TRANSCRIPT 

Dan Millman

[00:00:23] Sean: Dan, welcome to What got you there. How are you doing today?

[00:00:24] Dan Millman: Great. Sean, thank you for having me on your show.

The Spiritual Quest

[00:00:30] Sean: Oh, absolutely. This is so invigorating and exciting for me. Your works had a tremendous impact on me. So it’s really good to see you. But we’re gonna start off here with how you started off your most recent book. And I would love to know why you decided to choose this quote, and the quote is,’ May the stars guide you through the dark and speckled forest along with a winding passionate past. May you learn from your wandering, so you’ve returned both stronger and wiser here now, where you make your home? I would just love to know what resonates so deeply with you about that quote. 

[00:00:49] Dan Millman: That quote by Agnieszka Rajak, I believe it just seemed indicative. It was a great opening quote for the journey for the spiritual quest, darkened winding pas speckled, forest. It just seemed appropriate for this quest that I believe everyone is on whether we would call it a spiritual quest, or whether it’s fully conscious or not. We’re all seeking a sense of fulfillment in something deeper, not just the conventions of everyday life because those who’ve achieved reasonable happiness in a relationship, maybe finances or career. They still there’s something they begin to ask: what am I here for? In those quiet moments? So I think that seemed like a wonderful image. That’s why I use that opening quote, thank you for asking,

Success v/s Fulfillment 

[00:01:49] Sean: You know, it deeply resonated with me. So I really appreciate it. I’m just curious to get your insights there. And one of the other things that I think spoke to me You mentioned Ross seeking something. And then one of the things that you’ve talked about, is seeking excellence as opposed to seeking success, right? Like so many people seek success, but we can’t control success but we can control accident excellence. And I would love to know your thoughts around this and this approach you take to so many things basically your entire life, which is what I love so much.

[00:02:15] Dan Millman: Well, it’s a thing most of us have heard that that happiness is getting, or successfully getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get. So there’s a bigger picture here of learning to accept and embrace life as it unfolds. Because life comes to us in waves of change. We can’t predict or control whether we can learn to surf. And so that is a kind of a spiritual or big picture skill. We can develop that we weren’t taught in school. And that’s really what the question is about, and that’s why I want to share my quest with a wider readership. Not just because I presume that everyone cares about this Dan Millman character and wants to know all about his life, but because of the theme, it it may shed light or leave a trail of breadcrumbs in a sense about the major elements of this quest for fulfillment and happiness.

Redefining Success 

[00:03:11] Sean: Yeah. Your approach to excellence leads to more happiness and fulfillment when you put your whole heart and soul behind something. I’m wondering for you, what is the practice of seeking excellence look like for Dan Millman today after such an incredible life and so many journeys

[00:03:28] Dan Millman: Right, I usually wander a bit but I do get back to the question, or sorry about that. As far as success and excellence go, first of all, we can redefine success in a way that I find most practical, which is rather than reaching the top of the mountain, or our destination. Rather, if we define success as making progress toward a meaningful goal, a goal meaningful to us. That is a form of success. And it seems much more positive and useful because if we define the top of the mountain as success, then we fail with every step because we haven’t reached the top yet. But if we define every step in the right direction, then we succeed with every small step when making progress. We can pat ourselves on the back and remember that in perspective, but we can’t control the outcomes. That’s what you were suggesting. And that’s what I write about in the book too. We can’t control the outcomes in our life. But we can control our efforts and by making a good effort, we increase the odds of getting the outcomes we would like. That’s why I define effort as success because every effort goes in the right direction, and we can control excellence. We can bring the best we have at the moment to any task, whether it’s in sports as I did in my beginnings in my youth, but any task at all, we can give our best shot. And that’s what we can do. So we can aim for excellence. Yes, but the idea of success is abstract. And that’s why I like to focus on the practical and immediate.

Practicing to be the Best in your Shoes

[00:05:12] Sean: Yeah, that resonates deeply. Once again, the word I think about often is our Arete, the Greek word essentially it’s like excellence but excellence in your highest self each moment in that you can approach with that level of concentration, that effort and everything, I think is a beautiful way to go through life. I am wondering if you mentioned your gymnastics career and this wasn’t just dabbling into something. I mean, world champion. It’s pretty unbelievable what you were able to accomplish there and then obviously, as your journey has progressed, I am wondering for you though, that approach we have a lot of athletes who do listen to the show, and when they lose that game, it is very hard mentally to handle that and wondering what experience you have and how they could think about that, that practice towards excellence and not be so outcome-focused.

[00:05:55] Dan Millman: Well, one suggestion I gave to the team I coached at Stanford University for four years, and we have the top US Olympian and I developed a national team in about three and a half years from a high school level team when I arrived, and so my theories work pretty well in practice. And one of the things suggested was don’t say I’m a gymnast. And in fact, for anybody don’t say I’m a doctor, or an artist or a writer. Say I do gymnastics. I practice medicine. I work at art because that way, it’s something we do. It’s not a core element of our identity. Because when we have our identity wrapped up in something, and how well we’re doing if we don’t do well that day, it seems to impact us as human beings. And I’m failing as a human being. But really, it’s just something we do. And we all know. Sometimes we do better than others. And that’s what I want to make clear. When I say focus at the moment and bring your best. Many people beat themselves up with that they go yeah, but I can bring more I can do 100% and all that. That high energy, high achievement, gold, am I reaching my potential, and it’s a little crazy-making, because, by definition, we do the best we can every day of our life. It may not be on some absolute scale, but some days we have more energy than others some moments we do. So it’s just a relaxed way of bringing ourselves into the moment. And there’s a story I like to tell about. 

The mentor is called Socrates, my literary mentor for those who don’t know my work. We were in the gym one day, and I was training. I have a high bar and I did a routine and then I did my dismount of full-twisting double somersault whatever but I stuck my landing which is a good thing. Most people know that. And so I went yes, you know, and, and then I decided it’s a good time to wrap up my workout, and then high notes so I ripped off my sweatshirt through to my workout bag. And we were walking down the hallway afterward. And he said, Dan, you know that last move you did was really sloppy. And what are you talking about Socrates? I said that was one of the best dismounts I’ve done in weeks. He said I’m not talking about the dismount. I’m talking about the way you took up your sweatshirt and put it on your back. And he reminded me once again, I was treating one moment as special and another moment as ordinary. And again, there are no ordinary moments. And when we start to value those in-between moments, not when we’re in the gym or on the sports field or performing with a musical instrument, or giving a presentation, but every moment when we’re walking to and from when we’re sitting down, standing up, because he followed up that comment about no ordinary moments. With a reminder, I actually slipped into the movie script. I didn’t write the script, but the movie is based on my book Way of the Peaceful Warrior. The director put it to his credit a couple of weeks before they started shooting, and the line that McNulty uses, playing the old gas station attendant, he said, the difference between us Danna, you practice gymnastics. I practice everything. And I really had to think about that. Well, that sounds crazy. Practice everything. But what it means is most of us do things every day. We do the laundry, we do our work. We do our homework, we do whatever we do the dishes, but when we turn our attention or our intention to practicing, can we do the dishes better than we did yesterday? more smoothly? Can we breathe or walk across a room? Better, how many of us are practicing our signature to see if we can sign the smooth more smoothly than we did last time? The moment we intend to practice something, we’re doing it to refine or improve it? And what happens when we do that at that moment? When we remember, I don’t remember all the time, and nobody does. But when we do remember it brings us into that state of absorption. That zone that flows. And that’s why the idea of practicing everything is one of those key elements in this approach to living that I teach. I call it, ‘The Peaceful Warrior’s Way.’

 Dan Millman Learning Process

[00:10:27] Sean: Yeah, yeah that line was funny. Perhaps for this conversation, I went through some lines and quotes of yours that I saved throughout the years and that one like front and center for me at least it is so deeply impactful. So I’m so glad you brought that up right now. I mean, you’ve talked about in the past that the ultimate school is life and what it can teach us and you say Earth is school and daily life is our classroom and every moment has a lesson for us. I’m wondering for you along your own evolution, like when did this really start to become clearer for you?

