PNTV: Everyday Enlightenment by Dan Millman (#35)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. As always, we've got a great book, Everyday Enlightenment by Dan Millman. Today we've got the great book, we've got the six page PDF Philosopher's Note, we've got the different color. As I hold that up, we've got about 10 or 12 of my favorite big ideas here. I'm super excited about this book and sharing more of Dan Millman's wisdom. As I mentioned in the PNTV episode on his other great another one of his great books, Body, Mind Mastery. Dan has become a friend over the last several years and he's one of the first teachers whose books I read all of. I just literally fell in love with his way of the peaceful warrior. Read this book Everyday Enlightenment, Living on purpose, Body, Mind Mastery, the life you were born to live. They're all amazing. Great blend of east and West. He's a super plugged in, spiritual, high thinking, inspiring guy who's also really grounded and is all about having big dreams but taking the steps today toward our highest selves and creating the habits that will really allow us to create an extraordinary life. This book Everyday Enlightenment is kind of his magnum opus. Is that the word? If it is, then awesome. If not, then awesome. That really distills his big ideas into one book. The subtitle is the 12 Gateways to Personal Growth. So there's 12 different gateways he walks us through. The first one is discovering our worth. Then we go all the way through. I don't know what number 12 is, but they're good. So let's look at a few of my favorite big ideas. The first one discover your worth. He talks about the fact that some of us who are most inspired to make a difference in the world are the most harsh on ourselves and we've really got to pay attention to honoring ourselves. And he says it's really simple. Treat yourself the way that you would treat a loved one or an honored guest who is invited into your home. How would you treat that individual? Treat yourself like that. It's a really cool idea. He has a whole chapter on that, but I just love that idea. How would you treat the most honored guest to come into your home? Well, treat yourself that way and check the language you're using and see if you'd say the same things to the Dalai Lama or Bono or whoever your favorite guest is that would come over. Obama, whoever. How would you treat them? Treat yourself that way. That's one way to deepen our sense of worth. Really cool. So as I mentioned Dan's all about creating positive habits. He's got some great ideas on how important it is to create positive habits and to stop doing the things that don't serve you. And he says one of the ways that he succeeded is he makes his good habits as easy to do as possible and his bad habits as hard to do as possible. So, for example, if you're trying to quit smoking, he says, look, just put your one pack of cigarettes that you have into a safe or something, a suitcase, and then go stuff it in your garage or in your closet in the very back, so that anytime you want to smoke, you've got to go through all the trouble of getting to that one pack of cigarettes. And by the time you get there, you realize, hopefully, that it's not a habit you want to keep on doing. So that's pretty cool. And then he had an idea here too, where if he wanted to stop eating late night snacks, what he did was he brought his toothbrush and his floss downstairs into the bathroom near the kitchen and dining room. After he ate, he'd go floss and brush his teeth immediately because he didn't want to have to do that again if he munched later in the night. So the idea here is finding ways to make the habits we want to build really easy and finding ways to make the habits we want to get rid of really hard to keep on doing. So think about that. When what's one thing you want to make? A positive habit in your life. And how can you make that part of your life? And you might want to press, pause and think about that and write it down right now, what's the one thing that you could do that would have the most positive benefit in your life? Right? The habit, if you did it consistently, would just rock. And then what can you do to make it easier for you to crush that habit? And then how do you get rid of. What's the one thing you need to stop doing? Just a bad habit. And when you've identified that, what can you do to make it harder to keep on doing that? Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really big idea. So there you go. Habits. He's also got a great line here. He says, st. Nike was right. Just do it. This idea of whatever we're thinking about or dreaming about, just do. I think it was Emerson who said, tell the world what you're going to do, but first show it, right? Just show us what you're going to do. No more. You can still talk or do whatever you want. But match your vision and your big dreams with action. Really good idea. Here's another big idea on that theme. We've heard of carpe diem, right? Really cool concept. Seize the Day. What movie was that? I don't know, but it was great. So seize the day, right? Well, Dan says that's awesome. But you know what? You can't seize a day. What you can seize is this moment and the next moment and the next moment. Because all life is is a series of moments, right? The power of now. And all that stuff is moment to moment to moment to moment to moment. Opportunities for us to fully express ourselves or to do what we want to do, to seize the moment. So rather than carpe diem, Dan suggests we carpe punctum. Isn't that cool? Carpe punctum, which apparently means seize the moment. I actually love the word punctum so much, I made it a password of mine for quite a while. Shh. I think I've changed most of them. So there we go. Carpe punctum. Isn't that cool? Seize the moment. I'm actually going to jump because he has a great idea here. When we talk about moments, Dan says that there are no enlightened beings. No one is just simply an enlightened being. And I love this approach. He says we have more or less enlightened moments. Right? So some people like to say, hey, I'm enlightened. Yeah, okay, whatever I like. You're either acting enlightened in this moment or not. And those of us who are more enlightened than others tend to have more of those moments in which we're acting and you're acting enlightened. Right? But the trick is we have the opportunity, moment to moment to moment to moment to moment. And we all have neurotic moments and enlightened moments. And what we want to do is start creating more and more of those enlightened moments. How do we do it? Carpe punctum. Seize the moment. Create habits that allow us to be more connected, to source more consistently really cool ideas. So there you go. Carpe punctum. And there are no enlightened beings, only enlightened moments. He has a great chapter on fear and courage and dealing with our fear. And he says that daredevils are scared, too. It's silly to think that we're going to get rid of our fear completely. Not going to happen. We're going to increase our comfort zone as we stretch ourselves and grow, sure. But fear is never going to go completely away. So he suggests, as all these authors do, for us to have a more healthy relationship with fear. And one of the ways to do that for me is to realize that we've all got fear. So many of these great people who we admire have nerves, have tension, throw up before their great performances, but most of us aren't willing to go that far, right? So we don't even show up the first time. But we want to engage and embrace the idea that even the daredevils are freaked out. So really, really cool idea. So if you're feeling some fear, breathe into it. We're going to talk about fear a lot more throughout these episodes. And when I start doing episodes just on big ideas, we'll talk about it in depth. So back to this. We've got pain and suffering. Dan says that pain is a relatively objective thing, right? If I burn my finger or I cut my hand or whatever, I'm going to have pain. That's an objective thing. Suffering, however, is a very different thing. Suffering is subjective, right? The Dalai Lama says that pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Dan says the same thing here in the book and in the note. We talk about it, but the idea is there's an event. Something happens, but it's our response to that event. I repeat this again and again and again. It's our response to that event that either creates joy or it creates suffering. The event is neutral. It's empty of meaning. Right. How we respond to it is going to determine whether we suffer or whether we learn and grow and actually experience joy in the process of growth and unfoldment. That's really big. We don't even have time to get into emotional meteorology here. But it's great book note. We're going to talk about it more with Constructive Living. But the idea here is that emotions are kind of like clouds that pass by. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it's a thunderstorm, sometimes it's bright skies. Our emotions are a lot like the weather patterns. We don't have great control over them. But what Dan suggests is we do have control over our behaviors and we can change those behaviors which will directly affect our emotions. Really cool idea. So I can go on for about a month, but that is all we have time for right now. Hope you dug it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have a. Have an awesome day. See you.