DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE | How To Stop Holding Yourself Back! | Dan Millman

There is no best teacher, no best book, no best philosophy, no best religion, no best diet, no best exercise form, no best martial art. There is only, I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. There is a saying out there, I may butcher the saying, but it's a saying that says it's better to be A warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. And I'm curious, does that resonate with you in any way about having a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit? And what does that really mean? Is it connected to that in any way?

Well, I like that saying. It has a nice resonance and balance. And yes, I love to have the opportunity to explain what I mean. You know, way back when, When I was a young college professor in Oberlin, Ohio, I taught a martial arts course, basically Aikido and Tai Chi. And they're both internal arts. I was gonna call the course the Way of the Warrior, which makes sense, but it didn't quite fit because they're internal martial arts. They're not really aggressive arts. And then a light bulb went on and I said, hey, why don't I call it the Way of the Peaceful Warrior? to add some balance. But it wasn't until years later that I wrote a book and decided to use that term as the title. But people asked me, what do you mean, peaceful warrior? And so over time it evolved and I got more insights and it's like we're all peaceful warriors in training. Whether one would label themselves such or not, I view everyone that way because Everyone I know is seeking to live with a more peaceful heart, a sense of serenity, equanimity, balance in the chaos and changes of the world, since change comes at us in waves that we can't control or predict, as many of us have learned recently, but we can learn to surf those waves. And so that's the idea of a peaceful heart. And there are times in our lives, not just athletes like you and me, former athletes, There are times anyone needs a warrior's spirit. And it's not about fighting. It's not about a battle, except maybe the internal demons of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, those kinds of things. But really it's about rolling up our sleeves, standing up tall inside of ourselves, and marching into everyday life and doing what we need to do with that kind of spirit. So that's why I view everyone as a peaceful warrior in training.

You mentioned these kind of inner demons that we all face. What do you think is the strongest demon that each one of us needs to learn how to overcome?

Probably some form of fear, including self-doubt. That can be a big one. You know, Custamato, the boxing coach, once said, Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. They just respond differently. And so the focus of my work recently, after working with the four primary mentors in my life over a 20 year period that I describe in the new book. What I've come to is that we have less control over our thoughts that just appear in our mind, in our awareness, and less control over the emotions we happen to be feeling in any given moment. We can't just change them by willing them to change instantly. We don't have a spam filter in our head to stop certain thoughts. So rather than focus on what we have less control over, I believe in focusing on what we have more control over, which is our behavior, what we actually do. And so that's become an emphasis in my work of late, and it really does simplify life. You know, Barbara Rasp, the writer, once said, the lesson is simple, the student is complicated. And that's true of all of us. We complicate everything. And so I'm striving for simplicity. directness, clarity, by life skills, spiritual life skills we didn't learn in school necessarily. And so that's what I've gained, that kind of insight after working with these mentors over, as I said, several decades.

And what do these mentors teach you about overcoming fear and self-doubt? Or what did you discover within your own lessons and own failures and learnings? on how to overcome failure and self-doubt so that it doesn't consume you or control you.

Early on in the memoir, in the new book, early on I go into my foundations as a young risk taker who was almost left the planet when I was still in diapers, running after a bouncing ball in the street until my dad grabbed me. But I had a role model named Steve Ussah when I was about five or six years old. he was seven or eight. He was streetwise, you know. And he and his friends, I'd followed them around. And he and his friends found a home under construction in our neighborhood and they climbed to the roof naturally and there was a huge sand pile below. And I climbed up with them. I managed to get up there. And Steve jumped off and sunk up to his knees in the sand pile and his friends followed. And then they said, Come on, Danny. and so I went to the edge and I wanted to so badly, I wanted to jump, but I was so afraid, I stepped back, then I stepped forward again, and stepped back. And he finally yelled something I never forgot. He said, Danny, stop thinking and jump. And a light bulb went on. It was like, I could do that. I just stopped my thinking about it and bent my knees and pushed and jumped. And that became like a master metaphor. It became a meme kind of in my life. Stop thinking and jump. And I trained my gymnast to do that when I was coaching at Stanford University. When I knew they were prepared to do something, but there was still the fear.

What if we don't feel prepared to do something?

Right, now that's different. There's a saying that fear is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. And it can serve us. I mean, if our fear is physical, if we could be injured or killed doing something, fear may be a wise counselor saying, wait a minute, step away from this, you're not ready yet. Or prepare better, or take precautions, or be especially alert if it's something we really want to do. But if we're not prepared yet, then we avoid it. So if the fear is physical, we need to listen to our fears. If we could be injured or killed, they may guide us. If we're walking down one dark street in a part of the city we're not familiar with and we get a weird feeling about to go around corner, we might want to listen to that and go wide around the corner or across the street, that sort of thing. But if the fear is subjective, if we're afraid of looking foolish or being embarrassed or ashamed or awkward, just do it anyway because it doesn't break bones. So we're embarrassed. So, you know, I've been embarrassed many times and I write about that in the book as well. So those are the two kinds of approaches. When do you know when to listen to fear? When do you cut through it. And that's how I would differentiate it.

Why do you think so many people are crippled by the fear of judgment of other people, the embarrassment, what people will think about them, what they'll say about them? Why do you think so many people will wait in decades to actually start a project, a creative endeavor, writing their book that they've been dreaming about for so long out of the insecurity of someone else's opinion.

I could theorize about why other people do it, but I do know that I've faced it myself. And yet, as a gymnast, I failed. And as a football player, former football player, you faced it too. I failed 50 times a day. I tried something, I messed up, I fell, I crashed, and I kept doing it. So failure to me was just a stepping stone to where I was going. But many people haven't really encountered a lot of that and they just want to succeed and they feel their identity is on the line, their self-worth is on the line and they put too much on the line. To me it was all play and you mess up and you do better next time. So I think, you know, there's one fundamental kind of fear. Well, there's several actually, but the fear of public speaking. One Canadian study found that it was rated slightly higher than the fear of death.

Crazy.

Because when we're speaking in public, all these people seem to be judging us. What if they don't like us? Oh my God, we might as well roll over and die. But the fact is if we focus more on the task at hand of giving to them rather than what they think of us. If it's all about me, how do I look? Do they like me? How do I sound? Then we can get all nervous about that. That's one kind of fear, but it also is related to self-doubt and it's related to the God of opinion. You've heard that saying, what other people think of us is none of our business. But most people don't believe that. They put the best self forward on Instagram, on Facebook, or whatever, because they want to look good to everybody else, thinking everyone will like them if they look good. But sometimes if we look too good, other people feel bad around us. They compare themselves. And there is an exercise one can do to free yourself from the God of Opinion. So you could begin to trust the God of your heart. All right, and this, by the way, this actually works. It sounds silly, but it works. You make a little altar in your room, and maybe put a white cloth on it, some incense, a flower, whatever, make an altar. Then you make a little God of Opinion, and you put it on the altar. It can look like Darth Vader or a clay figure, or put someone's picture on it who represents the God of opinion. And every morning when you get up, you get on your hands and knees in front of this altar before you start your day, you bow down, touch your head to the floor, as ridiculous as it may feel, and you go, how am I doing, God of opinion? Am I okay? Do I look okay? Do I sound okay? Do you approve of me? Now, if someone walks in on you when you're doing that, it's like, Whoa, what are you doing? And it's like, oh, I'm just worshiping my God of opinion. That's even better. But let's say no one walks in. You do it privately. You don't have to do it the rest of your life just for a week or two. But what happens is during the day, when you confront somebody and they seem to be judging you and you're worried about their opinion, you can say to yourself, wait a minute, they look a lot like the God of opinion, but it couldn't be because I know where it is. I left it back on my altar this morning. And here's the key. I've already worshiped it today. I already did that. Do I want to do it again? What this exercise does, it works at a subconscious level because that little inner child or subconscious mind likes humor and it likes symbolic imagery and this has both. So this actually can help cure worshiping the God of opinion and start paying attention to our own inner knower.

I love this example and exercise. I don't think it's too crazy. I think I'm always exploring and trying new things like that in my own way. So I think that's a beautiful exercise. I think people should try that 100% if there's been something that's been holding you back from the opinions of others, peers, family, friends, social media, whatever it is. Practice it. Try it for a day, try it for a week and see what happens. Do you ever feel that insecurity of your life at this stage of your life from the opinions of other people when you're putting out a new project or speaking or anything like that, or have you mastered that?

I only feel insecure around my wife. That's about the only time. I just am so focused on sharing with people that the insecurity or doubt just never comes up. And even if it does, I've learned, and you know, really, I learned that God of Opinion exercise from one of the mentors I call the Warrior Priest. And I found out it really works. And I learned from the mentor I call the Sage, who I met more recently, some other principles. And so even if I feel self-doubt, I've learned three things that are very, very effective for functioning well in life. despite the feelings or thoughts, positive or negative, which is to accept my thoughts, positive or negative, and my feelings as natural to me in that moment. Now, when I say accept them, I mean as I might in meditation, notice them. They're there, not denying them or ignoring them or running from them. Just notice they're coming up. The second thing is, what is my purpose? What is my goal or aim? And the third is doing what needs to be done in line with my purpose. It sounds very simple. It's not so easy. But by doing that, we learn to function well in life despite conflicting thoughts and feelings, all those complications.

So the three things, accept your thoughts and feelings as natural. Yes, it's natural to you. Maybe you don't want to continue on with those thoughts and feelings, but accept that they're happening, you're feeling them, you're thinking these things. It's step one. notice them really. Number two is go back to thinking about your purpose. What is my purpose? And then step three is to start taking actions and steps that are in alignment of your purpose.

Right, it's respectful of the individual, not in alignment with Dan Millman's philosophy or what you read in a book or scripture. I mean, it's basically just what is your purpose, a constructive purpose, and then do what needs to be done. We've all done that. We've taken out the trash or done our work or gone to gone to school, whatever it is, when we were tired or not feeling like it, we've all done that. So we know how to do that. You know, there's a saying, a man named Shoma Morita once said, When running up a hill, it's okay to give up as many times as you want, as long as your feet keep moving.

Absolutely. Do you feel like we can control our thoughts and our feelings?

Absolutely not. I know there are many books around or people who will tell you how to feel more resourceful feelings and feel this and feel that so you can finally live well and how to quiet the mind or think more positively. I personally, in my own experience, have found that neither I nor anyone else I've ever seen has a spam filter in their head can just say, oh, I don't want to think that thought anymore. In fact, the best way to become obsessed is to try not to think a given thought all day. So rather than focus on that, trying to control what we have little control over by our will, because feelings and thoughts change all the time. They come and they go. They don't stay with us unless we're, you know, what you fight, what you resist, persists. That old saying. So rather than trying to fix my thoughts and feelings, there's another way to liberate ourselves literally from that. Now feelings can be very valuable. I mean, they have information. If I'm feeling depressed or angry when I'm around a particular person, there is some action I may need to take, something I may need to express or change. So feelings have information. I'm not saying deny or ignore them, but to try to change them. You know, if there were a terrible storm outside right now, and a lot of destruction. Would it be your fault? Would it be my fault? I don't think so. And why not? Because we have no control over the weather. Unless we're storm, I guess, in the X-Men or something, you know, she could control the weather. If we could, we'd have some control, but we can't control the weather, therefore we're not responsible for it. So we can probably agree on this, that we are responsible for what we can control, not responsible for what we can't control. And so if we come to accept this idea, many people haven't thought about it. I know I hadn't until the sage exposed me to these ideas, but I realize that thoughts just come and go. And one problem with many teenagers and adults as well is they feel too responsible for the wild and crazy thoughts and feelings they're having. and not responsible enough for what they actually do. And they use emotions or negative thoughts as an excuse to not do what they need to do. So there is a way, an approach to simplify our lives and just focus. The one question, the key question in my life at any given moment is, what do I need to do now? And do that to the best of my ability. And there are tricks, there are ways, there are hacks. For example, I recommend to people they dream big, but start small and then connect the dots. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

Right.