[00:10:58] Dan Millman: I think it’s when I realized when I heard that statement for the umpteenth time that when the student is ready, the teacher appears but many of us misunderstand that, as you know, Sean. They think when they’re when they’ve suffered enough, or when they’re deserving enough or when they’ve prepared sufficiently, then some teacher like Socrates will appear to guide them or kick them up the path. But actually what I think that statement means is when the student is ready, or paying attention, the teacher appears everywhere. I tell the story in the book about a lesson, a valuable lesson I learned that changed my behavior, changed my breathing from a cloud watching a cloud just right across the sky. So or a tree bending in the wind so we can learn when we’re paying attention. And you know, Andre Jean said, he said everything that needs to be said has already been saying. But it needs to be said again and again. Because no one’s really paying attention. So when we do pay attention that’s one of the lessons that appears and we can have an incident with someone or an emotional charge. It could be anything: a fender bender, somebody cuts in front of us, or something happens on the sidewalk or at our office or wherever it is at home in a relationship. And if we were paying attention, we can go hmm, what can I learn from that?

Humbling Endeavor

[00:12:28] Sean: I think sorry. Continue, please. No, I’m just thinking one of the things we tend to put people like yourself up on a pedestal and I appreciate one of the things you said like we’re not perfect, none of us are. And so I’m wondering for the people listening to someone like yourself, I mean, I look to someone who’s just taught me so much upon that pedestal. What is life teaching you right now?

[00:12:50] Dan Millman: Well, you may recall at the end of the book I tell a story about mindfulness. You know, when I was introduced at a talk I gave in Melbourne, Australia, they said Dan Millman is an expert in mindfulness from America. And the first thing I said to the audience was, my wife might beg to differ. Because she notices if I do the dishes, when they dry spots show up and she said, Dan, you missed this spot, this spot. So I’m constantly learning it’s a continuously humbling endeavor. And one of the themes as I repeat in the book numerous times, what three or four times anyway, is that every teacher is human and every human has foibles and failings. We expected teachers to be perfect in all ways, or completely flawed and canceled. But most teachers, including myself, take the role of teacher today. I’m an elder now. But most teachers have their quirks and foibles fortunately because I’ve got a wife who’ll kick my butt if I don’t do it, right? She’s my guardian angel in North Star. We’ve been married 46 years now. Best friends, and she will remind me if I have any slips in fortunately, I haven’t had any major slips. You’re going to read about the newspaper or anything like that, but quirks. Sure, so we’re all human. We’re all doing the best we can each day. And in fact, we need to consider just the possibility that our parents did the best they could in raising us whether they were kind and attentive, and thoughtful or whether they were even cruel and abusive. With their wounds, their blind spots, their suffering, they were doing the best they knew how it may not have been very good and it doesn’t make any excuses if it was a really poor upbringing, but it provides a partial explanation and understanding with compassion, that we’re all doing the best we can here. Sometimes it’s better than other times.

 The story behind the Title ‘Way of Peaceful Warrior’ 

[00:14:55] Sean: Yeah. It’s always so helpful. We have a great joy like that in our lives to bring out our even better selves. It’s remarkable the amount of work that you’ve done over your career, peaceful heart warrior spirit, the 18th book. First of all, I should state the impressive body of work. It shows the commitment to your practice and your excellence. I’m wondering why that title specifically?

[00:15:20] Dan Millman: Well, that’s a very good question, I think because let me just tell you the inception of the word Peaceful Warrior. Yeah. As I wrote in the book, I was teaching a martial arts course at Oberlin College. When I was an assistant professor at Oberlin. And it was focused on I Kido, and Tai Chi, and they’re both more internal arts. And I was going to call the course a survey course to introduce students to these martial arts. I was going to call it the way of the warrior which made a lot of sense, but it didn’t quite fit since they’re not aggressive arts, they’re more defensive arts. So I, a light bulb went on and I went, Hey, why don’t I call it the way of the Peaceful Warrior? It kind of lent a balance. And it was only years later that I wrote the book that I thought hey, that would be a good title, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Now, people have asked me, Well, Dan, I wish for a peaceful warrior like you, or I wish I could become one someday. And in my view, it’s clear to me that everyone I see is a peaceful warrior training every human being’s son, who are sociopathic, you know, extreme examples, psychopathic, those souls may be lost for a while, but they’re still in training. We’re all here to learn. But for you and me and most people, we’re all striving to live with a peaceful heart, a sense of equanimity, serenity, in the midst of the chaos of everyday life and change. And at the same time, we recognize there are times we need a warrior’s spirit. So the idea of the peaceful heart warrior spirit, conveys male, female, younger old for anyone, that we’re all peaceful warriors and training in the School of daily life. And that’s why, you know, I looked for titles for every book. It’s been a real story of how you came up. I came up with a title. But for this one, it came very naturally. I tried a few different titles stumbling toward the light, that would have been a pretty good one. But then the peaceful heart warrior spirit in the story of mine, the true story of my spiritual quest describes my life but also I hope it appeals to many people who could relate to that idea.

