Most of what you believe about yourself, you never agreed to. It was handed to you before you could argue back, and you have been running it ever since.

This is Episode 01 of a six-part series on don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements, the book I have gifted more than any other. Before we get to the agreements themselves, we have to look at what they are correcting. Ruiz calls it the Dream of the Planet. I call it the software you didn't write.

In this episode

• What Ruiz means by domestication, and why the reward and punishment system you grew up inside is still running now.
• The Book of Law: the rulebook you inherited about what is acceptable, what is shameful, and who you are allowed to be.
• The Judge and the Victim, and why they work as a pair. One hands down the verdict, the other serves the sentence.
• Why noticing the dream is the whole first move. You cannot renegotiate an agreement you don't know you made.
• What this looks like in coaching rooms with men who have never once questioned the rules they are living by.

One thing to try this week

Catch one rule you are obeying without ever having chosen it. Don't fix it. Don't argue with it. Just write it down and put a question mark after it.

Links

• Read the full essay: The Dream We Didn't Choose on Substack
• Free two-page cheat sheet for this episode: fouragreements.8notes.co.uk
• On Instagram, comment or DM the word DREAM and the cheat sheet comes straight to you.
• Join the 8Notes waiting list: waitlist.8notes.co.uk

The book

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by don Miguel Ruiz (Amber-Allen, 1997). Everything here is my reading of it. Go and get the book.

The 8Notes Reading Room is a podcast about the books that change how we think about being human. Written and hosted by Adrian Melrose. More at 8notes.co.uk.