What if someone is saying, well, I feel like I can't manage my thoughts and my feelings and it's consuming me so much that I just feel stressed out or anxious or worried all the time. How do we then, I guess, redirect our thoughts and our feelings into a more peaceful heart, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, the peaceful heart is not always a feeling of serenity. It's a way we behave. Let me give an example. A young man came up to me after I gave a talk at a college, and he said, Dan, I think you mentioned you have done consultations with people one-on-one at times, but you must charge a lot of money for your time. I'm a poor college student. So, What can you tell me for a dollar? And he gave me his dollar. And I told him six words that could change his life. I gave him a lifetime practice in six words. I'm still practicing. And those six words are here and now, breathe and relax. And that is an entire teaching. The here and now part, most people say, oh yeah, I know that already. I know it's good to live in the present moment. but many people don't really understand what that's about and why. And for example, technically, a physicist will tell you there's no such thing as the present moment, because what nanosecond can we grab hold of? You know, millionth of a second.

It's gone.

It's gone. It's gone. So what teachers like myself, what we say is just handle what's in front of you, because past and future do not exist. They literally do not exist. The past is always going to be past. The future is always going to be future. There's no such thing as future happiness. We're either happy now or we're not. We're either strong now or we're not. It's not a matter of I will get that way later in the future. So what do we bring to that? How do we know? Well, first of all, when I say they don't exist, what we call the past is a set of neural impulses in our brain we call memory. And someone can show me a picture of their 10th birthday party and say, look, I know the past is real. I can show you this picture. But what's actually happening is I'm looking at a picture in this present moment and they are showing it to me in this present moment, a visual image. But that was, it's still a memory. Nothing wrong with the past. It's a great human capacity to remember, to learn, to reflect on, to ruminate, on the past, but not to mistake it for reality. And the same with the future. We can plan our day, we can use our imagination about the future, but the future never comes. It's always our imagination. Even if we plan our day, we don't want to become too attached to the plans because they have a way of changing, don't they? We intend one thing, something comes up. So by focusing on the present moment, the here and now, that's our moment of power. It's our moment of reality, our moment of sanity. We can always handle this moment. When we're concerned about a toxic meeting we're going to go into, we're not looking forward to it, it's not happening right now. You know, I was in Costa Rica teaching a workshop there some years ago, and one of the things we did was a zipline. You know what ziplines are? You go up in a big platform and link up to this line and leap off 30 feet in the air and zoom down this line. Well, it's kind of scary. And she'd never done this before. We had our harnesses on, our safety harnesses, which they hook us up to, and we were walking up this gigantic tree, like in Middle Earth. It was a spiral staircase going up this tree. And as we were walking up, she said, oh, I'm so nervous. I'm really getting scared. And I went, I don't understand. Haven't you ever walked upstairs before? And she went, oh yeah, I've walked upstairs. I said, well, that's all we're doing right now. She went, oh, okay. So she relaxed for a little while. We got to the top on the big platform. People were going off, and they hooked us up to a cable at the center of the tree around the tree so we wouldn't fall off the platform. And then she saw somebody leaping off and she went, oh, I'm getting scared again. And I said, I don't understand. The only way we can get hurt standing here is to take off our helmets and bang our head against the tree. She went, oh, okay. Brought her back to the present again. And finally, she was standing on the edge ready to leap off. They'd hooked her up to the line and I went, Now you can be scared. At least it's appropriate in the moment. So by focusing on the moment, it simplifies our life. This is the moment of power to focus on our, not our cosmic purpose or ultimate purpose or 20-year goal, but focus on what I need to do now. What is my purpose right now? My purpose is very clear. So is yours.

As your definition, mission of purposeful life or meaningful life changed over the last 20, 30 years, or has it always been the same?

No, it's changed. It's evolved like everything else. It's become clarified more than changed. My sense of what it means to have a purpose. Reflecting on my little granddaughter when she was in diapers crawling across the floor, It struck me that she wasn't doing this to exercise. She wanted something, some sparkly little thing she was crawling toward. And I believe from infancy we're hardwired goal seekers. We're happiest when we're pursuing a goal. Those people who feel most fulfilled aren't just those who've reached a destination, but those who are moving toward it. In fact, I define success as making progress, toward a meaningful goal. And you know, in the Peaceful Warrior movie, you may recall a moment when the character Dan is walking up this big hill with the man I called Socrates, played by Nick Nolte, you know. And Dan has this realization. He said, Sock, you know, I just realized it's the journey that makes us happy, not the destination. And that's a bit of wisdom because most of our lives are spent on the journey. But without a destination in mind, there is no journey. We just wander around. So from our point A, we need a point B to be going toward, even if it's just in the next five minutes. And by doing that with quality, it pulls us into the zone, like we experience as athletes, in everyday life. And it helps us to live purposefully. You know, one of my books is titled Living on Purpose. One is the four purposes of life. Another is the life you were born to live. so a lot of my work has developed in this area of living a purposeful life.

What do you think gets in the way of people living a meaningful, purposeful life?

Well, as you probably know, I'm sure you do, things like doubt, like insecurity, these blocks that we put in our own way, what if fear of failure and maybe even fear of success at times, because what if we succeed and we're not happy? What do we do next? So sometimes we get in our own way, step on our own feet, put our foot in our mouth and self-sabotage. So life can be very simple if we just focus on what is my purpose, not what does someone else want me to do and what is my purpose and then moving toward that. And I believe that sense of a purposeful life gives us a sense of fulfillment because people who get things done that may not sound that sexy or spiritual, to finish what you start. But people who get things done have a default sense of fulfillment that's greater than those who don't get things done.

And why do you think so many people self-sabotage and how do we overcome sabotaging ourselves?

Well, and I have given this some thought. I believe one of the fundamental elements, in fact, I wrote a book called Everyday Enlightenment, which has 12 gateways. to personal growth. And the first one in that book is discovering our worth, appreciating our worth, not a sense of entitlement. I'm talking about appreciating our innate worth as a human being. I often remind people that each of us has a story and that story is unique. It's like no other on the planet. Not a single other person on the planet has exactly our story. And it's so it's kind of our treasure. We don't just have a story, we're a story in the making. We're like a novel being written and we never know what the next chapter.

Is going to be.

But I think we need to appreciate that story and the value of it. And we've all had quiet moments of courage, of heroism, overcoming adversity.

We've all had those.

You know, sometimes in a seminar I'll say, Please raise your hand if you've experienced physical, emotional, or mental pain in your life. Of course all the hands go up. But yet I think we could agree that because of that difficulty, that challenge we've all faced, we're a little bit stronger now, a little bit wiser now, and having a bigger sense of perspective for having gone through that. Sometimes digging out of a dark hole can give us the strength to climb the mountain. That's my experience. And I've had my dark moments as well. And I wrote about in Way of the Peaceful Warrior and in the new book in the memoir.

We talked about fear of failure, fear of success, and the fear of other people's opinions or judgment from other people. Which one do you think is the biggest fear to overcome for a majority of people, of those three?

I wouldn't want to hypothesize because each person is individual. And it's, Well, I was mentioning self-worth. When we grow up, we've done kind acts in our lives. We've done unkind acts. All of us at times have been callous. Somebody came up to me once and said, Dan, you seem like a nice guy, I said sometimes. Because we're sometimes this and sometimes that. That's natural.

And.

Nobody is standing over us with a notebook judging. Every time we've done a kind act or an unkind act, or shirked responsibility or showed lack of integrity, all those things, but somebody is keeping track. We are. And what happens is we each have a sense, a limited sense of deservedness. There's a saying, we don't get what we deserve in life. We get what we're willing to negotiate. And what we're willing to negotiate depends on that sense of deservedness. How much do I deserve of success? And again, it's not entitlement. It's just innate value as a human being. And if I were to ask a group of people, and I have done so, give yourself on a 1 to 100 scale, rate yourself, what's your level of deservedness? Give yourself a number. Rarely do people say honestly, sincerely, 100. Usually it's 98 or 26 or 72 or whatever it is. And Ramakrishna, the Indian saint, once said, An ocean of abundance can be pouring down from the heavens, but if you're only holding up a thimble, that's all you're going to get. And so that's what that limitations we place on ourselves. When something good happens, we go, this can't last. Or, When's the other shoe going to drop? Or, I'm starting to get uncomfortable with all this good stuff. I need to make it more difficult. We don't do that consciously, of course. We don't wake up one morning saying, I think I'll sabotage my relationship today. Oh, no, I did that last week. I think I'll do my finances today. It's operating on the subconscious level based on the sense of deservedness or self-worth. That's where self-sabotage comes from. Now, you may say, well, if it's subconscious, how can we change it? Well, it's not really about a feeling of self-worth. By the way, it's not the same as self-esteem. That's more like confidence and liking ourself. But this deeper sense of deservedness, that's going to be key in our lives. And you know, I would just recommend as a practice, put up a little post-it on your mirror in the bathroom. And every morning when you get up, you read this and it says, How good can I stand it today? And that's how good you'll get it. So that's what I suggest. It's a matter of when someone offers us a pen because we don't have one, instead of oh, I couldn't take except that, it's thank you. It's saying to life more, yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. And opening up to that, that we deserve it not because we've led perfect lives or always been nice to everyone, but because we're a human being doing the best we can, with what we're given that day.

I mean, how does someone really learn to develop their own self-worth and appreciate their worth so they can believe they are deserving of what they want, and they believe they are deserving to negotiate more of what they want?

Yeah, well, that's really a tough one about believing that. Now, there are people who will tell you there are trainings that work with belief structures and disc-creating, unresourceable beliefs and creating more useful beliefs, more complications. You don't have to always feel worthy. You don't. That's why see all I can do as a teacher of this kind of practical, some say spiritual wisdom, all I can do is remind people of what they already sense or know at some level, but they tend to forget. I offer observations and reminders. So I'm offering the reminder now. And that's other than putting that post-it on your mirror, it's just remembering this issue of self-worth, remembering how we can sabotage ourselves because of this subconscious tendency. And any habit like this can be challenging to overcome. For example, here's another habit that's not the same thing. I'm going a bit off topic, but it's related. One of the most heartfelt things I beg people to do is to stop comparing yourself to other people. Because if you do, and look what happens. People get depressed. We know young people on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and all that, because everyone else seems to be having such a fantastic time. But they don't realize everyone has their inner battles. Everyone, no matter how good their act looks like on the outside. And so when we compare ourselves to someone else, we're either going to feel superior or inferior. And it's a profound disrespect for our own process. For example, when I was a coach at Stanford, I taught beginning gymnastics classes and eventually I taught some of these young kids how to do back somersaults. And I noticed that some of them learned the somersault faster than others. But often those who took longer to learn it learned it better than those who learned it faster.

Interesting.

So we need to this, that's another reminder. We need to trust our way of learning and our way of living, to trust our own process and who we are. Which is why, well one of the fundamental tenets of this approach to living that I call the Peaceful Warrior's Way is that there is no best teacher, no best book, no best philosophy, no best religion, no best diet, no best exercise form, no best martial art. There is only the best for each of us at a given time of our life. Life's an experiment. We have to find out what works for us. So I'm back to that topic of self-trust. And yes, we'll have doubts. We'll have insecurities in various situations. Like an athlete may be very confident on the field, but maybe not so much at a party. Or it's for some, it's the opposite. So we all have our situations. That's old saying, what is it? We're all ignorant only on different subjects. So we're human beings and we need to give ourselves a pat on the back and cut ourselves a little slack at times.

Sure, sure. What's the thing that we should write on our Mirrors.

How good can I stand it today?

How good can I stand it today? I like that. What happens do you think for people when they start making that switch? Not, oh, here we go again. I hope it's not a horrible day again, but instead, how good can I have it today?

