The Four Agreements is a book describing how people are not necessarily born free, but there is no way to help that the environment naturally "domesticates" us to not be free from birth. The book is divided into three. main lessons that explain how freedoms relate to each person, and how they affect everyone.
The first "agreement", or, lesson, is that the environment we grow up in shapes our entire lives. Although the physical environment around us, (like living in the hills or in the plains) is not the environment referred to, it also plays an important part in shaping our lives. For example, if you were living in the 1800's in a region with much farmland, you would most likely be a farmer.
This lesson instills the idea that we must accept that not everything in our lives is choosable. No one can pick where they are born or what language they speak, nor can they choose how their parents teach them to grow up. All of these will mold the mind of a young child into what they will become as an adult, but none of them could have been changed by the person who is affected most by them.
The second lesson in the book is that you should never take things personally because, in fact, nothing anyone says about you is intended to be personal. One excellent example is someone telling another person that they are ugly. This indeed is a rude comment, but it says much more about the personality or the hard times that the person saying it might be facing than it does about you.
The third lesson acknowledges the past and the present, and how they need to be forgiven. You must ignore harmful beliefs that have been with you your whole life, you need to forgive people that hurt you because it was not intended personally, and you must keep yourself in your present being - as if each day was your last.
