In the introduction to The Four Agreements, Ruiz talks about how we, as people, are domesticated like our pets by our parents, our teachers, our family, our friends, and we learn, through a series of rewards an punishments, what and who everyone else thinks we should be in order to gain acceptance. Changing from this norm creates fear, and that fear keeps most of us trapped in dull, drab, unhappy, unfulfilled lives. We create this idealized version of who we're supposed to be...someone, by the way, we can never live up to be, and we use this idealized version to judge ourselves and declare ourselves guilty.