Well, in another one of my books, I write something I call the Margaret analogy. and the way it works is this. You know, people ask me, Dan, if you had an enlightenment experience, I go, no, my life is more like a dimmer switch being turned up and then down slightly and then up a little brighter and then down slightly. So it's more, you know, two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. But in this Margaret analogy, I coached a diver, a springboard diver named Margaret at Oberlin College. And the way she learned a new dive, is first she would go up and just go splat in the water trying it. She'd have no idea what she did wrong, how to improve it. She'd need me, the coach, who watched her. And she'd say, what did I do, coach? And I'd explain to her and then she'd say thanks and she'd try it a few more times. And then as she improved, while she was messing up, she noticed it. Oh, I'm doing that again and splat.

But in the air she's noticing it.

She'S noticing it in the air. Oh, I'm doing it again. And we've all had that experience. Here I go again.

Right?

And what you said. So after more practice, she's able to notice it earlier and correct for it and compensate for it. But it takes a while. So people shouldn't think they hear something, hear me speaking now or read a book and suddenly they're going to just their life is mastered now because it takes time to overcome inertia, old habits, ways of doing things. So there's that in-between period and we have to understand that. You know, I learned something when I was 60 years old, which was about 15 years ago. When I turned 60, I wanted to do something special. So a friend of mine loaned me his unicycle at my request. And I wanted to learn to ride a unicycle. And he recommended I practice in a tennis court because it's good level ground and I could get a death grip on the chain link fence while I'm trying to stay atop this thing. Now, I don't know if you have ever tried that, Louis, or any of your listeners, but it's humbling, believe me. You get up on it and it goes out from under you. So, I practiced every day. I came back. And I, at the end of the first week, I could pedal six times careening forward before it went down. And then the second week, I think I got 12 pedals. I was thrilled, 12 pedals. By the third week, to make the story short, I was doing figure eights on the unicycle around the tennis court. It took me three weeks every day. And I learned two things from this experience that I'd learned years before in gymnastics, but I'd forgotten. because it's easy to forget. I learned first of all that everything is difficult until it becomes easy. And that's everything we do, changing habits, whatever. The second thing I learned was maybe even more interesting. I found there were certain days, two or three days during those three weeks where everything fell apart. I was worse physically, I was confused mentally, I don't know what happened. I was better the week, you know, a week before. It was very discouraging, but I kept coming back. But then I realized, noticing this pattern, that the day after, after those so-called bad days, I made a breakthrough, a jump in learning. And I realized the learning was actually happening on those so-called bad days. That's when it was, the information was going from my front brain, the cognitive part, thinking about it, analyzing it to the back brain, which is more automatic into my instincts, like learning to drive a gear shift car in the old days, you know? So that can happen that those crisis times that seem to be worse in a relationship, for example, or in learning any kind of skill where you feel all confused and you feel worse. You know, sometimes we feel like we're getting worse, going vegetating, even going backwards. but we may be backing up to get a running start. So we persist through that difficult time and we have breakthroughs in relationships, new levels of intimacy, and so on. So just to push on, that's where our feet keep moving.

Right.

I thought you were in your 50s. You look amazing for 75, you said?

Yeah.

75. Genetics and decent life habits, nothing extreme, but good life habits.

Good mindset, habits, environment, quality relationships, good sleep, hopefully.

Yes.

What have been the, I guess, I mean, at 75, what have been, what are the new lessons you're learning at this season of life that were different than 40, 45?

Well, one thing I realized in my relationship with my wife, Joy, of 46 years, but who's counting? It took me 25 years probably to realize she was not criticizing me. She was improving me. That's part of her job. And hopefully I serve some of the same capacity. But she's taken that on, that task. And with the new book, Joy read every single draft of the nine drafts I did, cutting the new book down from an over bloated 500 pages down to, from a, yeah, from a hedge, a big thick hedge to a 200, weighing in at 200 pages to a bonsai. I wanted to just trim it down. You know, Jack London once said, it takes hard writing to make easy reading. And I did the work. So Joy read every single draft and made suggestions. So I'm still learning, always learning. Anybody who presumes to teach needs to keep learning. and Joy even weighed in. Around the seventh draft, she said, Dan, I remember things, you know, she was with me through my time with the four mentors as well. And she said, I remember things that just have a different sensibility. I remember this differently from you. And she said, what if I wrote something in the book? And I went, what a great idea. So she also, it's unusual for memoir, but she also added about 10 pages overall, sprinkled throughout the 200 pages of the book.

Yeah, I see joy's notes at the end. At the end of some of these chapters, her notes, which is kind of cool.

Exactly.

I'm gonna be 40 in a year and two months, and it's hard. It's hard for me to even. It's hard for me to even contemplate that because I just feel like I'm still in my, I don't know, 20s, early 20s still.

Good. Good.

Yeah.

What are three things you wish you. did, didn't do, or implemented as you went into 40 for the next 35 years of your life?

Yeah, that's a good question because I have more of my life to look back on than forward to in all likelihood. And that's why it seemed time to write a memoir. But my 40 year old self, I would congratulate myself on reaching a certain level of maturity. You know, in our 20s, We're kind of bulletproof. We can do anything. And we learn that's not necessarily the wisest course sometimes. In our 30s, early 30s, we become more reflective, more contemplative. We're ready to take on life in a different way than just the play time of the 20s. And at 40, I think there's also a place of maturity. For you, it probably won't even be midlife yet. But it's getting to those places where we really wonder. You know, one of the books I wrote with my daughter is called the Creative Compass. And it's about writing your way from inspiration to publication, but it's about creativity. And I'll get to the point of this in a moment. She, Sierra, my daughter, very smart young lady, who just turned 40 recently too. And she structured the book around five stages of any creative process. The first is dreaming, coming up with ideas, light bulb moments. You have to get some idea, you know, what you want to do, and especially in writing. or creating anything. The second is drafting, which is bringing it into the world from the ethers, from nothing to something. So you sit down usually and you record it or you type on a keyboard and you bring these ideas into life. The problem with that is sometimes that castle in your mind looks more like a garden shed. when you've actually written it down. And that's when you have to renovate. That takes you to the third phase of the creative process, which is development. Development. Which is when you step back and you say, is this the vision I wanted to convey? And then finally you go to the refining stage. That's the fourth stage, polishing and so on, and then finally sharing it with the world. the fifth stage. Now, the reason I mentioned that, it seems like a non sequitur, but you in your 40s are at the development stage. You're looking back at your life and is this what I want to do? I hope it is because you do it so well, Louis. Is this what I want to do? Do I want to make some fundamental changes in life? You're really going, you've developed some momentum as well. and experience. Do I want to tackle the way I do it in a little different way? How can I improve? So that's what I would say to my younger self is to trust that, trust the process exactly where you are. And remember, you are still young from my perspective.

Yeah. Is there any other lessons you wish you knew when you hit 40 that maybe were hard lessons to learn in your 40s, 50s or 60s?

Again, you're getting insight into my thinking process because it's going to seem like another brief tangent. But I came across a quotation by Golda Meir. I used to be more of a humble person. But then she said, Stop acting so humble. You're not that great. And the reason I bring that up, the reason I bring that up in response to your question, Louis, is that I want to say, Don't worry. It's not that important. We, you know, the world isn't riding on it. It may seem to be so. It seemed to me, oh, when I was really involved with my books, I was writing almost a book a year and I was going to save the world and turn people's lives around. And maybe I have influenced some people, but nothing is that important. It's all a form of play. You know, we're here on earth. We don't know why. It's a bit of a mystery. We have a certain amount of time. Let's not be too desperate. Let's relax a little bit and enjoy the show. That's what I did on Trampoline from a beginner kid just jumping up and down, I describe in the book, to at a World Championship. The book opens in midair at the World Championships. But it was all play. It was just having a great time. Yeah, I was working, it was some effort, but it was all this sense of play. And that's what I would say in their 40s, it's a good time to remember that.

Do you feel like working on all these books you've written, do you feel like they were all play when you're in the middle of it, or did you get lost in maybe the stress or the worry of making sure you've created more and more?

Good question, because no, I associated trampling with play, but writing is difficult. In fact, Thomas Mann, Nobel Prize winning author, once said, Writers are those for whom writing is more difficult than for other people. Because they're trying to do it well. And you know, in our little book, the Creative Compass, one chapter is Permit yourself to write badly so that one day you may write well. Permit yourself to write badly. Those who write a first draft, Hemingway said the first draft of anything is crap. And Ray Bradbury said writing consists of two phases, throwing up and cleaning up. And I found that to be true in my own case. But writing is difficult. And yet, so is gymnastics, so is trampoline, so is football, so is life. It can be difficult at times. but it can still be approached with the idea. Well, let me tell you a story. I was in the gymnasium and I was swinging around the high bar, getting ready to do a big dismount, like a full twisting double somersault, whatever. Socrates was there watching me in this story. His arms crossed, you know, and I do a full twisting double and I stick my landing. That's a good thing in gymnastics. So I went, yes. And I figured that's a good place to stop for the evening. So I rip off my sweatshirt, throw it in my workout bag, and he and I are walking down the hallway afterward. And he said, you know, Dan, that last move you did was really sloppy. And I went, what are you talking about, Socrates? It was the best dismount I did in weeks. And he said, oh, I'm not talking about the dismount. I'm talking about the way you took off your sweatshirt and put it in your back. And he reminded me again that I was treating one moment as special and another is ordinary, like it didn't matter. But there are no ordinary moments and everything matters. That doesn't mean we have to get too serious about it or desperate or craving or clinging or perfectionistic, but it just means see this. What he said after that was he said something I never forgot. I actually got this line into the movie two weeks before they started shooting. I wasn't the screenwriter, but the director liked the line and put it in. Socrates says, Dan, the difference between us is you practice gymnastics. I practice everything. Ooh, now what did he mean by that? Because that sounds like a never ending obsessive self-improvement program, but that's really not what it's about. See, mostly we do things. We do our work, we do our job, we do the laundry, we do the dishes, we do you know, our studies. But the moment we say we're practicing something, we're doing it with the idea of improving it or refining it. How many of us refine every time we sign our name? How many of us try to do it smoother or better? Or when we walk across a room to ask ourselves, can I walk a little more smoothly? Can I sit a little more balanced? Can I breathe a little more relaxed and deeper? When we do this with a sense of play, not over seriousness, but just how can I improve like learning a backflip and improving it. What happens is it pulls us into the moment, into the zone, into the flow and life becomes a meditation when we remember to do it. Do I remember it all the time? No, that would be idealistic. But in those moments I remember it, I have a different quality of moment. a different quality of life. Even now, I'm remembering that. And it's a good reminder we can offer ourselves every now and then.

I love these stories. They give me chills about that. The movie's amazing. If people haven't watched the movie, you should go watch it and get that book as well. You talk about these additional mentors in the later phases of your life, the warrior priest and the sage. why is it important for someone like yourself who has been someone who has achieved at high levels from sports to teaching to writing and creating and workshops and all these different things, had a thriving marriage for 45 plus years? Why is it important for someone like you, plus many other things, a movie and all this other stuff? Why is it important for someone like you to continue looking for, finding mentors and learning when you are teaching so much and you've learned so much already.

