The Power of Four: A Review of “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz & Janet Mills

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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The first printing of The Four Agreements ran to 6,500 copies. By April 2000 the book had gone through nine printings and 125,000 copies, and by the end of that year nineteen printings had put close to a million copies in circulation, according to a Publishers Weekly report marking the book’s fifteenth anniversary. The idea underneath those numbers is compact: four short rules meant to replace the unwritten ones people absorb as children. Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills built a self-help classic on that premise, and the reasons it sells, along with the reasons some readers push back, say a good deal about the genre.

A Surgeon, a Publisher, and a Dictated Manuscript

Ruiz was born on August 27, 1952, in Tijuana, Baja California, the youngest of 13 children, and trained as a surgeon (Wikipedia). A reading-guide summary at Butler-Bowdon supplies the family background that the book’s marketing leans on: a mother who was a curandera (healer), a grandfather described as a nagual (shaman), and a car accident in the early 1970s, during his last year of medical school, that sent him back toward his family’s tradition. The same summary has him moving to the United States in the 1980s.

The book itself came through Janet Mills, founder and president of Amber-Allen Publishing in San Rafael, California. She met Ruiz when a mutual friend suggested she join one of his “Power Journeys” near the pyramids of Teotihuacán, and she decided to publish his first book after the two became friends. Ruiz told Publishers Weekly that he dictated the manuscript to her in English and that she edited it. Amber-Allen released it in 1997 as The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, with Mills credited as co-author (Wikipedia).

Growth started slowly and then jumped. Ellen DeGeneres brought the book up on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey became a fan, and a feature in the premiere issue of O, The Oprah Magazine followed. Publishers Weekly places that issue in May 2000; Wikipedia’s entry dates the magazine feature to 2001, so the sources disagree by about a year. Sales totals are similarly date-dependent. Publishers Weekly reported 5.2 million copies in 2012, while the current Wikipedia entry cites roughly 15 million copies in the United States, 53 languages, and more than a decade on the New York Times list.

The Four Agreements, One at a Time

Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity and say what you mean. In Ruiz’s framing, words create things, so gossip and self-directed negativity count as damage rather than idle talk.

Don’t take anything personally. Other people’s behavior is about their own state of mind. The line most often attached to this agreement is a short one:

“Nothing others do is because of you.”

(Source: Wikiquote, Don Miguel Ruiz, listing the line under The Four Agreements, 1997; the page gives no page number.)

Don’t make assumptions. Ask questions and say plainly what you want, so that guesses do not harden into grievances.

Always do your best. The standard moves with circumstances such as health or mood, and meeting it spares a person the habit of self-judgment and regret. Butler-Bowdon concedes that this one can seem elementary, then argues it holds the other three together, since the first three become easier once harsh self-judgment loosens (Butler-Bowdon).

The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan at first light with mist along the Avenue of the Dead

Domestication and the Dream Behind the Rules

The four rules are the practical end of a larger claim. According to the Butler-Bowdon summary, Ruiz treats ordinary reality as a shared dream, which he calls mitote, a fog of collective perception that people accept because it is hard to resist. He calls the process that installs it the “domestication of humans.” Along the way, people make unspoken agreements with others and, more importantly, with themselves, and many of those agreements cause suffering. LitCharts names the book’s antagonists as the Judge and the Victim, internal voices that enforce the old rules, and notes that the book’s climax is a pair of prayers.

Ruiz has described the appeal of the book himself, in remarks Publishers Weekly quoted:

“a way of life based on wisdom rather than common sense.”

(Source: Don Miguel Ruiz, quoted in Publishers Weekly.)

That description fits. The book’s strength is portability: each agreement fits in a sentence, applies on a Tuesday morning as readily as in a crisis, and asks for practice rather than belief. Its weakness sits one layer down. The dream and the domestication process are asserted rather than demonstrated, so a reader who does not already accept that framing has to take the rules on their own merits. A fair reading is that the agreements stand up reasonably well without the cosmology, while the cosmology offers little that can be checked.

