CW 1020 FBF - The Four Purposes of Life, Finding Meaning & Direction in a Changing World & Way of the Peaceful Warrior, A Book That Changes Lives

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason hartman, episode number 64640, and listeners from 164 countries around the world. You know what that means? It means this is the tenth episode, so we're going to discuss something of general interest. Life, success, more effective living today. And we have Dan Millman back on the show for a second time. No, this is not a Flashback Friday episode. This is brand new stuff from Dan Millman. We're going to talk about the four purposes of life, finding meaning and direction in a changing world. Of course, we'll talk about the way of the peaceful warrior as well, but mostly his newest work. He's really got some good stuff, some good information. I enjoyed this interview thoroughly and I think you're going to like it too as we do a 10th episode today. Every 10 episodes, something of general interest, life, success, more effective living content there. Gosh, what is going on in the world of real estate? Well, I'll tell you, clients, I just want to say thank you so much. You have made us so busy. Last year we had an absolute record year. I mean, it was a really good record year. It was much better than any other year, at least in recent history. It was shaping up the same way today. You know, you guys are buying properties at an amazing clip. They are flying off the shelves and the constant battle is to just keep finding good inventory. We have all kinds of people approaching us every single week that say, you know, sell our stuff, sell this stuff. We've got that product, we've got that product. We've got this one off deal, you know, What? It's really tempting for us because I know, I know we could probably increase our income by 50 to 100%. But as they say, you only get one chance to have a reputation. You know, you only get one of those in life. It's kind of a little bit unfair if you think about it, you know, I mean, if someone wants to declare bankruptcy, what are they can do that, what, every seven years? I think, or 10 years? I think it's every seven. Some people do it like it's a business plan that's pretty awful. Not ethical. But, you know, you only get one chance. And so you gotta do it right. You gotta keep being forever vigilant to be really, really picky. There's just all kinds of crappy property out there. And I'll tell you something, I have noticed. I mean, I have noticed this for a long, long time. Back When I was 19, 20 years old, I remember taking all of the investment classes through Century 21, the real estate company I started with many, many years ago when I was taking these classes. I remember one of the great instructors we had was a guy named Dennis McKenzie. He wrote a bunch of the real estate textbooks for California real estate courses. And he talked about. And I remember also Tony Reuter, she also was a great instructor there. And, you know, they used to have some really good classes. I doubt it's that way anymore, just looking at the company. But, hey, sorry, century 21, I may be speaking out of turn there, but you had some good stuff in the old days there for sure, remember? Really? Both of them, and other people have talked about this too, when. Here's the thing that happens as we have the business cycle and the overall economy, as we have the real estate cycles and the housing market cycles, and. And I'm gonna coin a new one maybe as we have the opportunity cycle, okay, where opportunities. When there are a big supply of opportunities, and maybe sometimes opportunities are in short supply, right? So everything is a cycle. Opportunities in general, real estate deals, when the market is flying and it's going crazy and properties are flying off the shelf left and right. And then you have the time when opportunity dries up where there's nobody wants to buy anything, regardless of, you know, could be real estate, could be just the overall business cycle where supply exceeds demand, right? So you have these constant cycles of the supply demand curve. And what happens when you get this really high flying time? And I would say we're. I don't know, we're kind of in one of those. We have been certainly to some Extent for the past couple of years, really, but it seems as though it's getting even more so. And I sense this huge distrust for Wall street that is rightfully placed because Wall street is the modern version of organized crime. And so people are looking at alternative investments. And so many of them have come to the most historic, historically proven asset class in all of world history. And that's income, property. Of course it is. And when you get these high flying times where everybody's buying everything, it becomes more of a job of being a sorter, of sorting things, of evaluating opportunities. In the general world of business today, it's the same way. We have so much coming at us. We have so many tools available and so many opportunities and so many, you know, different options we gotta, like, run down and we gotta figure them out. And when times are like that, every flake and every, like, dishonorable character comes out of the woodwork. And when that happens, it's incumbent upon us, number one, us as your team in growing an investment property portfolio with you, but you as well. It becomes the real job. The real value that you have to bring to the table is the value of sorting things, of figuring out what is the wheat and what is the chaff. You know, what is good, what is worthwhile and what is junk. Because there is just so much junk out there. It is amazing to me how much crap there is. And people approach me constantly, they're asking about this property, about that property, about this deal, about that deal. And I don't know, it kind of amazes me. Like, they listen to this podcast and how did you like that, by the way? I said, like, just like a Gen Y kid, right? Like a millennialist. Yeah. You know? Anyway, so they come and they bring these properties to me and they say, well, hey, what about this deal? And I think, are you listening to the podcast? Like, did you listen to all this stuff I told you on the last 200 episodes? You said you told. Listen to. It just kind of blows my mind. So be a sorter. I know how it feels. You know, we all get in this position sometimes. We got like, the money is burning a hole in our pocket, right? Like, we gotta deploy it, we gotta spend it. And that's true. Look, you know, that is conceptually true for sure. Because if you are not deploying your money, it is not working for you. You know, if you have way too much cash in the bank or you've got too much equity in your house or your houses or your