Well, there's a thing, a concept, as you probably know in the Buddhist tradition called beginner's mind, to keep the mind of a beginner. There's the old Zen story about, you know, you have to empty your cup before you can learn. The teacher pours the teacup and it overflows and so on. But actually, I've learned that you don't need to empty your cup. You just need to get a bigger cup. You can keep what you've learned, your life experience, but stay open to new learning. And that's what I've tried to do. It makes no sense to lock into the role. Now I'm a teacher. I don't have to be a student anymore. Even after years after I was teaching, I met some other mentors. I was starting to teach when I met the Warrior Priest. I was definitely teaching actively the Peaceful Warrior's Way when I met the Sage. And I wasn't studying with him to improve my life. I was studying to maybe refine what I was teaching, to inform my teachings, so I could simplify further and keep things more and more practical and realistic. And he was a devotee of reality. He brought me down to earth from the metaphysical realms. So your question is, yeah, I had a lot of success early on. It was just my destiny, if you will. I got lucky at the world championship, as I described what happened. I was in the middle of my championship routine when I completely forgot the routine, forgot what I was doing. My mind was a total blank and I could have very well just stopped. and hung my head down and that would have been it. But I remembered that stop thinking and jump and I just kept jumping and I kept doing flips and I just made it up as I went along. Improv. Now, people have trouble relating to that. They're used to seeing gymnastics in the Olympics that people do routines over and over and over and rehearse and practice for their performance. But I never did. I used to do different routines every meet. I was creative and I liked improvisational stuff. So I kept learning. I was all these experiences and then I ended up lucking out and getting a coaching job at Stanford at 22 years of age and went through many experiences learning how to coach. Then, you know, it's funny, a lot of managers in business, I think they'd be better off considering themselves as coaching a team. and it's, it's a beautiful and apt metaphor. It's not just fancy words. They are a coach, no different from a sports coach, and they have a team to manage. And, but I think rather than a staff, you know, manager and staff, it works better to think of themselves as, as a team. And, yeah. So I learned a lot, you know, what prepared me was my athletic days. that prepared me for what I was to do later on. I didn't know it at the time, of course. But I describe in the book how a Zen master knocked on my office door and said, I have a group of students. We meditate in the mornings. Could we use your floor exercise mat? And I went, Sure. In fact, can I join you? Later I learned transcendental meditation and all that. This was before I met any of the mentors. So I had some background. In college, after I shattered my leg in a motorcycle crash, as many people know about who've read my work, and I describe what really happened like that in the new book, I started thinking more deeply. What is inside? What's in my psyche? I realized my own mortality. It shook me upward, let's say.

Yes.

And I actually experimented. It was back in the late '60s. I was at Berkeley. and I went to a teammate of mine and I said, listen, I've heard, you know, you can get some real insights with this stuff. What is it? LSD? And he, and I said, can you, can you give me any advice? He said, Dan, have you ever been drunk? I went, no, I don't really like alcohol. He said, have you ever been stoned? I went, no, I don't like having smoke in my lungs. He said, you better get drunk and or stoned first. Better walk before you run. So I, I, you know, I experimented a little bit with some grass and got the munchies and experienced music for the first time in a different way. But the LSD trip for me was quite valuable. I don't believe in recreational drugs at all, but for a sacred purpose in the right setting, it was quite profound. All that happened before I met any of the mentors. But I think more than anything, what it was my commitment to share with other people. Because something hit me. I was so much into self-improvement, Louis. Maybe you were too. As a kid, I took memory courses, speed reading. I learned to juggle and do magic tricks, sleight of hand, yo-yos, bullwhips, boomerangs. I just learned all these skills because I wanted to improve myself. One day it struck me that no matter how much I improved myself, only one person benefited. But if I could somehow influence other people in a positive way and look what you're doing, you know, then it made my life more meaningful. Not everybody has that calling. That's fine. They don't need to. But for me, that was the call. And because I wanted to share anything I learned with other people, I think life opened me up. to meeting these four mentors, the professor, the guru, the warrior priest, and then the sage, over a span of 20 years, intensive training. Even people who read Wayne and the Peaceful Warrior think, oh, Dan was this jock, you know, who met this old guy in a gas station, and now he teaches spiritual stuff. But they don't understand the intense preparation and training I went through to do what I do now.

If you could only. Let's put you in a hypothetical scenario. Maybe it's not a fair question, but hypothetically, if you could only spend one more day with one of the mentors, one of the four mentors, and you had to choose one, who would it. Who. Who would it. Which one would it be and what question. or conversation would you still want to ask that maybe has not been asked?

Leave it to you, Louis. That is a great question. I've never been asked and probably will never be asked again. If I could be with one of those mentors now.

Only one. You can only be with one.

Only one. Well, I could answer that different ways. Let me just take the easy way out. I'd want to be with a sage, the last one, because he's the only one still alive.

Okay.

Though it'd be very interesting being with one of the others who passed on. So, and also because it was more of a culmination. It was more of a finishing school, if you will. Now, if you'd ask me another question, who's your next teacher? I have no idea if I will have one, but I suspect my wife has been one of my teachers all along. Later in life, a lot of my training is just to keep up with her. I think she's an older soul. That's my own feeling about it. And I'm just playing catch up this life, doing all this hard work to things that she had already realized in some ways. So I think we need to appreciate our spouse if they're in our corner. And to me, more than anything, she's my best friend. And I think that's so important. We're not competing with each other. We're not, even though I do feel insecure around her, as I mentioned sometimes, So, without idealizing her, I mean, she's got her issues too, like we all have, but it's been a real blessing in my life. Socrates, the ancient Greek, not my Socrates, he actually said this. He said, By all means, marry. If you choose well, you'll be happy. And if you do not choose well, you'll become a philosopher. You realize he became a philosopher.

You're a philosopher too, but it seems like you got a happy marriage.

Yes, also I had best of both worlds. So you were asking?

The greatest lesson your wife's taught you in the last 45 plus years?

I believe the most challenging lesson for me, we all have our tendencies and values and priorities, and I think I came in to life on what they call a certain ray. And my devotion was, my family was my extended spiritual family, my students, my readers. And so that was my priority. Fortunately, I did better than Mahatma Gandhi, who was a great figure, an iconic figure, but he completely ignored his children who suffered and their lives reflected that. And my priority was always on my work. It felt important to me that I needed to spend my time no matter what. Before that it was on the search. And my first wife suffered the effects of that because I really wasn't engaged in the relationship. I was just focused on my work. And so my work changed. It became teaching work in the larger world. So what my wife has taught me, one day she said this and it didn't make sense to me at the time but I never forgot it. She said, Dan, with all the work you do and all the books you write, it may be some of the most important thing you'll have ever done is help raise our daughters. And at the time, I said, well, yeah, that sounds good. But I didn't really get it, but now I do, now that they're grown. There are some amazing people, as all young people are, in their own way. I don't want to be a bragging dad, nothing's more boring than hearing you bragging dad. But now it's grandchildren and it's taking care of them. It's not always easy. It's like running a marathon, delightful but exhausting. So I'm having to, it humanized me in terms of focusing on my daily life, my relationships and family, and setting aside my work at times when I need to do that. So I think that's, you know, I was introduced in Melbourne, Australia, when I gave a talk down there as an expert in mindfulness. And the first thing I said when I got up on the stage was, my wife might beg to differ. When I do the dishes, she always finds the spots I've missed. Dan, come back and redo this, you know? These are the kind of humble things that I learned from her each day. By the way, while we're on the topic of mindfulness, to me it's become a thing, this like solution, oh, I practice mindfulness. But actually, mindfulness, I don't know how people can write whole books on it. Basically, it just means paying attention to what's going on in the present moment without judgments, just being aware as we would. And if we do it internally, we call it mindfulness meditation, noticing the thoughts and feelings arising, letting them go. But even more important, because we don't live life in a sitting position, in a lotus position, more important is being mindful in everyday life. And that's something I'm still learning and my wife is still teaching me more about.

Wow, that's beautiful. It's interesting, I've just in my relationship with my girlfriend, It feels different in the way that we communicate with one another. It feels than my previous relationship, let's say. There's a different quality to our conversations and spiritual connection it feels.

And.

We'Ve gone very, you know, vulnerable early on. The first day we met, both of us very vulnerable. It's kind of been that way the entire time. Beautiful. and so every time she asks me what might seem like an uncomfortable conversation, I tell her, do you want me to tell you the truth of what I think and feel and, you know, my vision and all these different things or, or not? Because everyone I've shared in the past hasn't been able to handle the truth without some type of reaction or not accepting me or getting upset or whatever it might be. And she said, yes, I can handle it. And then I'm , in my mind, I go, okay, here we go again. I'm going to say the truth, and then this is not going to work out. But the reason I'm queuing this up is because one of these conversations was her asking me, what's my vision and what's my priorities in my life? And I said, do you want the truth? And she said, yes, I go, to be honest, I think most women will not want to hear what I'm about to say if I was in a relationship with them. but my vision and my purpose, my number one priority, is to take care of my mental, physical and spiritual health first. Because if I'm not in a good state of mind or a good body or good physical health, then I'm gonna have to put all my energy into getting there so I can help others.

Right.

That's priority number one for me. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I feel like I'm out of my life. Second biggest priority is my mission, my purpose, my calling. Because if I'm if I'm abandoning my calling from my creator, I'm going to be very upset, resentful, unhappy, missing, you know, whatever it might be. And so my mission is my main driver beyond that. And then three will be you, my partner, if this continues to grow and work out. And I go, you're probably not going to like that because most women want to be the number one priority in a relationship, but that just doesn't work for me. And I've tried that in the past and it didn't work. And, and she looked at me, she goes, that's it. I love this. I've, you know, I've always wanted to find a man with a purpose. And so I was like, okay, well, but I'm hearing you say that your work was a. A massive priority for you.

Do you.

Do you wish that you pulled back on that in your 30s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and I guess we're more present in your marriage or in your. you know, with your kids? Or do you feel like what you did was exactly in alignment with what you wanted to do?

Yeah, I really wouldn't change anything at this point in time. Looking back, I did what I needed to do, just as you stated, Louis, taking care of my body and my health is essential to anybody's life because spiritual life doesn't begin up in the air. It begins on the ground where we are. And it's the old cliche, you know, take care of your oxygen mask before you put it on somebody else. So that allows us to do all that. So I'm really aligned with what you've done. And no, I think one thing I did, if you want, you know, to model this vulnerability is I wish I'd been more communicative with my wife and my daughters. To the vulnerabilities.

About what?

Well, my own vulnerabilities. When I screwed up to apologize. Even when I wasn't sure I was really wrong, but just to acknowledge it. And if, when my daughters were young, being teenagers, they'd sometimes run in their room, slam the door, they were upset. Their mom would just pound on the door and come on, let me in, let me in. I would step back. I just stepped back at that point. It was too difficult for me at the time. So maybe I would have stayed engaged and been more involved with their schooling, knowing their friends' names, that sort of thing. These are small things, but big things for them at the time. It wasn't like I abandoned my family. I mean, I was a pretty good dad. We still have good relationships and everything.

But.

We all make mistakes, you know, we refine things, we do them differently. But anyway, I want to make that clear because there are people out there maybe in a similar situation. I wouldn't change my priorities. I'm here to share what I can. But I will say this, Louis, when you get to be my age, your marriage, if that is your partner, is going to take on more and more priority because you've done the work, you've completed, you've accomplished a lot and you realize you're going to be together this time and you've got the two of you. Many people are afraid of intimacy because they're afraid of loss. And my wife and I talk about that because one day, you know, she says, I'm going to die first. I said, no, I'm going to die first. I don't want to have to deal.

With that, with you dying first.

So these are intimate things, but many people have conversations about this.

It's difficult.

What do you think the lesson, you know, I'm seeing that as a big fear. You don't want to lose your wife, obviously, before you go. What do you think is the lesson for most people? You know, I don't want to put this out there, but what is the lesson for most people if they lost their partner, what is the lesson that they need to learn, can learn if they're willing to step into that unfortunate, obviously, and very challenging time?

Well, just love and trust. And many people are afraid to do that because the grieving will be proportionate to the love. But I just came across a quote, it's a hobby. It's the one big hobby I have.

For the last 40 years.

I collect quotations, pithy bits of wisdom, as you've noticed. I like to share them.

I love them.

Yeah, I do too. And it's been just a hobby of mine. And one that comes up for this situation, it may be when you lose somebody, the most appropriate response is not necessarily grieving, but gratitude. For the time you had together. On the other hand, everyone grieves in their own way and that they will, there's no one way to do it. And it's a natural part of life. When people have been together a long time, we just have to face that with a warrior spirit.

