Book Diagram: The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz

Another in my series of diagramming out books from my past that have influenced me. In the best selling book The Four Agreements don Miguel Ruiz gives four principles to practice in order to create love and happiness in your life. Adopting and committing to these agreements is simple. Actually living and keeping these Four Agreements can  be one of the hardest things  you will ever do. It can also be one of the most life changing things you will ever do.

As you practice living these four practices your life will dramatically change. In the beginning these new habits will be challenging and you will lapse countless times. With practice these agreements become integrated into your being and every area of your life and become easy habits to keep.

The Four Agreements are:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

Tom

You can click on the diagram for a larger version. 

Diagraming 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Some of you who follow me on social media like Facebook or Google+ know that I have begun to re-read some of the books that have influenced me over the past couple of decades. By influencing, I mean not just making me think about something, but actually making me think AND modify how I live and work. It's been interesting, to see what things stuck with me over time and which things faded. What I am hoping to do, is slowly diagram these books out as I finish them, then sort of merge them into a whole to see the patterns of what I have learned, and what was effective, at least for me.

Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was probably the first book (outside the Bible, which belongs in a class all by itself.) that changed my thoughts AND my behavior, so it seemed like a good place to start. The value of this book is probably reflected in that, more than a decade after it came out, it continues to hover around, and sometimes break in to, the best seller list. It's definitely stood the test of time, not just in my life, but for people everywhere.

The chart above breaks down the seven habits. They are important to me that many years ago I made a chart with the seven habits that I have framed along with my personal mission statement. This chart has sat in every office I have worked out of since 1998.

Diagramming these out is not intended to replace reading the book. Instead it's designed to give you the main points. If you've read the book, it will be a nice reminder. If you haven't read the book, it will give you a quick glimpse into it's main point, and perhaps, make you want to read it, or start a discussion. If you like this one, you can download a PDF copy here. You can also double click on the image above for a larger JPG image.

Tom

Wisdom Letters now a free e-book.

The Wisdom Letters has been available as an e-book for Kindle, Nook and other e-readers (for $2.99) for some time. Now I have also made it available as a free PDF download. You can get it here. (or click on the book cover above.)

Tom

My second book, I think.

Honestly, I am not sure if this is my first book or my second book. It's the first thing I ever wrote, and it was first published as a PDF book nearly a decade ago, before the lexicon had a word for e-books, and way before we had Kindles, Ipads and Nooks. Now, of course, I have "Love in a Minor Key", a book of verse, in print, so in a way, this could be my second book.


Now I have reformatted it so it can be downloaded and used on virtually any e-reader: Kindle, Nook, Ipad, even old Sony e-readers.

The Wisdom Letters is a gathering of essays, stray thoughts, poems on life, faith, humanity's quirks. Reader's of the first edition called it "Inspirational", "Just what I needed.", and "the kind of thing that draws you in."

A print version is in the works, and should be available soon. I'll let you know when it is available, in case, like me, you just like to have real books on the bookshelf to read, loan out, and make your house feel like a library!

You can get The Wisdom Letters here. 


Tom Atkins

Influential Books

I have been working on a little project over the past few weeks that you might be interested in, and might even want to think about doing yourself. I have been going through some of the more influential books I have read over my lifetime, and creating a mind map of their main points.

It began as a way to have some of those key points at hand when I was thinking about things, but it is slowly turning into a sense of discovery and creativity as I see the connections between the thoughts that have resonated with me over a lifetime.

A copy of my map (so far, I still have a few books left to review) is shown above and you can click on it to see it in a larger version. You don't need fancy software to do this, just some time. It's well worth it.

Tom