entire portfolio, it's not working for you. You've got to deploy it, you've got to put it to work, of course, but at the same time, let's have some reasonable amount of moderation so that all these promoters out there that are throwing absolute crap at us do not get our attention because they don't deserve our attention. They have junk. So sorting, sorting, sorting. That is one of the big things we've got to do. Statistics. So I'm constantly talking about these articles, you know, I'll share them a lot and they'll say the best markets to invest, the best markets for renters, the best markets for landlords, you know, the best markets that are going to have the most appreciation, blah, blah, blah, this and that, right? The unemployment rate is, the inflation rate is, the consumer confidence index says, all of these different stats. They are so amazingly, amazingly misleading. Let me give you another example. Just quickly here before we get to Dan Millman. Now this doesn't have anything to do with real estate, but I'll bet you most of you participate in what I'm about to talk about and that's driving most of you listening. Probably have a car and you know, soon you may not need one. In fact, if you've got kids under 10, I think there's a very high likelihood they may never learn to drive. They may never need to imagine if in suburban neighborhoods really all areas around the world, of course, but suburbia particularly, because I have predicted the resurgence of suburbia. Okay, like most people think that's a weird prediction, isn't it? Well, you know, we've had the pendulum swing back and forth and by the way, I'm on a tangent here. I'm going to get to that article I was going to tell you about in just a moment. So, you know, of course we had the post World War II baby boomer era and we had Levittown and we had this whole resurgence or not resurgence, but really the creation of the concept of suburbia. You know, when the romantic era of the automobile in America and really most countries weren't like that, they didn't have that. That was kind of an American concept of the big 57 Chevy and happy days and all this, all this romance and nostalgia was built around the automobile because of course we had the interstate highway system and we had lots of land and not all countries were like this. A lot of countries still, you know, existed around city centers and so forth. Certainly European countries were like that. They didn't have the rise of suburbia the way the US did. So the US had this huge suburban sprawl thing going on for decades. And then the pendulum has swung back and forth, right? And recently it swung back to the cities. Now I know that's still the hot trend, but I'm making a prediction that the autonomous car, though, maybe, maybe they'll be those little ugly Google cars that you've all seen by now, right? They have no steering wheel, no gas pedal, no brake, amazingly. And so maybe those little autonomous cars will be just driving around virtually everywhere, or they'll be a moment's access and you'll have that car picking you up and you won't even need to own a car. And so say you live in suburbia, say you now live 45 minutes from the city center and you think, well, you know, you live there because it's less expensive, because you're practicing the drive until you qualify concept. Yes, that's what people do nowadays. They drive until they can qualify for a loan. Yeah, until they can buy a house and afford it. And so with the resurgence of suburbia, that is a strong possibility with the autonomous vehicle and cheap energy, right? These cars will just come pick you up and take you anywhere you need to go. And they may go a lot faster because the concept of traffic will be virtually eliminated. 90 miles an hour, bumper to bumper traffic. But moving so fast, because the cars are all networked together, they're like a virtual train. They don't have a physical hitch, but they're all hitched together electronically. So this is an amazing thing. I mean, it's a game changer. I've said it before, my Tesla just got its second software update and now the Tesla parks itself. You can summon the car and it will come to you. Do you really need valet parking people anymore? It's a game changer. I'm telling you, everything changes. This is a massive shift and it has massive impact on real estate values. So if people are paying huge premiums to be in the city center area where real estate is very expensive, I mean, even where I live in Scottsdale, right? It is amazing. People think Arizona is inexpensive, but you get into old town Scottsdale and I mean, it is. Well, it's not Los Angeles, but it's expensive, okay? You know, it, it is not cheap. You get into suburbia in Arizona, you know, you go to some of the outlying areas and they're not really outlying, they're all their own little sort of communities. But you know, they're generally considered suburban markets. The price goes down dramatically. I mean, you can buy a big beautiful home for a lot less money and the reason is, is because the proximity. But if proximity becomes a non issue, it's a game changer. So back to how to lie with statistics. Then let's get to our 10th show guest, Dan Millman and talk about his great stuff. So here are the cars that get the most and the least tickets. I just thought I'd share this kind of funny thing because it applies to everybody, right? So which cars get the most tickets? Which cars get the least tickets? Okay, well, what's the worst? If you drive a Nissan 300 350Z, you're going to get a lot of tickets. Or an Alexis ES300 or a Dodge Charger, or a Volkswagen Jetta GL or a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, okay? Now check this out. Here are the drivers or not the drivers, but the five cars with the least number of tickets, okay? The Buick encore, the Lexus IS350, the Acura ILX, the Cadillac ATS, and the Chevrolet Express. What is a Chevrolet? I don't even know what that is. A Chevrolet Express. Remember, you're listening to Flashback Friday. Our new episodes are published every month, Monday and Wednesday. But anyway, that's according to insurance.com alright? That's who gets the most and the least traffic violations. Now, they didn't talk about the color of the car. We've all heard that, you know, red cars get a lot of tickets, right? Which may well be true, but what is the gaping hole here? What is the gaping hole in this theory about getting a lot of tickets? And you know, people will look at this article and they'll think, well, gee, I'm not gonna get myself a Nissan 300Z because I'm gonna get a lot of tickets. They'll think that. They might think, well, what's that buconcor look like? Let me check that out. Maybe, maybe that car is okay. Maybe I'll get that