One more caution applies to the second agreement. Critics cited by Shortform argue that taking nothing personally can be read as permission to ignore all outside criticism, which is the opposite of what a person trying to improve needs.

Watch: Ruiz on Not Taking Things Personally

A video titled “Don Miguel Ruiz: How to Not Take Things Personally” covers the second agreement, the one readers most often single out as the hardest to practice:

Small paperback lying open on a worn oak desk beside a handwritten notebook page

What the Critics Say

Butler-Bowdon is candid about the prose. The summary calls the work “not a great piece of writing” and says it may read as a basic version of shamanistic wisdom, yet it credits the book with helping many people assert their own identity for the first time (Butler-Bowdon). SuperSummary reports the same split among readers: praise for simple, practical guidance, and complaints about redundancy, thin depth, and occasional oversimplification.

The harsher reviews on Goodreads go further. One reader called the explanations “conclusory, circular, and intentionally unclear,” and others found the book repetitive and its ideas unoriginal. Those are individual opinions rather than a verdict, and they sit next to a very large body of positive ratings, but they show where the friction is: the book offers confident answers with little supporting argument.

The Toltec framing draws a separate line of criticism. LitCharts observes that Ruiz uses “Toltec” for spiritual beliefs drawn from Mexico’s broader indigenous culture and oral history rather than for a documented historical civilization, and links his writing to neoshamanism and the New Thought movement. Wikipedia’s entry on Ruiz notes that some people associate his work with Carlos Castaneda’s, and Butler-Bowdon says the book’s premise follows Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan. Shortform adds that historians disagree about what the Toltec were and that most of what survives about them comes through Aztec and post-colonial sources.

A religious objection comes from Susan Brinkmann, who argued in a December 2023 post on the Women of Grace blog that Ruiz’s system rests on animism and New Age thought, “neither of which is compatible with Christianity.” That is a faith-based critique, and readers who do not share the premise may weigh it differently, but it is a real position held by a real readership.

From Paperback to Card Deck

No feature film or documentary adaptation of the book turned up in the sources used for this review. What exists instead is a long list of formats. Wikipedia lists hardback and paperback editions, an audiobook, a color-illustrated book, a card deck, and an online course, and Publishers Weekly describes a four-color gatefold paperback illustrated by Nicholas Wilton for the fifteenth anniversary.

The strongest pop-culture marker remains the Oprah connection. A February 2013 post on the blog Juan of Words previewed a Super Soul Sunday interview with Ruiz scheduled for March 3 on OWN, and says Winfrey first met Ruiz through DeGeneres in 1999. Ruiz kept writing with Mills afterward: The Mastery of Love arrived in 1999, and The Fifth Agreement, written with Mills and his son Don José, appeared in 2010 (Wikipedia).

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the four agreements?
Be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best.

Who is Janet Mills?
Founder and president of Amber-Allen Publishing, which released the book in 1997. According to Publishers Weekly, Ruiz dictated the manuscript to her in English and she edited it.

Is it actually Toltec wisdom?
That depends on what “Toltec” is taken to mean. LitCharts says Ruiz uses the word for spiritual beliefs from Mexico’s broader indigenous culture and oral history, not for a documented historical civilization, and historians cited by Shortform disagree about what the Toltec were. Readers looking for scholarship on the historical Toltecs will not find it here.

How long is the book?
Short. Goodreads lists a 152-page hardcover and SuperSummary lists 160 pages, so the count varies by edition. SuperSummary’s header estimates about a two-hour read.

Is there a movie?
None turned up in the sources used for this review. The book has been adapted into audio, illustrated, card-deck and online-course formats instead.

What is The Fifth Agreement?
A 2010 sequel co-written with Janet Mills and Ruiz’s son Don José (Wikipedia). LitCharts summarizes its addition as being skeptical while learning to listen. Shortform reports that some critics see it as retreading the first book.

Four smooth river stones stacked on a weathered wooden dock at dawn

Where to Read It

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills is the book reviewed here, short enough that a two-hour read is the usual estimate. See it on Amazon (affiliate link)

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

Further Reading

Sources

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