Learn by Experiences

[00:17:39] Sean: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. In the book, you describe the relationship and learnings amongst four mentors, which I would love to get into here in a second. But I’m wondering if we can learn so much from mentors and then even from great books like yours, and then other lessons, but I’m wondering what are those lessons that no one can teach us? We just have to experience them. Is there any like that just comes to mind for you?

[00:18:01] Dan Millman: Well, as an agent saying, I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. So yes, I agree with you, Sean. There are things that only experience can teach us, some cynical wag once said the only people who profit from the experience of others are biographers. But I don’t think that’s true. I think we actually can’t, we’re connected. We’re all connected. And by reading about other people, seeing their lives, and having them share their experiences, I think we could all learn in one day. It struck me that you know, I was really into self-improvement. I described that some in the book in my youth, memory courses and speed reading and learning to juggle and sleight of hand, doing some magic and then Trilok wisdom and bullwhips and throwing boomerangs and yo-yo and I try I love to learn and so I was constantly improving myself. But then one day it just struck me I almost burnt out on self-improvement. I said, you know, no matter how much I improve myself only one person but if I could somehow influence the lives of other people, I didn’t know how you may be, it was through gymnastics, you know, somehow, but then it made my life more meaningful. I can impact other lives. Not everybody’s called to that. But I was called to teach to reach out and try to influence other people. And that’s been my life, career, and calling for four decades now. And I think because of that commitment to sharing what I learned not just learned for myself, but to share it with others. So now I think that’s what opened me up to meet these particular four mentors. And as you point out, we’ve all had role models and inspirations, teachers, maybe a couple of teachers stand out in our mind or memory, from school, or in everyday life. We’ve all had those role models, but I was given somehow I stumbled across one after the next over a 20 year period for significant mentors who each represent a different aspect of the spiritual path.

The Professor, the Guru, the Warrior priest, and the Sage

[00:20:32] Sean: Yeah, there’s four being the professor, the guru, the warrior priest, and Sage and you do such a good job getting into a lot of the lessons that you learned through them in the book but I would love could you even just give it a flyover on each one of them just give the listeners kind of a heads up and preview into what they can expect that each one of those can teache.

[00:20:50] Dan Millman: Sure just to overview. Well, the professor created a school that’s why I call it a professor. I could have called him headmaster but he created a school like no other on the planet because it has an unusual background. And it had an incredible blend to amplify and accelerate our evolution. And at first, he promised at the end of the 40-day intensive training 10 hours a day, doing 30 or 40 Different kinds of meditations for different purposes, various breathing exercises, retention, and including Kundalini type things. Deep bodywork bone massage I described in the way of the Peaceful Warrior. The Mongolian warriors used to do before and after battle to clear fear, produce tension from the body movement, discipline cycle, physical kind of movement disciplines, models of understanding levels of consciousness, how we reduce tension in our lives and respond to stress. So it was and we did a lot of group work as well. And insight works to anybody who has heard of the Enneagram books for self-knowledge actually all that came from the professor. His actual name was Oscar he Chazal and of course, these are real people. I mean, I do give their names and so on, but their archetypes are very significant. So that was one approach to spiritual life. He said at the end of the 40 days you will be enlightened. Well, we learned a lot. I could speak for myself. It really transformed my body, my mind clarity, expanded awareness. Was I enlightened, not classically. So then there was advanced training. And then there was more work after that. And more. I ended up moving on and discovering the guru. And the guru works differently. He said I’d rather beat you with a stick that tells you to meditate your way to enlightenment. So he was an unconventional teacher. He was an American-born teacher and went to Columbia and Stanford University. And he was a tremendous communicator and writer of many books. So, the guru thought the way he worked was, he claimed very clearly and seemed to have the Mojo and the creds to back it up. Alan Watts lauded him, as did Ken Wilber. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Both respected scholars and pundits and authors. So he worked with people in the sense of transmitting transcendent or divine reality through his person. He was transparent to God. Or there’s, it’s hard to find words. Some people don’t like the term God if you’re not religious, I’m not particularly religious, but the divine, let’s say, or a transcendent understanding, illumination, just being around him. And he sat with us in Satsang. It’s called Hindu tradition. He wasn’t Indian though. He was an American board fellow. So anyway, that was a very different way of working with people now. People think of a cult when they think of a guru and think Oh, it must be a cult. And in fact, the guru himself said, you know, this isn’t a cult, because it’s difficult to get into and it’s easy to get out. And that was true. He also pointed out that there are cults everywhere, there are cults around movie stars and singers. Yeah, spiritual teachers as well. He said the question is not whether something’s a cult. It’s whether it’s benign, or whether it’s manipulative and controlling. So the word cult isn’t necessarily a bad one. I mean, people you know, love various chess. Collinson. All kinds of different approaches people surrounding an idea, love it. So I was with him on and off for almost seven years now and my wife Joy was also with me through the four mentors. And she actually, around the seventh draft of the book, read every draft as I was writing. She said, Dan, I see this a little bit differently from you. Maybe I could write something too and I went, That’s a great idea. So she has commentaries about a total of about 10 pages sprinkled throughout the latter part of the book, in the 200-page book, which I actually pruned down from 500 pages, bloated, overwritten the first draft. That was the challenge, turning it into a  