one. So I won't get so many tickets. I have a lead foot. Do you know, years ago, I don't know if they still do this, Oregon listeners tell me, is this true? Okay, so years ago I had this assistant, Marley, and she was from Oregon. She told me that in Oregon, if you get too many speeding tickets, they send you to a psychiatrist or psychologist. Isn't that funny? Yeah, you got to go have your mental health examined if you get too many speeding tickets. You know, how was your childhood? Was it slow or fast? Is that why you drive slower? Fast? I don't know, it's just funny. But what did they not tell you in this article? You don't Know how many of each of these cars exist? It's not based on the concept of a per capita concept. There's no proportionality to this. It's totally stupid. Right? For example, if the Nissan 300 or 350Z, if there's maybe there's way more of those than Volkswagen Jettas. I mean, I don't know. I haven't checked this stuff. But, you know, maybe there's just not that many Buick Encores and Chevrolet expresses out there. So of course they don't get as many tickets because not as many of them exist. Thank God. I mean, seriously. I know, I know, I know. Our audience. I know. Dear listener, you get this, right? You understood this without me even pointing it out. But how can this stuff pass as far as flipping news in this country? You know, this is a, this is an AP article, right? It's on the, it's on the Associated Press wire. And all these news media outlets around the world will pick this stuff up and, and talk about this like it's news, yet it doesn't tell the story. So that is the, the lack of proportionality is just, it's just staggering that that's totally missed. It's not even mentioned here. So we've got some great properties@jasonhartman.com they are flying off the shelf. Go check them out on our website. Jason hartman.com Go look at those. I'll tell you personally, I'm doing another real estate deal myself. Well, I do lots of real estate deals. I've been doing some in Grand Rapids lately. I know I never thought I'd be buying a property there. Right. But, you know, I've been doing that to create land contracts for our buyers who want to buy the land. Contracts. So that's been good. By the way, for those of you not interested in owning the physical property, the second best thing are these land contract deals we have. These are great. You buy them at a discount. You know, we've done shows about that before, so I won't belabor the point now, but I am selling one of my properties again to do a 1031 tax deferred exchange. Did one of those last year. I was, you know, I kind of like a few years go by and you don't really pay much attention to these properties and you get such a pleasant surprise. They've gone up in value. Imagine that. And so I've got this one property in Houston. It's worth like $220,000. You know, I only paid like 150 for that property. I Think, and heck, I'm going to sell it. I'm going to do a 1031 tax deferred exchange. Income property is the most tax favored asset in America. I'm going to buy two more properties in Memphis. I just bought two last year on another exchange there in Memphis. I sold a property in North Carolina that was also appreciated a lot more than I was even aware of because I wasn't really looking at it, wasn't really paying attention to it. Went up in value a whole bunch. I sold it, I bought two properties and increased my cash flow dramatically. My rent to value ratios improved dramatically. So, you know, I'm in this game every day. I'm constantly doing deals and constantly looking at deals, and this just makes total sense. So again, here I'm gonna go from probably, what did I rent that for last? I think 1550 per month. And I'm probably gonna take this up to about 21 or $2,200 per month, no tax implication, 1031 tax deferred exchange, and boom, I'll increase my cash flow by basically about, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%. Isn't that phenomenal? I love income property, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. So go check out those deals@jason hartman.com if you want to learn how to evaluate properties better, go to propertytracker.com or go to the App Store for your iPhone or your iPad and look up Property Evaluator. Great little software to help you do that. Also, we've got our Salt Lake City event coming up. This is going to be an awesome JHU Live where we're going to do the math on evaluating properties, building portfolios, working together. This is a really interactive event that we do. It's only our second JHU event. The first one was a little too easy, some people said. So we made this one a lot more challenging. So we're going to test your knowledge and abilities and push them a little bit. And that's in Salt Lake City on March 12th. You can register for that at Jason Hartman.com and we'd love to see you. And if you're already a JHU member, remember, we've got an incredibly special deal for you. So contact your investment counselor about that. Oh, here it is. It's jasonhartman.com contest and you can enter to win free tickets for the Salt Lake City event, too. So if you enter and you buy a ticket, if you're selected in the raffle, we will simply refund your money. We've done that several times over the years when we've done contests. So entering only takes 20 seconds. Go to jasonhartman.com contest and enter to win free tickets for JHU Live jasonhartman.com contest. And just to hedge your bets, buy your ticket and do that@jasonhartman.com in the events section. All right, let's get to Dan Millman and let's see what he has to say about the four really important areas of life and how to be more successful in them. Again, it's great to have him back on the show. So let's go to Dan Millman. Hey, it's my pleasure to welcome back a great guest. We had him on the show a while ago, and it's Mr. Dan Millman. You probably know his name and you probably know his work. He's the author of 17 books, I believe now, and he's out with a new one called the Four Purposes of Finding Meaning and Direction in a Changing World. He's probably most well known for the awesome book the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, a book that changes lives. The creative compass, writing your way from inspiration to publication. So he helps authors too. He's a former director of gymnastics at Stanford University. And I gotta make one comment before we start with Dan and hear about his latest work. You always hear the constant refrain of the intellectual snobs out there who say, whenever a book is turned into a movie, well, the book was better, actually. The book and the movie of the Way of the Peaceful Warrior are both fantastic. So that's a rarity. But, Dan, welcome. How are you?

