Reddit reviews The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

The Four Agreements

>1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

>2. Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. 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.

>3. 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.


>4. 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.

I am so sorry to hear about the trouble your son is going through. I'm glad you're turning your life around and trying to support him.

I don't know if this will help, but maybe. I am not gay, but for many years after I left the JWs I still suffered from depression, a lack of self-esteem and suicidal thoughts because I was convinced that {I} was wrong for leaving the JWs. I must not have been good enough.

It was thanks to a lot of self-help resources from many places that I started to get over that. There's a big gap between realizing you're being lied to and realizing that you are a valuable person on your own. When you've been told you're worthless for so long, even when people keep telling you that's not true, it takes time for you to start believing it.

A big help for me (your mileage may vary) was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Learning to recognize "self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering" and replacing them with "agreements" that you make with yourself worked wonders.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005BRS8Z6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Good luck to you and your son, and I hope he recovers.

I haven't read this one yet but its on my list.

The Conscious Caregiver: A Mindful Approach to Caring for Your Loved One Without Losing Yourself https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUEYL0T/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_PanwCbH3G8MS5

While its not about caregiving, I would also recommend

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005BRS8Z6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_8bnwCbV5WCPZM

Like the others have said, there are a variety of reasons why you might be doing this. One potential problem is that you place to much value on what others think of you, and think that lying will raise yourself in their esteem. It probably won't be an easy fix, but it's good that you're willing to make a change. Check out "Lying" to learn about why people lie. Try The Four Agreements for a practical guide about how to make improvements in your life (one of the agreements is to 'always be impeccable with your word')

I read The Four Agreements recently and one of the things it discusses is not making assumptions. I think it helped me out with an issue similar to yours. Maybe check it out and see if any of it sticks for you.

New-agey and a bit weird, but useful. You should give it a read.

Je te le à book that can help toi. I wish toi thé Best

https://www.amazon.fr/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom-ebook/dp/B005BRS8Z6

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

"In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love."

That might be a little too obvious, but, it is one of the most life changing books I've read.

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom-ebook/dp/B005BRS8Z6

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I don't think that reliance upon anyone else's opinions is a productive way to live your life. That being said, I don't see the harm in letting other people's opinions influence me.

If you're just looking to read, I would suggest Lying by Sam Harris or The Four Agreements by Miguel Perez

Is it this? http://www.amazon.com/Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom-ebook/dp/B005BRS8Z6

Good points on all! Maybe I need to go re-read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz again, and revisit this. :)
(A great, easy read and #1 book I highly recommend! http://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom-ebook/dp/B005BRS8Z6/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421457689&sr=1-4)

Book name: The Four Agreements

Author: Don Miguel Ruiz

Why you think this book should be read by our book club:

Is the book available online? Where?

Amazon.com - kindle

Scribd.com - read online

I mean its the internet. Someone is always gonna get mad. Just be honest with your word and that's what really matters. How people perceive it is on them not you. I recommend the book The Four aggrements sometime. Its a quick read with some strong ideas.

>Need more reading suggestions - focusing on OI / DNGAF.

and

>My beta shit goblin keeps popping up and I keep telling him to STFU.

I'm only a bit through The 4 Agreements - but if you liked WOTSM this might be good for you. Warning, it's hippie, but there is an entire agreement on defeating your beta shit goblin. It's literally a 1/4 of the book. Audiobook is only 2.5 hours.

>On the topic of sex, I have been initiating less (2x last week, 1 success). Two reasons for this. 1) I was sick with a sinus infection and was worn out. 2) I am purposefully not initiating if it's validation seeking. Only if I really want to fuck and I truly DNGAF if she wants to or not. This has helped me be OI and the one rejection I had, I didn't care (not just pretended I didn't care... I really felt no different). Kissed her, read, and went to sleep.

It wasn't too long ago I was grinding on the separation of validation and sex. Keep it up... I think you're close. When i got this part down cold the needle started to move.

>My only fear currently is if I can keep this up without falling back into my emotions and feeling sorry for myself.

Beta shit goblin strikes again.

Keep up the good work dude.

Thank you for your courage and taking the time to write this all out; you are on an incredible journey.

I have always believed that life was like school; if we don't learn the lesson in this life, we have to come back and repeat the "grade" next "year". I'm certain your intuition is telling you important things right now, most notably that this life has the potential to turn out in a similar fashion to a previous one if you are unable to find the insights and wisdom you need to push past the particular obstacles facing you this time.

It sounds as though your Mom needs healing just as much as you do, but you have absolutely no control over her spiritual process. The best you can do for yourself and your whole family is to become a trailblazer leading the way to a happier life, and it most certainly can be done. We are not doomed to repeat past mistakes, that is just the "autopilot" mode running in the background until we wake up and take the wheel.

It sounds as if it would be very beneficial for you to specifically focus on healing, shifting your focus and attention from anxiety and feeling like you already know the future (it's really not written in stone) to how you will heal and release the pain you are carrying. The pain we carry not only accumulated in this life, but also in the lives of our ancestors and this can get passed down to us as well, so when we begin to focus on our own healing, we can also pay respect to our ancestors by acknowledging their suffering and sending them love and peaceful thoughts (this includes your mother).

While anxiety may be an unavoidable part of BPD, we can make our own anxiety worse by obsessively focusing on it. When we shift the focus to healing, the anxiety doesn't necessarily go away but we are no longer giving it ultimate power in our lives. As we form this habit more and more, anxiety slowly fades in prominence. It is healing, not anxiety, that gives us feelings of peace and enjoyment in life, so if you do want more peace and enjoyment, and to find a new path forward, then it seems that moving your focus toward healing will be a helpful way to feel better on some level.

I'll recommend several books and hopefully at least one will spark your interest. You might be able to get a few of them from the library if you don't want to buy them, and most are on Amazon/Kindle to read on your phone.

The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield: this is an easy read that gives people more insight into the underlying energy exchange happening in our personal/family relationships as well as the interplay between ourselves and our religion (in this case, Catholicism). There is a "control" paradigm clearly on display here, and I sense those very same undercurrents happening around you as well, so this is an easy read that brings those ideas more into focus so that you can move to the next book...

The Empowerment Dynamic: The Power of TED, David Emerald: one of the single most important books a person can read when they are struggling with relationships. In every conflict, we can identify one of three roles being played out; a Victim, a Persecutor, or a Rescuer. A person can even swap between several roles in the course of one argument, moving from the aggressive persecutor to the slighted victim the moment someone stands up to their bullying behavior. It's so incredibly important to be able to identify this behavior in real time so that you can stop responding to it in the same old habitual ways. This book illustrates how to shift your perspective so that you no longer have to have those arguments. The most important point here is that you don't read this book to have an idea of how to change others; you read this book to have an idea how you relate to others, and in many cases, others begin to relate to you differently because your behavior changed, but you did not specifically change them (nor should you try).

The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz: this is a beautifully simple little book that encapsulates four principles of Tol'tec wisdom, which mesh well with any other religion.

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Sacred Contracts, Caroline Myss: this one will really speak to your spiritual path and your spiritual connection with others, and why we reincarnate back into similar situations so that we can ultimately resolve chronic spiritual issues.

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The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh, Thich Nhat Hanh: powerful, simple stories from a beloved Zen Buddhist monk. Comforting, illuminating, loving and compassionate.

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Sending you love and support, wishing you peace.