He recommends that people live their lives one day at a time, doing their best, and soon it’ll become easy.
Chapter 5 Analysis
Chapter 5 is longer than the previous three chapters because Ruiz shows how applying the fourth agreement—Always Do Your Best—supports the first three (Be Impeccable with Your Word, Don’t Take Anything Personally, and Don’t Make Assumptions). The last agreement is easiest to conceptualize and understand through the book’s three themes. First, doing one’s best means challenging the Self-Limiting Agreements. The Book of Law, Judge, and Victim mindset developed during domestication and continues to determine one’s reality if one allows it. By doing one’s best, however, a person actively combats that belief system:
When you do your best, you don’t give the Judge an opportunity to find you guilty or blame you. If you have done your best and the Judge tries to judge you according to your Book of Law, you’ve got the answer: ‘I did my best.’ There are no regrets (80).
Similarly, doing an action for the sake of doing your best and not for a reward challenges the beliefs learned during domestication. In Chapter 1, Ruiz writes, “We train our children whom we love so much the same way that we train any domesticated animal: with a system of punishment and reward” (6). Therefore, by doing an action for the sake of doing it, and not for a reward, one rewrites the self-limiting beliefs formed during domestication—and makes new agreements.
Next, doing one’s best is a choice that one must make multiple times a day, reinforcing the theme The Necessity of Choice. Going against the habits formed during domestication, which tell individuals to judge themselves for every tiny mistake, is difficult. Making a ritual of doing your best is a choice that will break old agreements and consistently form new, beneficial agreements: “Doing my best has become a ritual in my life because I made the choice to make it a ritual. It’s a belief like any other belief that I choose” (83). As people choose to break those old agreements by doing their best and learning to accept themselves, their actions form the new agreement and change their lives.
As in the previous chapters, Ruiz concludes with encouragement to look forward to the new dream, highlighting the theme Unconditional Love, in which one releases the Book of Law and is free to create a new reality. The last few pages of the chapter illustrate what life can look like when people practice all four agreements:
When you honor these four agreements together, there is no way that you will live in hell. There is no way. 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. You are going to control your life one hundred percent (87-88).
The chapter ends by providing encouragement to keep going even if one falls, because keeping the agreements gets easier with time and practice. The last agreement, Always Do Your Best, is the key to start living in heaven on earth.