Oh, doing great. Glad to be here with you.

Good to have you. And you have moved since we talked to you last. You are now in the very hip and trendy Brooklyn, New York. Huh?

I have moved, Jason. And we moved for three reasons. Two daughters and a grandbaby.

Well, it wasn't the weather, huh?

We like the cold. The fourth seasons are fine. We have to be in California all those years. We do enjoy running through the snow, that sort of thing.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, hey, tell us about your latest work, the Four Purposes of Life.

Well, every one of my books has to justify itself. I've never written a book just to have the book out. After Way of the Peaceful Warrior was published way back in 1980, it started taking off by word of mouth over time, but I didn't write another book for 10 years. I felt I'd say, said what I have to say, which I think is kind of refreshing. But after around 1990, 1989, in the late 80s, I met a rather unusual mentor, was exposed to a lot of new, very exciting information, perspectives on living. So I started writing it after that, about a book a year. So it culminated most recently with the Four Purposes of Life, because it puts my work into context. It's a small book, about 150 pages, but it's packed with information to clarify where people are, to crystallize their life, to help them understand themselves and where they're going better.

Interesting. So you say in a changing world, I mean, we certainly all feel that pressure of the world changing so quickly. What did you mean by that when you made that the subtitle of the book?

Book? Yeah. When I wrote my first, you know, 30 years ago, I gave my first talk in Southern California. And even then I predicted. I said, you know, it's hard to predict anything accurately these days because the variables are so many we don't know about or can foresee. But I said, one thing seems to be happening. This was 30 years ago. I said, the pace seems to be accelerating, the energy is building, and I had no idea where it would go. This is before the Internet, before apps, before smartphones, but the pace is definitely increasing. And this whole idea of disruption, of staying apace with technology and the news, the daily news, whether it's economic change, is happening so fast, the workplace. So to help people ground out and take a deep breath and say, okay, what is my life right now? What do I need to do? In fact, jumping. Well, let me just say what these four purposes are so people get a sense, because.

Right, right. That's a great place to start. Yeah. Okay.