[Laq] Man, peaceful heart warrior spirit is out now. It's the true story about really your life and your spiritual quest and a lot of great lessons. The four different mentors that you've worked with over the years, the lessons they've taught you, incredible examples and stories, actionable practices that people can take on to have a deeper, peaceful heart and warrior spirit as well to take on the challenges and adversities of life. People can get the book right now. Where can we go and support you personally? Where do you spend the most time? I love getting your newsletter. so I know people can go to peacefulwarrior.com at least and jump on your newsletter, but where do you spend the most time that people can connect with you?

Well, I think my website, peacefulwarrior.com, there's a free life purpose calculator. People might enjoy just putting in their date of birth and even a relationship number there you can do. And various books, online courses I teach, a four-minute meditation, a four-minute workout, which I do every day, as a core of my workout. So yeah, peacefulwarrior.com, but also I share my favorite quotes with people on Facebook and Twitter as well. Anybody who wants to follow me there can do that. And yeah, so I'm going to continue to teach where I'm invited and I'm looking forward to going on as long as that may be, stay in good health. It's one of the treasures of my life is meeting people like E. Louis and being invited to share with you and have conversations.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Every time you come on, we get such a great response. People love the message and so glad you always got these new quotes to share, which I love. So, I'm curious, I want to ask you a couple final questions. I've asked you these before, but I'm curious if the response is the same or if maybe they're different. this is called the three truths question. It's a hypothetical question that I'll have to look up what you said before, but I'm curious what you say now. Imagine it's your. It is your last day on Earth. You get to live as long as you want to live. But eventually you gotta call it. Call it a day. And you continue to live out your dreams and have the relationship you want with your wife and see your kids flourish and all these different things. They all come true. but for whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario, you have to take all of your work with you to the next place or it goes somewhere. But we don't have access to your work anymore. Your message, your quotes, your books, your content, this video, it's gone for whatever reason. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true from your life lessons or maybe the lessons that these mentors tell you. What would be those three truths that you would share?

Behind.

Yeah, I don't know what I said last time at all, but this time right now, I would underscore with a yellow highlighter some of the things I've shared already. First, it would be about trusting your process. Again, not comparing to other people, but trusting the process of your life unfolding. The second would be that faith is the courage to live as if everything that happens is for our highest good and learning. And the third would be to remember your innate worth as a human being and treat yourself kindly with compassion.

As.

You would treat others.

I love that. I think that third one is a big one and if people can remember their innate worth, they can hopefully overcome the insecurities and self-doubt that holds a lot of people back from the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of judgment, and just be willing to pursue the calling, listen to the calling and pursue whatever that calling is for you, trusting the process of the failures, the lessons, the learning, and have the courage to know that it's all coming in your highest favor. You know, it's the highest level of learning for you. So I love these three truths. I want to acknowledge you, Dan. I've been, again, a big fan of yours for a long time and just inspired by your message, your mission, your. The way you constantly show up as a human being, the way you continually want to serve Humanity. I think it's just such an inspiration. So I really acknowledge you for it. And I hope. I hope you get to keep doing. in-person workshops sometime in the future and I got to come out sometime. But I want people to make sure they subscribe and come to workshops and do your online courses and everything as well. Again, peacefulwarrior.com and the book Peaceful Heart Warrior Spirit. Make sure you guys pick up a copy of this. You will be inspired. It'll just give you more tools to support you on your life's journey. and figuring out what your message is, what your meaningful life is to you. So make sure you guys pick up a copy of the book, Peaceful Heart Warrior Spirit, anywhere online, Amazon, but also.

At Dan's website, peacefulwarrior.com and support your independent bookstores. Oh, there you go.

Support independent bookstores. Yeah. It's at Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores and all that stuff.

Yeah.

And the final question is, what is your definition of greatness? There's an ancient quote that says, He or she who would be the greatest among you is the servant of all.

If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now.

We all know intuitively the Hidden School is right in front of us. It's right here. One we're paying attention. Many people have heard that saying, When the student is ready, the teacher appears. It becomes sort of a cliche. But what I think it means when the student is ready, any of us, When we're really paying attention, the teacher appears everywhere. Small incidents in life that happen can turn us around. And I know you've had that experience as well. So have I. Many of your listeners, I expect. So that's what it really means. So the Hidden School is everywhere, but I had to search. Socrates told me, My old mentor, an old man, wouldn't tell me his real name, but he reminded me of the Greek sage, so I started calling him Socrates, played by Nick Nolte. in the movie version. I just lost the train of thought. That's funny. That's what happens when I just open to any association. But yeah, I'll come back to it later.

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. What's the biggest challenge for you in your life right now, since completing this book? Where are you at on your stage?

My edge, I have two edges right now in my personal life. One, professionally, I like to be able to express what I have to say in fewer words, not to take too much of people's time and get right to the point. Sometimes I do a warm-up. James Michener, the writer, once said, It takes me 20 pages just to say hello. So that's one thing. I love quotations because they have power. A favorite quote, for example, by Mark Twain was, I've had many troubles in my life, most of which never happened. And people go, Wow, that's true for me too. Because most of our troubles are in the past, future, in our imagination. They don't actually happen to us. So quotes are reminders, and that's what I try to do through my writings and speaking, is remind people of what they already know but they tend to forget.

What's your biggest trouble right now? That hasn't happened.

Probably. Well, it has. I think the biggest challenge is with my family. People are intimate. They say you always hurt the ones you love. Well, it's not a matter of hurting them. Traditionally speaking, we get along very well. But it's having a really good rapport with my daughters. Grandkids are great. I've got little grandkids and they climb all over me. But actually I found I could get along with my daughters really well even through the teenage years, but unless I said something insensitive or stupid like hello. So it's been a continuing challenge. Really? And that's the arena. My daughters are 49, 37 and 35.

Wow. It's challenging to understand daughters. I'm not a father yet, so you're gonna have to educate me. But it's challenging to... Well, it can be.

It can be. Every relationship is different. And I don't want to give the impression we have a bad relationship. We have a very good one. But still, with families, it's more challenging. Ram Dass used to say, you think you're enlightened? Go visit your parents. Yeah. You know?

You'll get frustrated as hell, right? Yeah.

So within families, that's a cauldron of growth.

Why are we so triggered by the people we love the most?

We're vulnerable to them. We care about what they think and they care about what we think. Someone else can say something and we just brush it off. It slips off our back. But when a family member, a father, a mother says something to a child, they can remember it for years and you never know. So you can't make casual comments without really understanding where they are. So that's been a challenge for me in my own life.

How do we heal those relationships, those triggers that affect us so much?

Well, if I knew, I'd do it. You know, people have asked me, I've written 17 books and, you know, Everyday Enlightenment, no Ordinary Moments, and about the 12 Gateways to Personal Growth and so on. And people say, well, Dan, have you mastered all that you write about? and the answer clearly is no, but I'm sincerely practicing, and that's all I can ask of anybody. And if you observed me, I think you'd find me a good example. Perfect? No. But good example? Yes. Albert Schweitzer once said, In influencing other people, example is not the main thing. It's the only thing. And so I just do my best to be a good example. That's what I continue to do.

What do you think is missing in your life the most right now?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You know, people come up to me a lot and ask me, they say, Dan, you know, I'm doing pretty well, but I haven't reached my potential yet. And I want to ask or suggest, maybe you already have. Maybe last week was your high point. And then what are you going to do? Enjoy life? Continue to evolve, relax a little bit, because it's crazy making that we never reach our potential. Whatever it is, we've got to do 100%. Well, there's a point at which, I mean, I really appreciate the title of your first book, the School of Greatness. It really calls people to their best. If I were ever to start a school, I'd probably call it the School of Goodness. I don't aspire quite that high. Or if I were to start a church, I might call it the Born Yesterday Church of Occasional Clarity. has a certain ring to it.

Or you'd start the hidden school.

Or the hidden school. And each of us has our own hidden school. I believe that very sincerely. Our lives are like, daily life is a form of spiritual weight training. You don't lift any weights, you don't get stronger. And so I often ask people in audiences when I speak to groups, raise your hand if you've ever experienced physical, emotional or mental pain in your life. Of course, all the hands go up. And I invite people to disagree with me, because if we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary. But I hope we can agree on this, and I think your listeners will relate. Any pain, any difficulty, adversity, challenge we've had in our life, because of that, I think we're a little bit stronger now, a little bit wiser, and maybe even more compassionate. We know what the big stuff is and we know what the little stuff is. So it lends perspective. We don't have to welcome adversity. We don't have to look for it. I shattered my right femur, my right thigh bone in 40 pieces in a motorcycle crash when I was a young man here in Los Angeles. And if that hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't be sitting with you here now. It shook me up. I started asking bigger questions. You can relate. It changed the course of my life. However, I want to be really clear, I don't recommend fractures as a method of personal or spiritual growth. There are other ways. Daily life, it's called. Right.

Just waking up and walking around and saying hi to people. People will swear at you just walking and driving in a car.

It happens. And the idea of waking up, Many people know we all dream at night. We remember them sometimes. We don't remember dreams sometimes. But one can develop the capacity of lucid dreaming. And there are techniques and books on that where one can actually learn to wake up within the dream. One technique for doing that is quite interesting is you get in the habit in your everyday life to ask yourself, Am I dreaming now? And then 20 minutes later, or 10 minutes later or half an hour later, am I dreaming now? Am I dreaming now? We get in the habit of asking that question so a time will come when we're actually dreaming and we'll remember to say, am I dreaming now? And when you ask that, you'll go, I am. And you wake up within the dream and when that happens, the dream no longer just happens to you. You're not at its affect. You can begin to play in the dream. You want to fly, take off. If there's a monster, turn it into a flower. Do whatever you like because you're awake within the dream. The significance of that is that we can practice lucid waking because in all the spiritual traditions there's a saying that this life right now is something like a dream. That's why it's good to ask ourselves, Am I dreaming right now? Because we can wake up within this dream too in a particular way. And if I can indulge it, there's a brief story about a wanderer in the forest centuries ago. who came upon the Buddha. And there was something about this serene man walking through the woods that fascinated this wanderer. And he finally got enough nerve to walk up and walk alongside the Buddha. And he said, Excuse me, because he didn't know who he was. He said, Are you a wizard? And the Buddha said, no, I'm not. And he said, well, are you a great warrior or a king? And Buddha said, no. He said, But what is it then that makes you different from anyone I've ever met? And the Buddha smiled and said, oh, I'm awake. Is it possible that in some sense we're all sleeping now, making meanings and associations and projections of our life as it unfolds and complicating our life, where there's a way to awake within it and suddenly life becomes very simple? We live in the eternal present and one thing happens after the next. Because how many of us wake up in the morning and go, I have 16 things to do today.

Yeah, a lot.

But we only have to do one thing when we wake up. Open our eyes. Put our feet on the ground. Take a step. See, my life is busy. Yours is too. But life can become very simple when we recognize we can only do one thing at a time. Even if we're juggling, even if we're fighting multiple opponents in martial arts training, we only do one thing at a time. And the more we bring our attention to that, the more simple life becomes. Just focusing on this one thing.

I feel like I was in a dream right there, just listening to your voice. What's the question you think we should all be asking every single day to ourselves?

Well, I asked a question last night of a group of people I was speaking to and they asked each other the question for a few minutes and the question was, what is the good life to you? Because often people don't really consider consciously and directly what is the good life. We see friends on Facebook and everybody's showing what a good life they have. I see people walking down the street the streets of New York City holding their chai latte and going to work and they're doing their best to live the good life, at least as good as everybody else and everybody's showing their best face on Facebook. We all desperately want to live the good life. You know, it seems to me, and this is one of the basic premises that I teach in this approach to living I call the Peaceful Warrior's Way, is that there's no best book, teacher, philosophy, religion, martial art, sport, diet, yoga. There's no best. There's only the best for each of us at a given time of our life. Life is an experiment. We have to find out what works for us. And we have to stop comparing ourselves to other people. The Buddhists say that comparison is a form of suffering. It's a profound disrespect to ourselves instead of acknowledging our process. You know, I've taught gymnastics when I was a young coach and so on for years and some people take longer to learn a skill than others. But those who take longer often learn it better than those who learned it quicker.

