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The Fourth Agreement: “Always do your best.” 

Ruiz explains the Fourth Agreement to be the key to upholding the other three agreements. Doing our best does not mean the same thing every day. Some days are better than other days, and so the limit of our ability is always changing over time. Trying to do more than your best will exhaust you, while doing less than your best will create suffering in the form of judgment and guilt. Doing our best is what creates enjoyment in life and allows us to live without regrets. This requires us to take action for the sake of action, not for the sake of a reward. If we do an action for a reward, then we will suffer through it, but if we do an action only for the sake of the action, we can find enjoyment in it. In this way, we can learn to accept ourselves and not reject ourselves, increasing our awareness of ourselves and what makes us happy. We are not living our life to please others or to escape their judgments, but we’re living instead for ourselves and our own enjoyment.

Action is what allows us to live our lives to the fullest, while inaction deprives us of our own lives. Action is what allows us to manifest our own self-concept and desires in the world. There can be no results or rewards without our actions. Even so, it is the way that we do the actions that matters most. Ruiz uses the example of a ritual in India called puja, in which they bathe images of deities in a way that expresses their love. Ruiz repeats what he said in the Introduction, that all of life is God, and that by living your life in the present and being yourself, you are able to express your love and honor your life, or God. Repeating these actions will let them becomes habits, which can transform your life into one in which you honor life, or God, whether you are religious or not.

Ruiz ends the chapter by explaining that the Four Agreements allow you to master this art of transformation, and that the key to creating these habits and mastering that art is doing your best with each of the other three agreements. According to Ruiz, the Toltec people considered this mastery a way of transcending the illusory Dream and being one with God, allowing one to live in a world free of judgment and suffering.

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