The book, Jason, is like. It sounds like hubris because I didn't say four purposes of life. I wrote a book titled the Four Purposes of Life. You know, and a friend of mine, a friend of mine said to me, dan, I know the purpose of life. It's learning to love. Whatever the question, love is the answer. You know, I couldn't argue with that. It sounds like a great purpose in life. Another friend said, well, wait a minute, we're here to, you know, reproduce and keep the species going. Another friend said, no, we're here for enlightenment, for awakening. Everybody has a different idea of what the big cosmic purposes are of life. But just as we divide the points on a compass into four primary directions and the days of the year into four primary seasons, by looking at our lives through these four purposes, it does give a sense of meaning, purpose, connection, in terms of connecting our life with the bigger picture. And those four purposes are first, learning life's lessons. The second one is finding our career and calling and understanding the difference between the two. The third purpose is more mysterious, and it's intriguing, believe me. It's called finding our life path, which is different from a career or calling. And the fourth purpose, maybe the most important one of all, which is attending to our purpose in this arising moment. And so that summarizes what those four purposes are. There's a tremendous amount behind each of those summaries.

Yeah, we'll get into those. I'm particularly intrigued, like you said, by attending to the moment, because when I had you on the show last, you said you kind of summed it up as the one overriding theme of your work. I remember very well what you said, although I am not a good practitioner of this, but what you said, and I'll remind you, Dan, if you probably know, but it was be here now. That's what you said. And that concept of presence is a big theme in your work. You know, maybe before you go into these different purposes, do you want to just address that one maybe even more generally than you did specifically in the book? Because I. I think in. In what you just said, you're alluding to that as. Again.

Well, I am. And of course, I don't know anybody who is on, at least in the developed world, who reads, who hasn't heard or read many times about living in the present, that it's good to do. I mean, certainly it's not fresh with me. Eckhart Tolle restated it in his book. Ram Dass wrote the book Be Here Now. Robert Frost, the poet, talked about it. It's not a new idea. Epictetus, you know, Marcus Aurelius. It's been around a long time. But what does it really mean now? Today, this term mindfulness has become very popular. Everybody is mindfulness this, mindfulness that.

It's popular because nobody's doing it.

We are doing it consciously. Look, all mindfulness means essentially three things. Paying attention. The second thing is to the present moment. Moment we don't. It's not about paying attention to the past or future, memory or imagination. It's right now, what's in front of us. And the third thing is without judgment. It's just noticing, being aware. So they have mindfulness meditation, where you do that formally while you sit with your eyes closed or half open, and. But in everyday life, just being mindful of the present moment. So when I talk about attending to your purpose, it's not just about the. The stock phrase, live in the Present, it's about what is your purpose in this present moment? You know, we may not all know what our cosmic purpose is, but you and I know our purpose right now. It's sharing with each other, is talking, having a conversation. It's very clear. Most of us with all the concepts around, can get come back right now, here and now, what needs doing right now? What is my purpose? And the quality of our moments, as I said, end up being the quality of our lives. Because the better attention we pay to each arising moment and noticing what's going on and doing it purposefully, you know, the better the quality of our life turns out to be. Robert Byrne once said, the purpose of life is a life of purpose. So it's not just about being in the present. That sounds abstract, you know, how do you do that? But it's part of it is recognizing that there is no such thing actually in reality as the past or future. The future never comes, tomorrow never comes. It's always tomorrow. And the past is only a set of neural impulses we call memory. But it's not here anymore. So most of us. You know, Mark Twain once said, I've had many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.

Yeah. Although it's just a worry, you know, thinking about how they might happen. Yeah.

Thinking about past and future, but in the moment, you know, we just address what we need to in the moment. So that's what the fourth purpose. It brings us back. It helps again after. It helps pull us out of the concepts and all the things we have to remember and do and simplifies our life immeasurably. See, my life is quite busy, but it's very simple because I've recognized, finally, I can only do one thing at a time, really. I know many young people, millennials, say I'm a good multitasker, but that's somewhat of an illusion. It's been proven. It's been shown in almost every case, because attention is a zero sum game. We have so much attention for this moment. If we're paying attention to walking, then we're paying attention to walking. If we're paying attention to chewing gum, we're paying attention to chewing gum. But that old joke is true. You really can't walk and chew gum at the same time. You're either looking at your attending to one or the other. Have you ever talked to someone on the phone and you know they're doing their email at the same time?

Yeah, most everybody's multitasking in one way or another nowadays.

But you can tell the quality of attention isn't really there. It's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. Really? Huh. So they're not fully with you. So people who think they're multitask are just splitting their attention into various ways. And some people drive like that. It's a little scary, you know.

Just a reminder, you're listening to Flashback Friday. Our new episodes are published every Monday and every Wednesday. Okay, so first of all, I want to ask you a question about that, but I also want to share a quote that I just love about this. And you quoted a lot of great people. You didn't quote OG Mandino, though, and I bet you're a fan of his. He was one of the other greats, along with Dan Millman. And he says, I will live as all good actors do when they are on stage only in the moment. I cannot perform at my best today by regretting my previous act's mistakes or worrying about the scene to come. And, you know, that's like a great actor. You know, they're there, they're in the now. You know, you can just tell. And it's something you could never sort of academically quantify, I guess, but we just know it. You just know great acting versus mediocre acting is. Yeah, yeah, maybe you couldn't quantify it, but you just know. And we all have experienced that, certainly. But come on, you know, when we drive, we're in an alpha state. You know, a lot of people when, hey, I've been guilty, certainly, of driving around for many years listening to your audiobooks and those of many other greats. Is that bad? I mean, I don't think that deteriorates from the quality of my driving. Certainly. I think texting and driving does. That's very dangerous. I mean, aren't we always walking and chewing gum? You know, we're always doing multiple things right.

And, you know, we can walk and chew gum, obviously, and we can drive while listening to the radio or a book on tape. I do the same thing. Even when I go for bike rides through Prospect park. Often I'll listen with the head earphone in one of my ears and listen to that way I get to travel with different people. By the way, that was a great quote you read by OG Mandino. I really enjoyed that. And the metaphor of acting is wonderful because it's a transcendental art. Life is an improvisation. And the more the better actors we are playing different roles as we need them, the better our life goes. So I think it was very appropriate. You're raising that. Yeah, of course. Nobody's saying just completely have tunnel vision. There are times somebody is speaking with us, but the more we bring attention, quality of attention and presence to what we do, the better. By the way, you mentioned acting, and there's a great story about Sir Lawrence Olivier. He did this masterful performance, got a standing ovation and went into his dressing room, slammed the door, and someone knocked on his door and said, larry, are you upset? That was the greatest performance I've ever seen you do. And he said, yes, and I don't know how I did it. So as you say, there's no trail of breadcrumbs. Sometimes we bring a lot of presence if we play golf. Some people can see the line to the hole to it when putting. Other times it's all fuzzy. So these. These things do come and go.

Okay, let's go into the. Let's go into the different. The different four purposes. If we. If we could. I didn't want to get too off on that tangent because I want the audience to hear about the new book. Specifically, what are these four purposes? Well, you told us what they were, but, like, drill down on them if you would.

Now, learning life's lesson sounds kind of mundane. Oh, yes. We're all here to learn from our life experience. Turns out there's a lot more to it in terms of Earth is a school. Daily life is our classroom. You know, no one needs to read my books or any books or attend any seminars in order to evolve as a human being. People were evolving before books and seminars. So what? What then? People ask me, well, why do you write books, Dan, and teach seminars? Because any good information, good perspectives that I share can help people learn the lessons of life a little more gracefully with a little less pain, because it helps clarify the lessons of life. But that's why learning life's lessons is so important. In fact, there are 12 courses we need to pass in order to graduate. And I summarize all those 12 courses in that first chapter. There are also school rules. If life is a school, there are rules in any school, and we call them universal laws. So I summarize what that is about. So there's. It's really packed with an understanding that it's impossible to fail at anything if we've learned from it. Learning is not just the icing on the cake. It's the whole cake that if we start to appreciate, what have I learned today? How have I changed? How do you know if you've learned something? This is an important question. People say I learn things all the time. There are two ways to know if you learned something. The primary way is an action changes, something changes. The second way is your perspectives expand. And, you know, people have said to me, oh, your first book changed my life, Dan. You know, the way of the peaceful warrior. And I want to ask them, what do you mean by that? And it usually comes back to me as I have a different perspective now. And that's not a small thing. It's a better part of wisdom perspective. So that's what learning life's lessons is about. It is paying attention and recognizing that life is a form of spiritual weight training. If we don't lift any weights, we don't get any stronger. So some people feel bad about having some kind of challenge or adversity. But if we look back on those times, we've experienced a difficulty in our life. Here we are, the Japanese saying, fall down six times, get up seven times. Point is, every adversity has a hidden gift in terms of. Most people who've gone through difficulties will recognize are a little bit wiser now, a little bit stronger now, and that's of value. We don't have to pretend to look for adversity, but when it happens, we can appreciate that element, that that's what makes us stronger and that makes us grow, those challenges. So learning life's lessons is about all those things. And again, there's a lot in that chapter. It's not just, yeah, we're here to learn from our life experience because many people don't.

Yeah, that's a good point. I remember reading former President Richard Nixon's book in the arena, which was written years ago. It's a great book, by the way. And he just. I mean, that's a man who had some big successes and some spectacular failures, right? He had a lot of. He had a rollercoaster life. And he taught. Talks about how you can't fail if you learn. You. You've always succeeded in learning something. And you know, the famous Edison quote, and everybody says it's a different amount of tries where he failed to invent the light bulb, you know, 25,000, 1,000, who knows? It's been so, so, so changed over the years, but I've succeeded in knowing what doesn't work. And Nixon, I remember, he quoted Sophocles and he said, said one must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been. That's not really about learning as much. It's about perspective. But there's some brilliant wisdom there. Yeah, that's. That's great, Dan. Yeah, Good.

I appreciate that.

Yeah. What. What else do you. Do you want to go into the next one or more on this?

Well, career and calling. Just so people, your listeners, can understand the picture of the book. Career and Calling first defines the difference between career and calling. You know, we're told, do what you love and the money will follow. Well, doing what we love is about following our heart, following our calling. Some people, it's playing the guitar or another musical instrument, or people are called to the clergy or the military. There are hobbies people have. See, calling may or may not have anything to do with money. Calling is something we're just drawn to do in our discretionary time. It's something we find meaningful and enjoyable about it. Whereas a career, whether we call it profession, job, whatever, there are many words. Career is about producing an income to support ourselves and family, if we have one. And we may like a lot of things about our career, we may. The people we work with, we may find it meaningful, but if we weren't getting paid anything, we'd have to find something else. So that's the difference between the two. And it's important for, like young artists to understand they're not selling out by getting a day job and then practicing their art in their spare time. Otherwise it's hard to produce an income. So we need to balance career and calling. Other people devalue anything that doesn't make the money, and they've abandoned the calling that really they enjoyed and might enrich their life. So that's why it's important to understand the difference between the two. And that's why the second purpose in the book is finding our career and calling. And I emphasize self knowledge. So important, if we don't know ourselves clearly, we end up making the right choices for the wrong person, the one we thought we were. So I go into specifically, what does it mean, self knowledge? It means understanding what are my talents, what are my interests, and what are my values. And it can take 10 years to get that. You know, that's why they call them the trying twenties. When young people are trying this, trying that, and trying this because they're exploring themselves in the world. What are my interests? What are my values? They're learning to differentiate between what they think they should do or someone else thinks they should do and what they really want to do. And that can take into the 30s to really discover that nobody wants to hear it, who's young. But that's why the four purposes of life is especially intended for people going through Some kind of transition, graduating from school, retiring, any other changes or dislocations in their life. It's a good time to read it, to regain perspective.

Yeah, it sure is. And that career and calling, it's so important. I mean, we spend a good third of our lives in that, maybe more. And it's just a huge part of our lives. It's like saying, is sleep important? Of course it is. You know, so it's a big deal. And so I don't think that should be minimized. Okay.

We learn a lot about ourselves in that search for work. Some people search for a soulmate, other search for soul job. But really there's a lot in that particular section. Now we've touched upon the fourth purpose too, which is attending to this present moment, what is my purpose? The third one is the most mysterious and most controversial. And I took a risk even bringing this. This to the. To the fore in another book called the Life youe Were Born to Live. But the third purpose, finding our life path, involves. Well, the best way I can put it is to invite your listeners to go to peacefulwarrior.com click on the Life Purpose link. It's right there on the left. It will be taken to a Life Purpose calculator. All they do is put in their day, month and year of birth and they will see a number. The number won't mean too much to them, but there's some words associated with each digit and there's a paragraph about a paragraph, a teaser, a taste to give them a flavor for their life path. There are 43 different life paths for people born since 1900. And I'll leave it to people to see how accurate the material is. I can't explain how working with the numbers of your date of birth can give valid, reliable, accurate information. But I challenge your listeners just to take a look to get a sample of this material. Or they can get the Life Purpose app online. If you have an Android or iPhone, the app is very good. It gives you access to all the information, but it's really helpful.

So you're saying that, I mean, that's about numerology?

Well, again, I don't even use the word because I've never been very interested in numerology. It seemed about 40% accurate to me. At least I could be wrong about that. But then this unusual mentor showed me an interpretation of the numbers that bit different from many neurological systems, more simple, straightforward. And I found it just life changing actually. So I started working with other people. When I went to an advanced training A series of lectures he gave and I started working with it. Unlike many people, I was completely immersed in it for about eight years before I started teaching it and finally wrote a book about it. So it's one aspect of my teaching that I can't see as.

