Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of Toltec spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts.
He is best known for his famous book, The Four Agreements, which was published in 1997 and remained a New York Times bestseller for over a decade. The book advocates personal freedom from beliefs and agreements that we have made with ourselves and others that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives.
I think it’s an imperative message that we all need to read. So many of us are chasing freedom, but what we really want is freedom to be ourselves. This is all based on our own belief systems and “agreements” that we’ve made with ourselves.
If you’re looking for the best Don Miguel Ruiz Quotes then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the collection below.
Inspiring Don Miguel Ruiz Quotes
1. “The Four Agreements: 1. Be impeccable with your word. 2. Don’t take anything personally. 3. Don’t make assumptions. 4. Always do your best.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
2. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
3. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
4. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
5. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
6. “Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
7. “When we believe in lies, we cannot see the truth, so we make thousands of assumptions and we take them as truth. One of the biggest assumptions we make is that the lies we believe are the truth!” – Don Miguel Ruiz
8. “We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
9. “You know that if you lie to yourself, surely other people lie to themselves. And if they lie to themselves, they will lie to you also.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
10. “We never stop to consider that our beliefs are only a relative truth that’s always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
11. “Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
12. “When you look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use the word to tell yourself lies? If you believe that you are not attractive enough, then you believe a lie, and you are using the word against yourself, against the truth.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
13. “Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
14. “Listen to other people tell their story, but don’t believe them. You know that it’s just a story that is only true for them, but listen because the communication can be wonderful.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
15. “The whole world can love you, but that love will not make you happy. What will make you happy is the love coming out of you.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
16. “The more you practice gratitude, the more you see how much there is to be grateful for, and your life becomes an ongoing celebration of joy and happiness.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
17. “All of the drama you suffer in your personal life is the result of believing in lies, mainly about yourself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
18. “It’s difficult to try and be what you are not. Being what you are doesn’t require any effort. When you become wise, you accept yourself the way you are, and the complete acceptance of yourself becomes the complete acceptance of everyone else.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
19. “I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
20. “The happiest moments in your life are when you are playing just like a child when you are exploring and creating just for fun. It is wonderful when you behave like a child because this is the normal human tendency.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
21. “Whatever life takes away from you, let it go.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
22. “The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you’ve created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
23. “When the love comes from somebody else, we can feel it and it’s nice, but when we feel our own love, it is the best thing that can happen to us.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
24. “You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes a difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
25. “If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
26. “You don’t need to change the world; you need to change yourself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
27. “If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
28. “People are starving for love, not knowing their heart is a magical kitchen. Open your heart. Open your magical kitchen and refuse to walk around the world begging for love. In your heart is all the love you need. Your heart can create any amount of love, not just for yourself, but for the whole world.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
29. “If you are aware that no one else can make you happy, and that happiness is the result of love coming out of you…this is the Mastery of Love” – Don Miguel Ruiz
30. “The need to be accepted is born…The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough for someone else is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
31. “If you can see yourself as an artist, and you can see that your life is your own creation, then why not create the most beautiful story for yourself?” – Don Miguel Ruiz
32. “I change the world by changing myself. I am changing the world by loving myself, by enjoying life, by making my personal world a dream of heaven. I change myself, and just like magic, other people start to change.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
33. “There’s a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
34. “Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about ‘me’.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
35. “You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you. When you truly understand this, and refuse to take things personally, you can hardly be hurt by the careless comments or actions of others.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
36. “Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
37. “The only truth for you is what you perceive in your world. With this awareness, there’s nothing to prove to anyone. It’s not about being right or wrong. You respect whatever somebody says because it’s another artist speaking. Respect is so important. When you learn to listen, you show respect for the other artists — you show respect for their art, for their creation.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
38. “Truly nothing matters but the present, because it is the only place where life can express itself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
39. “All your life you tried to be good enough for somebody else, and you left yourself last. You sacrificed your personal freedom to live according to somebody else’s point of view.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
40. “It is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suffering.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
41. “The real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
42. “Life brings to you exactly what you need. There is perfect justice in hell. There is nothing to blame. We can even say that our suffering is a gift. If you just open your eyes and see what is around you, it’s exactly what you need to clean your poison, to heal your wounds, to accept yourself, and to get out of hell.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
43. “A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
44. “In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
45. “You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you. It doesn’t matter what others did to you, you are going to forgive them because you don’t want to feel sick all the time. Forgiveness is for your own mental healing. You will forgive because you feel compassion for yourself. Forgiveness is an act of self-love.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
46. “Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
47. “Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you’re expecting a reward. Most people do the exact opposite: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don’t enjoy the action. And that’s the reason why they don’t do their best.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
48. “We don’t need to justify love; it is there or not there. Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
49. “We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
50. “To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive an express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
51. “The dream you are living is your creation. It is your perception of reality that you can change at any time. You have the power to create hell, and you have the power to create heaven. Why not dream a different dream? why not use your mind, your imagination, and your emotions to dream heaven?” – Don Miguel Ruiz
52. “Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
53. “Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exercise and do what makes your body feel good. This is puja to your body, and that is a communion between you and God.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
54. “If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life. You are going to control your life one hundred percent.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
55. “The way you see the world will depend upon the emotions you are feeling. When you are angry, everything around you is wrong, nothing is right.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
56. “You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction. You will hear the name of the person and you will have no emotional reaction. When someone can touch what used to be a wound and it no longer hurts you, then you know you have truly forgiven.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
57. “Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice; to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny. To suffer, or to love and be happy. To live in hell, or to live in heaven.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
58. “The way you react has been repeated thousands of times, and it has become a routine for you. You are conditioned to be a certain way. And that is the challenge: to change your normal reactions, to change your routine, to take a risk and make different choices.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
59. “We search for everything we believe we don’t have, not knowing that everything we are looking for is already inside us. We are born with it.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
60. “Your life is the manifestation of your dream; it is an art. You can change your life anytime if you aren’t enjoying the dream.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
61. “The only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
62. “How are you going to change the world? The answer is easy. By changing the world that exists in your head.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
63. “You can live in heaven right now. Heaven or hell is here and now; you don’t need to wait to die. If you take responsibility for your own life, for your own actions, then your future is in your hands, and you can live in heaven while your body is alive.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
64. “Do not let great ambitions overshadow small success.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
65. “How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is a thousand times for the same mistake. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for ONE mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
66. “We are alive and need to take risks. And if we fail, so what? Who cares? It doesn’t matter. Learn and move on without judgement.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
67. “Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
68. “The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves. But if we look at our lives we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others…The worst part is that most of us are not even aware that we are not free.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
69. “When you look in the mirror and hate what you see, you need addictions to survive.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
70. “We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
71. “We have millions of questions that need answers because there are so many things that the reasoning mind cannot explain. It is not important if the answer is correct; just the answer itself makes us feel safe.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
72. “There is really no reason to suffer. The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer. If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find. The same is true for happiness. The only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
73. “Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be. They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse themselves as well.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
74. “Humans create their own boundaries, their own limitations. We say what is humanly possible, and what is not possible. Then just because we believe it, it becomes truth for us.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
75. “The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don’t believe in lies, they simply disappear.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
76. “We are masters because we have the power to create and to rule our own lives.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
77. “If there is anything in your life that takes away your happiness, you have all the power you need to change it.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
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