Dan Millman Writing Process

[00:25:29] Sean: Yeah, there must be quite a process there.

[00:25:31] Dan Millman: It was with each draft or cut more and trimmed more and streamlined it Jack London once it takes hard writing to make easy reading. And that’s always been my goal. I hope I’ve succeeded. So that’s the Guru, the warrior priest and again, I eventually after seven to eight years, joined and I moved on. That’s when I met the warrior priest, a very different experience. I’d already had two of the heaviest hitting teachers I could have imagined. So I wasn’t interested in any more teachers. I wasn’t out there seeking another teacher. But a phone call came in one night as I described, and I ended up meeting this fellow who, first of all, I had a relationship with him where the guru and the professor were distant figures, more or less. I didn’t have a personal relationship and he and I traveled together. We’ve been taught together some, but this time I was starting to teach. So he was an adventurer, martial artist, former bounty hunter I mean, he was a really Alaskan bush pilot, EMT, but also a healer and metaphysician. He taught things like absent healing and how to avoid possession. These metaphysical ideas that were speculative, couldn’t be proven or disproven, but I was more interested in his practical information. And he really gave me my calling. He taught me the life purpose material that was featured in one of my better-selling books called, ‘The Life you were born to live.’ He also at the advanced training with him we learned a way to teach knife fighting for spiritual growth. I call it the Peaceful Warrior courage training. I taught it for 14 years. And people came from all over the world and are learning to train with a knife because that gets people’s attention. And these are people that walked off the street that most of them had never done any martial arts. Although we had a couple of advanced third, fourth, fifth, sixth-week black belts also joining the course, because they were curious how we got the outcomes we did in four days, in terms of being able to move without thinking, and in terms of the fundamental shifts people made, they remembered and felt for decades after so, by the way, this isn’t a promotional comment. I don’t teach it anymore. It was just very labor-intensive. I had a staff and everything. But it was wonderful training at the time and I learned that from the warrior priest. He taught race car driving, all kinds of adventurous things. So that was a very different flavor. He also taught self-trust. That’s where I got the phrase. I’m not here for you to trust me. I’m here to help you trust yourself. And so in the Guru’s community, self-trust was a rare commodity. It was all about trusting the guru. You know, he pointed out the guru pointed out something I thought was very valuable. He said there are three fundamental approaches to spiritual life to the quest. He said they correspond to three phases of human life, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, those transitional phases. He said, in our childhood we search for a parent figure, who can tell us what to do, to project on that person all our power and wisdom, and to obey & submit to them. That’s what children need to survive with their parents. They learn from their parents and that’s an appropriate place in the childhood of our lives and spiritual search. So there’s nothing wrong with that, but we eventually need to grow out of childhood and we become adolescence. Now, what adolescence is the adolescence characterized by is we all know, we reject authority; we say all these guys are fake, they don’t know anything; never trust them; only I know what’s best for me. ‘We know it all’ stage in the 20s, we’re bulletproofing so one and we all go through that phase, in many ways. But they tend to reject, ignore or deny the wisdom out there. Eventually, some of them reach maturity and adulthood when we find wisdom wherever we can, in odd places even in old service stations. Those are phases we go through. I started to recognize different phases in my own journey and search. So he really was a wise teacher. How many Gurus encourage that child-like devotion to them, but this Guru said before you become spiritual, you have to become fully human. He was looking for a mature human to live, not neurotic people who needed a parent. So, he was constantly criticized in that way. So it wasn’t the place to learn self-trust. The Warrior Priest, the third of my teachers, really gave me an enormous sense of that as I describe throughout the book. Finally though, through various circumstances, I found the sage near the end of my journey for these four mentors.the sage brought me back down to earth. Simple reminders of reality, after dealing with all metaphysics in the sky, mind, and abstract ideas, it was like meeting a Zen master. He pointed out what we can and cannot control. Many of us have grown up in a psychological culture and we assume that inner work and spiritual practices are necessary to be eastern. We are disillusioned with western solutions to happiness. So we look to the eastern solution, rather than an expansive extroverted approach. Unleash your power and succeed in the game of life, instead all our answers lie within. Sit, meditate, contemplate and go on the inner journey. That’s the endless adventurous wealth. But the sage, it was more about embracing the best of both. Noticing what we can or cannot control and what I was leading up to a few moments ago, we don’t necessarily have to fix our lines and only have positive thoughts or quiet the mind or just have the emotions of courage, confidence, love, peace, so we can finally live wisely and well. It pointed out what really matters is what we do moment to moment. What do I need to do now? And many people get that, but not exactly I know I didn’t at first because I’ve been conditioned so much the other way. It was like deep programming in a way to come back to the piece of everyday reality each moment.