Dan. I mean, you know, some people are going to hear you say that and they're going to go, oh my God, isn't that like astrology? Come on. I know, I'm not sure. Tell us, why do you think it's so credible? I had that analysis done once. You know, my life path number and I think it was five maybe or something like that. And it was, it was on camera. Uncanny how accurate it was. Kind of blew my mind.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a good numerologist can do that. Again, it's trans rational. I don't want to call it irrational, but I can't explain it. But you know, you can't explain how aspirin works. Scientists don't know yet exactly all the mechanisms. They just know it has certain results.

I will freely admit and agree with you 100% that there are many things we have yet to understand. And if you want to say, well, you know, these very empirical, scientific, logical people will say, well, you know, I just go with the science. Well, you know, science used to believe in bloodletting and leeches and the world is flat and you know, the universe revolved around the earth. I mean, science used to believe all sorts of crazy stuff that we don't believe anymore. There's lots of stuff we don't understand. So get over it. That's what I say.

I'm a big fan of science that pulled us out of the dark ages of superstition, gave us a method to test things empirically. But then, you know, if science becomes a fundamentalist religion, then faith becomes heresy. And I think both are valuable. So I don't want to be out in quote unquote, woo woo land. I can only say this. I was a psychology major at Berkeley. I understand empiricism, the scientific method. And I tell you, I mean I've studied the various systems, the Enneagram and MMPI and all the different inventories in terms of self knowledge. This is one of the most accessible, clear, useful methods I've seen. That's why I chose to share it. And I worked really hard writing that book and the four purposes of life to help give some perspective on these four purposes that can really lend a lot of clarity in people's lives. So that's why.

Okay, did you, did you Finish your thoughts on the purposes. I just want to make sure we got that in.

Yeah, I think I did. I think for a summary for the time we have, I think that gives people a flavor at least and.

And it's great that it's 150 pages, you know, a quicker read. I think a lot of authors are just still stuffing books to make them. I mean, they still think they're selling them by the pound when so many people are buying them digitally anyway. So I like a shorter concise book. So I think that's great. What else would you like, like people to know? I mean, your body of work is. Is so extensive to just anything you know, about Dan Millman or about your work. The way the Peaceful Warrior, which I think is. I mean, you would consider that to be kind of your magnum opus, right?

It's a signature book. It's my best known book. Yes. But each one has had to justify itself and has its own purpose. I would say. My background as an athlete and a coach has helped me to stay grounded because it's easy to get lost in abstract concepts. And really we want something that has actionable things we can do, that has actually outcomes, that is practical and useful. And that's what I try to convey in my various books. And including the four purposes.

And do you want to mention Anything on the 12 required courses in the school of life? I mean, you have four purposes, 12 courses, sure.

I don't really want to overwhelm people, but you know, it's a fair question. If we're here to learn, what courses are we here to learn? And we think, oh, I heard a little about relationships or money or education of the physical body. Those are all useful things. And daily life will deliver lessons in all those areas. But actually it's deeper than that. It actually summarizes the entire we call personal growth or personal development. And these 12 areas, I can fire them off at you really quickly. But basically it's discover your worth. And by the way, it's different from self esteem. But I can't explain that now. Discover your worth, reclaim your will, energize your body, manage your money, tame your mind, trust your intuition, accept your emotions, face your fears, illuminate your shadow, embrace your sexuality, awaken your heart and serve your world. And if you can come up in the 13th one, I'd like to hear it. But that really comprises the entire field of personal growth. And I worked very hard to summarize a paragraph to define and clarify what each of these areas are. There's another book I wrote, which is a major book called Everyday Enlightenment which covers all these in depth, all these 12 areas. But I want to summarize it in the four purposes of life.

Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Well, Dan, give out your website one more time if you would and you know, tell people they can find the book in all the usual places, I assume Amazon, etc.

Yeah, it's online and in bookstores and My website is peacefulwarrior.com and it has a listing and description of all my books. Basic various seminars around the world and there's some online courses as well that are pretty cool, like the Peaceful Warrior workout.

Excellent. Good stuff. Well, Dan Millman, thank you so much for joining us on the show again. It was great to have you back and just keep up the good work. Your messages are awesome and we all need to remember them and be, you know, stay grounded in some of this stuff as we live in this changing, hectic, busy world with information and stimulation overload, there's so much coming at us all the time. So keep up the good work and thanks again for joining us.

My pleasure, Jason.

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