Don Miguel Ruiz, Tijuana native author of "The Four Agreements", one of the bestselling books in the world about happiness, self-knowledge, personal growth, and the road towards fulfillment, revealed in an exclusive interview for San Diego Red what is humanity's biggest problem.

During the meeting we had with him in Rosarito, the master started the conversation regarding the search that led him to change his old medical profession to do something new and how it was a watershed moment in his life, surprising the people who surrounded him:

I used to be a surgeon with my brothers, Luis and Carlos. I was practicing medicine, and then I realized that there was something more important and I became interested in psychology. With a little bit of controversy from the people around me, I left medicine to explore something new: understanding how the human mind works, because, to me, to see people's behavior and the world's was very illogical. Why are we like we are? Why do we treat each other this way? Why are there wars, injustice, and all of that? I decided to investigate my own mind, why do I do what I do? Why do I treat people like I treat them and react to the questions they ask or the way they behave?

All of these questions led him to write "The Four Agreements". This Toltec wisdom book published in 1997 has sold to date more than 4 million copies, becoming an essential manual to understanding life and knowing how to relate to other people.

Regarding this, Don Miguel Ruiz explained humanity's biggest problem, which relates to the inner world and a series of rules, behaviors, concepts, ideas, positions, and ways of living that have been transmitted from generation to generation.

What exists in almost all human minds is a war of control. To control oneself, control the people you love, and tell them what you want them to do to be happy with that. But you don't take into account that they also want to control you: tell you what you should do and why. Then, everyone wants to impose their thoughts onto other people and control them, and if you don't do it, they hurt you so much that you get angry with them because you don't want that, but if they tell you what they want you to be, you are going to rebel. Humanity's entire problem is very simple: we are domesticated animals. We were domesticated to be what they want us to be. Our parents domesticated us to be a copy of them, and we do that with our children. We domesticate them as it was done to us. This not only happens with our families but with teachers in school and any activity one does. Everyone is going to want to control us. That explains humanity's entire behavior, war, injustice, everything is a war of control: from nation to nation, from people to people, from tribe to tribe.

Considering that to live together in harmony and society we need order, laws, and principles that do not negatively affect others, we asked him if domestication was something negative.

Domestication is just that: domestication. It is neither good nor bad. It is true that there are moral, legal, and family rules, and if you go against the rules, there will be reactions, you will be punished, or you will be rewarded. That's how domestication works, based on rewards and punishments.

The solution to this problem, according to the author, is to put into practice the 4 Agreements:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word. We must share love and exude positivity in the way we speak about ourselves and to others.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally. If somebody wants to hurt you, that person is hurting themselves, and that is their problem, not yours. Let it go.

3. Don't Make Assumptions. Imagining problems and inventing stories about what others think of you or why they did certain things only fill us with poison. If you have any questions, clear them up personally.

4. Always Do Your Best. Based on the circumstances that surround you, always do the best you can without becoming a perfectionist or getting frustrated to the point you sacrifice your happiness.

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At the same time, Don Miguel Ruiz stated that there is a Fifth Agreement that is: "Be skeptical, but learn to listen."

This is when you have perfected the Four Agreements and you will do that, not from a social position where you believe yourself to be very intelligent, that is not what it means. But you will be skeptical in the sense that they will tell you what you think is the truth, and maybe it will be for the world they built, but it doesn't mean that that is the truth for everyone else.

The master advised that, when listening, one has to take into account only what helps you to create your own knowledge and build your world.

When you reach that point when you respect yourself, what you believe, your creation, then you begin to respect others, because everyone has the right to believe what they want and act however they want, knowing that, if they act against the law or morality, they will be punished, judged, or put in jail, but those are personal decisions.

When we asked him if he considered himself a Tijuana native, he confessed:

I am a Tijuana native, but I am also a Mexican and I am American, and I am from the Earth, and this universe, and all other universes I could imagine.

Regarding the sense of belonging and claiming that names are what identifies people as that is what works and helps to recognize them, Don Miguel said:

But is that what you are? No, that is what you believe you are! Your entire life you have been acting and they could give you an Oscar for best actor, as you act to please others and please yourself.

Speaking more deeply about what he remembers of his time in Tijuana, he reflected on the past and the present, as things change with time:

In my mind and story, I was always rooted in Tijuana. The reality is that I have lived in several places that I liked a lot, but that Tijuana in which I lived no longer exists, it is very different. In the Tijuana that I lived in, there were around 70,000 inhabitants maximum, and now we are talking about several millions of inhabitants, there wasn't that much traffic. That Tijuana only exists in my memories, and that is now what I remember, now this is Tijuana. It's like when you were a kid, and then you are not.

You can watch a fragment of this interview down below: