Amazon describes the book “The Four Agreements” as offering a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The author reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. 

I describe is as the “best book per word” I have ever read.   This series is on the subsequent book “The 5th Agreement.”
Where they cover and expand upon the original 4 agreements – and add new wisdom.   

THE SECOND AGREEMENT: 

DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY  

Whatever people think of you is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn’t you.

At this point, it’s clear that the people you love the most don’t really know you, and you don’t know them either. The only thing you know about them is what you believe about them.

You only know the image you created for them, and that image has nothing to do with the real people.

Then you come to the conclusion that you don’t even know yourself, because you’ve been acting for so long that you’ve mastered pretending to be what you are not.

With this awareness, you realize how ridiculous it is to say, “My beloved doesn’t understand me. Nobody understands me.” Of course they don’t. You don’t even understand yourself.

Your personality is always changing from one moment to the next, according to the role you are playing, according to the secondary characters in your story, according to the way you are dreaming at that time.

Now it’s easy to understand why there is so much conflict between humans. The world is populated by billions of dreamers who aren’t aware that people are living in their own world, dreaming their own dream.

From the point of view of the main character, which is their only point of view, everything is all about them. When the secondary characters say something that doesn’t agree with their point of view, they get angry, and try to defend their position. They want the secondary characters to be the way they want them to be, and if they are not, they feel very hurt.  

They take everything personally. With this awareness, you can also understand the solution, and it’s something so simple and logical: Don’t take anything personally.  

Now the meaning of the second agreement is profoundly clear. This agreement gives you immunity in the interaction you have with the secondary characters in your story.

You don’t have to concern yourself with other people’s points of view. Once you can see that nothing others say or do is about you, it doesn’t matter who gossips about you, who blames you, who rejects you, who disagrees with your point of view. All the gossip doesn’t affect you. You don’t even bother to defend your point of view. You just let the dogs bark, and surely they will bark, and bark, and bark.

Don’t take anything personally is a beautiful tool of interaction with your own kind, human to human. And it’s a big ticket to personal freedom because you no longer have to rule your life according to other people’s opinions.

This really frees you! You can do whatever you want to do, knowing that whatever you do has nothing to do with anyone but you.

Once you understand that all humans live in their own world, in their own movie, in their own dream, the second agreement is pure common sense: Don’t take anything personally.