Really?

Yeah. So we have to start respecting our own process. You know, when we were babies, every one of us stood up and sat down. stood up, shook a little bit and sat down again when we were first learning to stand. We didn't fall down and go, bet the baby across the street's learning this a lot better. No, only adults do that. So we're all desperately trying to find the good life, but just as there's no best one thing for everybody, there is no best good life. Each of us has to realize we are living our own best good life right now, despite the adversity, despite the challenges. The opportunity to live a human life on planet Earth is extremely rare.

It's pretty powerful.

Yeah.

Is there any question that you haven't answered yourself yet?

I don't know, because it probably hasn't come up. I do have a way of asking questions. It's like a gift or a blessing and the answers come.

Really?

For example, I was on a book tour for one of my books, Life youe Were Born to Live, and it deals with numbers and people's lives and their life path. But I wanted people to know my teaching had a broader scope. So I asked myself, well, wait a minute, this is just one small piece. And I said, what is personal growth? What does it mean, personal development, spiritual growth? And the answers came so quickly. I wrote them down and they came out to 12 courses in the School of Life that every one of us is enrolled in. 12 courses we have to graduate from in order to achieve any kind of personal mastery in life. And I'll just recite them as a list if your listeners are curious. What are these 12 courses we're all taking? But before I do, I have a great story. I used to have this recurring dream years after I went to college. And the dream, some other people, you may have had this too, and many people have had this or a similar dream. where I just realized I have a really important exam to take, but I forgot to go to the class. I forgot I'd enrolled in the course. And so I have to take this exam, but I never went to class. Many of your listeners, I think, will go, oh, yeah, I've had a dream like that. The irony is, the reason I bring it up is because that's how we live. We have tests every day, exams, and we don't know what courses we signed up for.

Right.

So I'm about to share what those courses are. Awesome. First, to discover our worth. That is our innate worth. It's not about being entitled. It just means respecting ourselves, our innate worth as human beings. If we don't, we end up sabotaging ourselves. You know, things get too good and we go, oh, that's enough. And we say or do something. Money burns a hole in our pocket and so on. So it's a source of self-sabotage, many addictions. low self-worth. It's different from self-esteem which is just feeling good about ourself. Self-worth answers the question, how good of a person am I? How deserving am I of life's blessings? And if we're afflicted in that area and limited, whatever we do, whatever technique we learn, books we read, we still get in our own way. So that's the first. The second is reclaiming our will, which is about turning what we know into what we actually do. Isn't that a challenge? People are looking to find motivation. Now, I'm not a motivational speaker. In fact, somebody came up to me once and said, Dan, I feel kind of inspired. I said, Don't worry, it'll pass. You know, because inspiration passes, motivation comes and goes. I try to sow seeds. So, turning what we know into what we actually do is one of the major challenges for all of us. Right.

Because a lot of us have the information on how to live a healthier life, but we don't apply it and take action. consistently.

Exactly. So that's the second course we're enrolled in. The third is energizing our body. And you seem to have a lot of energy, and that's really a blessing because it enhances every human capacity. If somebody's really strong, but they have no energy, they're not very effectively strong. People have more charisma, more presence, more healing ability, all that with more energy. And there was a man who was seeking energy everywhere. he drank the magic green powders and the supplements and did everything to get more energy, but nothing seemed to work for him. And one day he climbed a sacred mountain and he reached up to the heavens and he said, Fill me full of light. I'm ready for energy. And a voice thundered down from the heavens, or maybe in his own mind, and it said, I'm always filling you, but you keep leaking. And that's our human condition. We're surrounded by spirit, by beauty, by inspiration. In some sense, every day. The weatherman doesn't come on and say 20% chance of rain, 30% spirit out today. But we're often preoccupied. What am I going to do about my relationship, my career, my finances? So we don't have the eyes of a child. We don't have the free attention to look around and notice the beauty of a tree. Once in a while we have these peak experiences, these moments. so energy, that's the key. And to plug up these leaks, to reduce the tension we do things with. So that's the first leak, extra tension. And that's real practice in life, learning to relax more. And the second leak is inhibited breathing. It can be valuable to deliberately hold our breath for periods of time as part of physical training in yoga. There are exercises where you hold the breath. Sure. But what we don't want to do is unconsciously hold the breath. When somebody's taking a selfie, they're holding their breath. Often when they're sitting down or standing up or pouring liquid into a glass, we hold our breath many times during the day and wonder why we feel tired. So learning to breathe like a pendulum fully and just remembering to breathe. A young man came up to me once and said, Dan, I know you do consultations with people. But you charge a lot of money. He said, I'm a poor college student. I only have a dollar. What can you tell me for a dollar? And I told him six words that could change the course of his life if he practiced them. Here and now, breathe and relax. That's a lifetime practice. And it really can enhance anything we do in any aspect of life, from making love to doing sports. Here and now, breathe and relax. So I'll go on very quickly because that's a long list. After energize the body, manage your money. Need I say more? Tame the mind.

Tame the mind.

Tame the mind. And I have different approaches for that. Trust or intuition, because most of us are trained to trust just logic reason. But sometimes we make a reasonable decision and the next morning we wake up with a weird feeling. So we have to listen also to that still voice inside. And the next is accept our emotions, major part of life. And finally, well, then we go into face our fears, self-doubt, insecurity, all that stuff, and illuminate our shadow, which is really all about self-knowledge, seeing ourselves and accepting ourselves, realistically, instead of a gloss of persona, becoming authentic. It's really about that, being real. And then embrace our sexuality. You can't ignore that in personal growth, how we channel our energy in that way. Awakening the heart and finally serving our world, finding a way, as you have, when you stopped being a performer in sports, like you found a way to serve other people. And so serving our world is a way we connect with people in a meaningful way. Even people who are independently wealthy, they need a way to serve and to make a difference in the world. So those are the courses now your listeners know. And this is not a burden. It is not something we have to add to our life, all these 12 areas. They're part of our life. We've all been enrolled in the course.

Whether we like it or not.

Whether we like it or not.

It's happening.

That's what comprises Personal growth in everyday life.

Yeah, I love those. I'm glad to hear, I didn't know what those 12 were before, but I'm glad to know that your last one, the service, it's the last chapter in the School of Greatness is if you want to live a great life, you've got to be willing to give back and be of service to the world, whether it be your family, community, country, the world, however much you can impact.

Exactly.

It's all about that. If it's just for ourselves, it's kind of unfulfilling, right?

I was so much into self-improvement, maybe you were too. I took memory courses, speed reading, and gymnastics and juggling and martial arts. And one day I realized no matter how much I improved myself, only one person benefited. But there was something about if I could influence or inspire other people, the way I did as a coach in gymnastics, that made my life more meaningful. Yeah. And that's what I've been trying to do ever since.

What's the greatest skill that you have, you think?

I don't know that I call it a skill. But it's more of a calling. I just really, I feel a oneness with everybody I meet. I can be talking with a group of people and I think I'm talking to myself in a real sense, I am. So I think that connection with other people. I'm on the subway in Brooklyn where I live now and going into Manhattan and I look around at all the people. I love to people watch.

Me too.

I wonder what they're like when they were kids and what they're going through. I wish I could reach out and give a hug to all your listeners. So I don't want to call that a strength. It's not something I work on, but it's a quality that's been really... Again, I use that word like a blessing in life.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

Oh, this character called Dan Millman. I take my work, in a sense, seriously, but I don't take the character very seriously. I've seen through myself, you know. You mentioned the word ego. The ego gets a bad rap in spiritual circles. You know, if someone says you have a huge ego, we don't normally consider that a compliment. But when Freud coined the term, Ego just meant self, identity. It was neutral. But so many people in today's world, in the ancient times they used to say, the devil made me do it, you know, when we were misbehaving in some way. Now it's the ego that made me do it. And I want to say, show me this ego. It's simply the conscious self. It's the self that learns, that grows up and learns. It's our sense of identity. We're not here to get rid of the ego. We're here to transcend it. descended and that's a big difference. And that comes through humor, insight and humor. So I have a sense of humor about this Dan Millman guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Of the 12 courses, if you could only say you only could enroll in one to master one, obviously it's all of them.

It's all of them.

But let's say the one, is there one that's the most important that you would start with? Is it worth? Is it sexuality? Is it.

Again, to respect your listeners, the one most important one is going to be different for every one of them at different times, at different moments. I'm not dodging the question. I can answer in a sense. The first three are foundations. We get them in all orders. You don't do them in order. They pop up as like whacK-A-Mole. But yeah, without self-worth, you won't benefit from any of the others. Reclaiming our will, turning what we know into what we do, that's supreme, and then energizing our body. So those three form a triad, the foundation.

How do we develop self-worth?

We don't. There are no techniques to do it. We have to just become aware. And it's not a matter of feeling worthy, because we feel differently all the time. Emotions pass through us like the weather. We feel differently moment to moment all through the day. Life is a series of moments. I've never met a neurotic person, only people who have more neurotic moments. Sometimes they forget to be neurotic and they function pretty well. I've never met an intelligent person, just people who have more intelligent moments. So there are moments where we feel worthy, when we do something worthy. but it's recognizing this our innate worth as a human being, respecting ourselves, treating ourselves with respect. So it's more about how we behave. And that's one of the key elements of the Hidden School and this approach that I teach to living. We grew up in a world that was very psychological and very spiritually oriented. Somehow we believe we just grew up assuming that we have to fix our insides in order to to live well. That if we just have the right thoughts and the right emotions, like confidence and love and peace and happiness, confidence, then we can go out and live well. And if we just have quiet mind or positive thoughts. But I found another approach. You know, I ask audiences often, please raise your hand if you've read a book on positive thinking, positive mental attitude. And many people raise their hand. And I go, Great! So then how many of you have only had positive thoughts, say, the last two weeks, all the hands go down. And everybody kind of laughs. And I suggest, but if you read the book twice, you believe. If you'd highlighted and done all the exercises, you too would be having just positive thoughts. But maybe that's an idealistic notion. I've been around the track. I've done many different kinds of meditation for decades. And sometimes my thoughts are positive, and sometimes they're negative. Sometimes dreams are pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. It seems natural to me. There is a way to transcend all that. And in fact, I'm going to share with you the most controversial thing I teach.

Let's hear it.

I do not encourage you, Louis, or Christine or Tiffany sitting in the back here, or any of your listeners. I do not encourage you to feel grateful. I don't encourage you to feel kind. or loving or peaceful or happy or confident or courageous. I just encourage you to behave that way. Now, some of your listeners might wait a minute, Dan, that's a bit off-putting. You're saying feel one thing and behave a different way. Isn't that inconsistent? Isn't that inauthentic? Maybe even hypocritical. But I would ask, what if you were walking down the street and you saw a little baby lying in the middle of a heavy traffic street, cars whizzing by, and you were terrified of running out in the street, but you found yourself doing that. And you didn't think, you grabbed the baby and you ran off and you dodged the cars. So while feeling afraid, you behaved as if you were courageous. Would that be inauthentic? Would that be hypocritical? No. that would seem highly virtuous of behaving with in fact, we can only behave with courage when we're feeling afraid. So I'm suggesting we can behave with kindness when we're feeling angry. Not easy. We can behave with confidence when we're feeling shy. There is a way of liberation while we live in everyday life not waiting for some cosmic experience. by focusing more on what we do in the moment rather than fixing our thoughts, fixing our feelings because we have a lot less control over what we feel in any given moment than what we actually do. Really? We don't have a spam filter in our head. If I were to suggest to your listeners, whatever happens in the next few seconds, don't think about a green elephant. Too late. Right. So thoughts come and thoughts go. Thoughts happen to us. They appear in our awareness. They just random, these things pop up and sometimes they're nice thoughts, sometimes not. But if we can accept those thoughts, which is about meditation, meditation lets us get some distance from those thoughts and see them from a distance so they don't have as much control or impact over us. Same with feelings. We can feel, and feelings are important. We learn from our feelings. I'm not saying ignore feelings, but we can, while we're feeling whatever we're feeling, We can focus on what needs to be done right now. What do I need to do? What would my higher self do? If I were enlightened, if I were a kind, strong, courageous being, what would I do right now and doing our best to do that? We'll fail many times. I fail many times. But it's a great practice. Focusing on what we do simplifies life a lot.

