The 4 agreements are a simple way to focus the mind and actions upon our own choices, without the dramas of worrying what others are thinking. Overall the impact of the content can be profound, as a method for remaining authentic to our unique selves. The introduction also needs a mention, because it shares a kind of cosmology as to what is really going on in society and how we could become lost in rules, concepts, beliefs and institutional norms that already existed long before we were born. Such as the fact that we didn't even choose the language we speak. However I notice where this will also come from, seeing as the author is Mexican with Shamanic/Medicine People of that part of the world as ancestors. We mustn't forget that the ancestral wounding of his ancestors, who would have been abused and conquered by brutal European Conquistador forces, would create a generational awareness of: being denied to speak your own language, to grow certain crops, to own land, to live by your own cultures rules. In my own cosmological world view, at soul level we always have choices and we may even have chosen to incarnate into a certain culture at a certain time. So the introduction doesn't entirely resonate with subtle allusions to a disempowering victimhood. However for others the introduction may be the first time they awaken to looking at the dynamics of society and their own freedom of choice within that. Other than that, the 4 agreements themselves have reflections of Buddhism, although this is in a different unique way. The agreements foster courage, authentic self expression, compassion, truth, happiness, self regulation and much more in a little book that could be life changing for some people.

Suitability:very good

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.

The author assumes to know what the readers lives and feelings are. More criticisms than uplifting content. The essence agreements is great. The last to chapters are the best. I got tired of being told how my life is, what I experience, and what Im feeling. Also, he assumed we believe in God.

I only hear good things about this book, so I really didn’t expect to not like it. At the base, the concept is fine. One of the writing issues is that the author gives so many examples for the same idea. It’s like he didn’t think people understood what he said the first time, so he said it about 10 more for good measure, and it makes it pretty repetitive. Some of the added examples really ended up turning me off of the book because he stretches things, like cancer, for instance, and puts having cancer as controllable by the mind or something if you achieve a certain freedom by embracing one of the agreements. Overall, I think there are good base concepts in this book, but it could be said much more succinctly. The writing is simple and redundant. There’s also Christianity in the book, which I wasn’t expecting and was personally turned off by, but that part didn’t affect my rating.