Absolutely, yeah. What would you say is the course that you need the most focus and attention on of the 12.

Of the 12?

Or the one you have the lowest grade in right now?

Me personally.

Personally, yeah.

Sure. Well, it wouldn't be embrace your sexuality. In fact, even at my age, I still have sex almost every day. Really? Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday, Wednesday.

That was a good one.

I had to slip that in.

That's a good one.

Sorry about that.

That's a good one.

All right, the Course I'm in, let's say in this moment, because you know, life is a series of moments. I've always had a challenge managing my money.

Really?

Yeah. There was a period of time where I was mastering poverty consciousness. and I remember seeing some attractive young women in their late teens or maybe early 20s getting out of a Mercedes and I looked at them and I felt negative about them. It was so strange. I didn't know them. They might be very lovely young women, nice people, but because they appeared to have a lot of money or maybe I was thinking oh they're driving their mommy or daddy's car, that came out of nowhere. I was making an assumption and I realized in that moment If that's how I feel about people who are well off, I'm certainly not going to attract much money.

I don't want to do that, yeah.

Yeah, I don't want to do that. I had these issues with money, you know? In movies, all the movies I saw as a young man, the wealthy people were mean. Remember It's a Wonderful Life, that movie, that old classic? Mr. Potter, who owned the bank in half the town, he was a Scrooge-like character. really selfish and mean and the poor people, they were the salt of the earth. So to me, I grew up thinking, you know, money is the root of all evil and all that stuff. I'm sure you've had guests who talk about that. But I was stuck on that and I finally realized, you know, that as you well know, that money is a form of energy. It makes us more of who we already are. If we're greedy, it makes us more so. If we're kind, it makes us kinder. and more generous. So I saw through that and worked with it. But some people can walk naked into the desert and come out driving a Mercedes and I've done all right for myself. I believe a peaceful warrior, that's all of us, can make good money doing what we enjoy while serving other people. All three are important.

You still struggle with that the most.

Of the-- But I'd say that-- Managing it or-- Yeah. And it's related to worth as well, really. Yeah. Yeah. Self-worth maybe ties into that. So I have had, over the years, let's say, I've had that issue. But right now, you know, it's good to be conscious of these things, of our different challenges. But over time, I've had difficulties with trusting my intuition. I learned to do that. There are some very interesting experiences I had around that. Taming the mind. We all have something. There's something for everybody. It's called everyday life. To me, daily life, I think Earth, I view Earth as a divine school and daily life is our classroom. What I'm saying is daily life is guaranteed to teach us everything we need to learn eventually. to evolve as human beings. We're actually in this school together. We call it relationships. We call it physical fitness or healing. We call it managing our money, career decisions. So no one needs to read my books or anyone else's or go to any seminars in order to keep evolving. People were evolving before books and seminars.

Of course.

But people ask me, well then why do you write books, Dan? Why do you teach? Because a good reminder can help people learn more from everyday life. They don't have to learn harder lessons. Can I share another quick story? This guy named Ralph was given a parrot for a birthday present. Beautiful bird. They live a long time. Very intelligent.

How long do they live?

Oh, they can live a hundred years. Really? Yeah. Or more. parrot. Yeah. I could be wrong, but that's what I heard. Yeah.

A little bird told me.

Well, he loved this parrot. It was a beautiful bird, but somebody had taught it to curse like a sailor. I mean, it really had a creative string of epithets. And it embarrassed him. His mother would come over, you know, Ralph's mother, and the bird had started cursing at her. And he tried everything. He played New Age music, played Anya, you know, he taught him affirmations, you know, but Nothing seemed to change this bird. And finally Ralph lost his patience. And he grabbed the bird and shoved him into the freezer, shut the door, figured it would teach him a lesson. And he heard the bird cursing, muffled squawking inside, but suddenly dead silence. And he said, I didn't mean to hurt him. And he opened the freezer. And the bird named Maurice, he walked out on Ralph's arm, stood on his shoulder, and said in his ear, Ralph, I realized, I had a realization in there. Very articulate, very. He said, I realized my behavior leaves a lot to be desired and my language needs cleaning up. I know that now. And I vow to do better in the future. I hope you'll forgive me. Well, Ralph said, that's great. But then the bird said, But by the way, Ralph, when I was in the freezer, I noticed there was a headless chicken wrapped in plastic. Can you tell me what the chicken did wrong? So he was a smart bird. He wanted to learn the easier lesson because lessons repeat themselves until we learn them. Notice that one? And if we don't learn easy lessons, they get harder. Life throws a ping pong ball before it throws a bowling ball. So that story is just a little bit about, there's a moral there. We can learn a lesson from a dream, from an incident, from a suggestion somebody makes. But the more stubborn we are, the more dramatic the lesson will be.

The harder the lesson will be, yeah. What's the thing you think about the most day to day right now?

I can honestly say to you, I really don't ruminate on things very much. Over time, as I've seen the reality of this moment and this moment, I realize that there's no such thing as the past. What we call the past is something happening to us right now. Synapses are opening in our brain and we are using something we call memory. So the past is gone. It's only kept alive as this thing we have memory. And the future is our imagination. There is no future. Tomorrow never comes. It's always tomorrow. It's always five minutes from now. And then five minutes from now. You know, I had a friend who was feeling very depressed and suicidal. And I said, oh, it's okay to kill yourself. Just do it tomorrow. And when you wake up the next day, just say, okay, I can do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. What we have meanwhile is today is this moment. And so as I focus more on that, look, you know the experience. What position did you play in football? Receiver. When you're running and that ball's flying and you're reaching for it, you're not thinking about breakfast tomorrow. No. Yeah, or dinner, what you're going to do later. You're totally... Athletes, they gain great wisdom, but they don't know it. They're so focused on the winning and the losing and the scores, they don't realize they're learning spiritual or universal laws about process, about living in the moment. the law of presence. So you can relate immediately to that and anyone can have that experience. They can take their car keys, throw them up in the air and reach to catch them and when they're reaching out to catch them, they're not thinking about past or future. Pure awareness, present moment. Can you imagine doing that all the time?

It's amazing.

I was in the gym once. I was doing a high bar routine. You know, as a gymnast, Socrates was watching me. his arms were crossed. He was the only one watching me in the gym. It was at night. And I did this really good dismount, a full twisting double somersault. I was one of the first ever to do that. And I stuck the landing. That's a good thing. I didn't stumble or I just stuck it, boom, and stood up and went, Yes! And so I figured that was a good place to end the workout. So I ripped off my sweatshirt, threw it in my workout bag, and we were walking down the hallway afterward. And he said, you, know that last move you did, Dan? was really sloppy. I said, what are you talking about, sock? That was the best dismount I did in weeks. He said, oh, I wasn't talking about the dismount. I was talking about the way you took off your sweatshirt and put it in your bag. He reminded me again that there are no ordinary moments. I was teaching, I was treating one moment on the high bar flying through the air as a special moment. But the other moment I was ordinary. And again he reminded me that. And then he said something, I actually got into the movie a week before they started shooting this line. He said, Dan, the difference between us is you practice gymnastics. I practice everything. What would that be like for you, for me, for your listeners, to begin to practice everything they do, walking, breathing, signing their name, How many of us try to improve signing our name? See, the difference between doing things, most of the day we do things, we do the dishes, we do our homework, we do our work. But when you practice something, you're doing it with a specific intention of improving it, getting better at it. And that pulls us into a form of absorption. You know, it's called the zone and all that, many different names for it. But it pulls us into the present moment. and it's a different quality of life. You know, you sign books a lot, right? Your books, and I do the same. My publisher once sent me two boxes of first pages, signing pages. I just did this. 4,000 pages. And they said, Would you sign these, please?

4,000?

Yeah.

I only had a thousand, but that took hours.

Well, it took me over a couple of days. Oh, my gosh. And I took a breath and I signed, Heart, Dan. That's what I do. I draw Heart, that's my message for you. and Dan. Then I moved that page aside, took a breath, did another one. It became a meditation. And I practiced. I tried to do each signature a little bit better than the last. And it creates a different quality of life because the quality of our moments become the quality of our life. And so the idea of practicing what we do. Socrates tried for a long time to get me to do that. He asked, how are you pushing open that door, Dan? Are you breathing? And I was getting irritated with him all the time. the time. But finally I got the point. Yeah, I got the point.

Did you ever know his name?

Well, I wrote another book called the Journeys of Socrates. It starts in 1872 in Russia. So his name, he grew up in Russia in a military school as a young boy and so on. It tells the whole story of his life, great adversity in his life. I grew up a middle class kid in LA in the 60s, you know? But his life was really tough. And his name was Sergei Ivanov or Ivanov. But he didn't tell me for a long time.

Really? How long did you know him for?

That's paradoxical. Because he became the archetypal mentor. You know, King Arthur had Merlin the magician. Daniel-san had Miyagi, the karate kid. Frodo had Gandalf. I mean, there are these archetypal stories of the mentor, the wise mentor, and the bumbling young student. And Carlos Castaneda, you know, he had the Brujo Don Juan. So Socrates became the archetypal teacher. And many people say, Dan, I wish I read your book, and I wish I had a Socrates in my life. I go, you, do. I wrote my books so I could share my teachers so they could be part of your life and I could be part of your lineage and it's wonderful we're part of each other's lineage. Each of us who interact with each other, we influence people and we teach them in that way. I believe we're all teachers and all students. I was mentioning before our talk here that Albert Schweitzer said, In influencing other people, example is not the main thing. It's the only thing. So that is how we teach. Many of us think, oh, nobody's paying attention to me. Yes, they are. Our peers, our colleagues, people on the street. You know, after our session, I'm going to be walking down the street later, and if I see a piece of litter on the ground, I might just pick it up and toss it in the can. So I can't know the impact of my words, but I do know when I leave LA, It's going to be a little cleaner.

I like that.

Yeah, little things can make a big difference like that. Somebody might see that and they might pick up some litter sometime. I think that's how we have the major impact on people.

If there was only one lesson you could share from Socrates, what's the most meaningful for you?

Well, it might have something to do with trust. We second-guess ourselves so many times. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. We could have done this, regrets and so on. And in this sense we're not trusting the process of our life. That everything that's happened to us has been for our highest good in learning. That's how I would define faith. F-A-I-T-H. It's not about believing something. It's about the courage to live as if everything that happens is for our highest good and learning. So it has to do with that sense of trusting our process, that we think we've lost the path. Maybe you felt like that at a point in your career, but wherever we step, the path appears, even if it doesn't feel like it, and to continue to move on. to move on. But there is one story. Houston Smith, he's an elder wise man. He wrote a book called World Religion. And he had a friend called Aldous Huxley who wrote a book called Brave New World. And Professor Huxley, among his peers, he had traveled the world intensely studying every spiritual tradition around the world. And when he was in hospice care before his death, his friend Houston asked him, All this, is there any way you can summarize everything you've ever learned? And he said, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I can probably summarize it in about six words. Try to be a little kinder. And it's possible that it all comes down to that. For each of us in our own Family in our own life to do our best to be a little kinder, to make a little bit of a difference, a kind word now and then, a bit of service for someone else. So I'm still working on that one.

Being kinder.

Yeah.

Do you get triggered easily in the world in general, outside of family?

No, I have other issues. I don't get triggered. I tend to be a bit of a stonewall. my wife, you know, it took me 25 years to realize my wife was not criticizing me, she was improving me. Sometimes rather enthusiastically. And when she is, her face was close to mine and she was improving me. Sometimes they do the typical guy thing, and I'll cross my arms, break off eye contact, you know, and stonewall. But once in a while I rise to the occasion and I keep eye contact with her. I listen, I take it in, and even when she's done, I thank her for what she said. I'm going to really think about this. Is there anything you'd like to add? I've actually done that. So we all have good moments and lesser moments. I think even those practicing in your School of Greatness, they have great moments. And other moments less so, like I do. We're all in this together. We're all practicing together in this school.

Yeah. Who is the second greatest teacher in your life?

Socrates, the man I call Socrates, the greatest teacher in my life. After 43 years of marriage, I would have to say, is my wife.

What's the greatest lesson she's taught you?

She still is teaching me just to She's a reminder to work at my edge. Whatever it is that's most difficult for me. And again, as I indicated to you, to be willing to lose face. You know, Socrates once said, We're all fools. Just that some of us know it, some of us don't. To be willing to be foolish and appear foolish. and I'd say that that would be it. You ask some challenging questions and I've given you the most honest answers I can.

I like them. Yeah, it's great. People going through transition in their life, going through a dark time, a challenging time, an uncertain time, what feedback or suggestions do you have for them? Maybe financial crisis, maybe physical challenges, maybe career, relationship challenges where what was once certain is now not.

Well, Alan Watts, who's a great teacher, he wrote a book called the Wisdom of Insecurity because we all go through those kinds of moments. And we all know you have to let go of one side of the pool to swim to the other side. But we don't like to let go. We like that security in that sense. You know, it said that spirit comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. When our lives are in difficulty, we're looking for change. Usually it's change out there, something different. But when life is going great, we don't want change. Life comes at us in waves of change we can neither predict nor control, but we can learn to surf. To surf. To surf, S-U-R-F. We can surf those waves. That is a fundamental life skill, to accept and make it over our way. Any good martial artist knows you can't always fight force with force. You get out of the way, use the energy, and we use it to lift. Again, daily life, spiritual weight training. You don't lift weights, you don't get stronger. So to remember that, to hold to that thread, that in those moments, all right, another quick story. When I turned 60, which was 11 years ago, I decided I'd learn to ride a unicycle. Anybody who's tried that knows it's humbling. Really tough. I'd get on and out from under me. I'd get on out from under me. And I went out to a tennis court. A friend of mine loaned me his unicycle and told me, Go around the court. Hold on. Get a death grip on the chain link fence. And I was holding on to a trying to ride this thing. It took me about an hour and a half to go around. And at the end of the first week of practice, I came back every day. I could careen forward for about six pedals. The second week, 12 pedals. The end of the third week, I could do figurations around the tennis court. And I never, at the start, I said, this just isn't for me. I can't do this. I'm just not capable of it. But I kept at it. And even though I'd learned some of this in gymnastics years before, because I failed 50 times a day, in the gym. I learned two things from this. One, everything is difficult until it becomes easy. But the most important thing, and this is the response to your question, that there were a couple of days in those three weeks, everything fell apart. I felt dumber, less coordinated. I was worse than I was three days before that. I was mentally confused, physically confused. I didn't know what I was doing. But I came to realize, because the day after that usually I had a breakthrough. You know that from your own training.

Of course.

Yeah. And I think those crisis times, those times of difficulty are really the learning times. It's going from front brain to the back brain. That's when the learning is happening but we're making that shift. That's why the confusion happens. Like learning to drive a gear shift car. You know, at first you have to think about it a lot. So it's important to trust that process of not knowing what you're doing. and leap into the void. And I know it's easy for me to say, but we've all been through it and to trust that path. By the way, I did write a book specifically for people going through transitions. It's called the Four Purposes of Life. We may have spoken with that. I'm not sure which book we spoke about, but it goes into the four purposes we're all working on. And it's good for anyone in a transition time. I guess I'm supposed to promote the Hidden School. It's my latest book. But you know, all your books are great. Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

That's cool. Hmm, this has been fun. Curious, what else I want to ask you though. For someone, I'm 34, you're 71, right?

Yes.

I'm curious and you're in amazing shape. At least you look like it. I don't know, maybe there's something else going on, but you look like you're in great shape.

Doing okay.

Amazing energy, posture alignment, obviously had a couple surgeries, but other than that, got great, great shape.

Thanks.

What is, what advice about health would you give to someone my age or in their 20s, 30s and 40s about what's to come? If you could go back to my age, how would you set up your day in your life knowing what's to come?

Yeah. You know that saying somebody said, if I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have, I would have treated myself better. We know that genetics are tendency. If we have long-lived parents, we tend to live longer. But there's wiggle room because there are these triggers. We can turn off a gene or turn it on, whatever that is, good or bad thing, by our lifestyle. And people sometimes come up to me asking, I have a spiritual problem. I have an emotional problem. But I ask them three questions. Are you getting regular moderate exercise? Second question, are you eating a balanced diet for you? Third question, are you getting enough rest? Because we tend to be sleep deprived. And we, you know, you know the research on that. And notice when I said regular moderate exercise, I didn't say the latest slow motion Pilates, this system, that system.

Are you moving your body?

Are you moving around the body is meant to move and stretch and do some strength and so on. Older people need more exercise than younger people, just different kinds of exercise. So moderate balanced exercise almost every day. And for those who don't do that, who know it would be good for them, who don't, I recommend they get up tomorrow morning and do one jumping jack and the next morning one jumping jack, the next morning one jumping jack. After 30 days, if someone says, Do you have a regular exercise routine? They can say, Yes, I do. Now, people laugh. They say, that's not going to give you your aerobic capacity or train your set point or anything. But it's got a foot in the door. It's based on the principle a little of something is better than a lot of nothing. Simple is powerful because we're more likely to do it. So rather than grandiose resolutions, start small. Dream big. Dream big, dream big, but start small, then connect the dots. That's how we turn what we know into what we actually do. That small start, gesture in the right direction. And a balanced diet, I didn't say vegetarian, vegan, raw food, gluten-free, paleo, all the systems. I don't believe in imposing a philosophy on our body. It's really just about finding out what works for us, what gives us more energy, and continuing to experiment. until we settle into a diet that's balanced for us, eating a little more of what's good for us, a little less of what's not. And the third thing is again, getting enough rest over time. Some nights we stay up, we have a lot of work to do, but over time, getting enough rest. When we do those three things with all the gourmet challenges and systems and sophisticated approaches to health and wellness, really comes down to those three things. If we do those, we're likely to optimize our own and genetic potential and live a balanced life. And those so-called emotional and spiritual issues tend to fade and go away. And we're better able to face the real challenges of everyday life. So small, dream big, start small.

Who's been a big influence in your life in terms of this space? Other authors, speakers, seminar leaders, who do you feel like has done a really great job at delivering a similar message in this space that you're like, wow, I really appreciate his writing or her speech or her, whatever it may be. Is there anyone that you do admire in this space?

The reason I'm kind of holding back from that is I'm, Next year I start my final book. It's probably going to be the last book I write.

How many years have you been saying that?

Oh, no, I haven't. Really? Yeah, I could be wrong. You can always be wrong, but I really do believe that it'll complete my work, 18th book, and it's going to be a memoir, and it's going to be about the four primary mentors who've most influenced my life and work. I will see this. One I call the professor, one I call the guru, one I call the warrior priest, and the fourth, the sage. These are other than Socrates. They influenced his character by Tumur wrote the book.

So you haven't shared these yet?

No, so I'm holding back on that.

Cool, all right.

Yeah, but they will come out, that's yet to come.

Can you share one that's not in those four that you're just like, wow, I really respect or admire them?

Yes, and yet it's not really well-known speakers or teachers or writers. I mean, I've been influenced by books. I love fiction books like Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, epic fantasy, but spiritual search, my favorite movie is Groundhog Day. It's a great movie.

It's a great movie.

But it's people from everyday life. When I see someone do something that I admire, those close to me, my wife and daughters, I become quite a feminist. I really can see the challenges for women today as well as men. Yeah. So, I take my role models on the subway. That's where I see them. And in the streets of New York. And here.

That's cool.

Sitting across from one now.

I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate it. This is one of the final questions. I don't know if I asked you this last time, which you were on in June of 2015, so I can't remember if I asked this. or afterwards. It's called the Three Truths. And let's imagine you've written your last book and maybe you've written more or you've done anything else you want to do for the rest of your life. You make it happen. You speak all over the place, you do whatever you want to do, it happens. And it's the last day, many years from now. And for whatever reason, all your work is erased. So all the books, content gone. but you have a piece of paper and a pen by your bed just before you're about to take your last breaths and you get to write down three things you know to be true about everything in your life that you've experienced. And this is the only thing people would have to be remembered by you, these three truths. Do you know what you'd say to yours?

You have a pencil handy? All right, well let me see. Let me see. Yes, I would write down Paradox, Humor and Change. My old mentor Socrates gave me a business card many years ago and those were the three words on it. Paradox, Humor and Change. Humor meaning cosmic humor, not just laughing at jokes, but not taking ourselves so seriously in our life. Change, we talked about a bit earlier, that is a constant. The Buddha said, All that begins also ends. Make peace with that, and all will be well. And if we can learn to flow with change, that's a huge, huge life skill. But paradox may be the key, in fact, in the hidden school. I'm going to bring it back to that. Paradox is two apparently opposing statements that are both true. For example, and actually it's a key to reconcile some of the major questions before humanity. The big questions of philosophy. Does free will exist? Does time exist? Are we all one or are we separate beings? Is death real or an illusion? These are big questions that underlie everything else in our lives. Without understanding that, there's no real foundation in our life. We wander around doing the best we can in relationships and everything else. So, paradox is a key to help reconcile these questions, because I can really state this: Does time exist? Yes. Is time an illusion? Yes. Is free will real? Do we have free will?

Yes.

Is free will an illusion? Yes. Are we separate beings? Yes. Are we all one? Absolutely. Is death real? For sure. Is death an illusion? Clearly. How can I say that? Well, I go into that in the Hidden School. There's a book within the book. and it goes into some of these fundamental questions that underlie all of our lives that many people don't even think about, because we're dealing with the challenges of everyday life. But I think it was time to write that, and that's why I waited 37 years. It's like an advanced training. Make sure you guys get the book.

The Hidden School: Return of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. Guys, check it out, danmillman.com PeacefulWarrior.com Either one. Peaceful Warrior, danmillman.com, are you on social media as well?

I'm on Facebook. I send out quotes every week, favorite quotations.

Sure. Awesome. Dan Millman on Facebook, everywhere on social media. Or Peaceful Warrior. Yeah, people can find me. Gotcha, gotcha. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Dan, for the incredible impact you've made on my life and so many people's lives with your wisdom and your constant search for meaning and understanding of how to live this crazy life that we're all in. So, I want to acknowledge you for the gifts that you have and for all that you do for so many people. It's amazing. Thank you, Louis.

I'd like to acknowledge you back. Okay. Yeah, you're doing some great work.

Thank you, appreciate it. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

The word that came up for me, everyone. They just haven't all awakened to that yet. It's not about achievement or how good a publicist you have or if you get in the media, get famous. There's a real heroism and I don't cheapen the word. There's a courage in every human being. We all bring it out at times. So that's what comes up for me when I think of greatness.

Love does not happen because you say it. Love does not happen because you're attracted to somebody. Yes, you may feel it at certain moments. When you like something, you may also begin to love it. All right? Essentially, love means sweetness of your emotion. Sweetness of your emotions. Yes.