 Dan Millman Going Deeper

(00:32:43) Sean: And when you could even go a little bit further than for people to hear that it’s abstract for them. I’m wondering if we could even go a level deeper there?

(00:32:52) Dan Millman: Sure. Ah, but going deeper is again, I found this in my own experience a challenge. It has to do with what we can and can’t control. Now there are many books written and seminars to teach you mind control supposedly, or how about anger management? You know, anger management courses don’t teach us to control anger. We can’t control anger or fear or sorrow. Emotions pass through us like the weather. They come and they change and then a new emotion comes if we really pay attention, have our watch beep every 20 minutes, and write down what we’re feeling. Our feelings change all the time. A little excited, a little bored, a little sad. All these things pass through our moment to moment. We can’t just will ourselves feel differently than we do at any given moment. But it passes anyway. There are many techniques that we do to try to influence how we feel like method actors try to bring genuine performance into the film player, whatever. So there are a lot of techniques to try to influence but as far as control by our will, we can’t control our emotions. We can’t control our thoughts, our discursive thoughts, the ones that just popped up into our mind, sometimes they’re positive, sometimes they’re negative. But we don’t have a spam filter in our heads. We don’t say I think I’ll think this thought next. Thoughts come and thoughts go. So rather than trying to control what we really don’t have any direct control over, the one thing we do is our arms and our legs and our mouth, that’s an action moving the mouth making noise. It’s called talking or singing. We can control that. Now some people say I didn’t mean to say that. Yeah, they did. They may have regretted it later, but nobody took possession of their mouth. That’s the point is a problem with many young people, teenagers or late teens, or adults, is we take too much responsibility for what we’re thinking or feeling and not enough responsibility for what we actually have control over which is what we do. So that’s why the stage said let’s focus more on what we can control. Any advice on three things. He said to live wisely and well, accept your thoughts and feelings, except it is natural to you in that moment. By accepting it’s like you would in meditation, notice them. You don’t deny them or ignore them, or fear them or run from them. Just accept them, okay, this is what I’m feeling now. This is what I’m thinking. It’s positive, it’s negative, whatever, but at the same time, the second thing is what is my purpose? What is my aim and goal right now? What do I need to do? And then doing it? That’s the third thing, doing what we need to do in line with our goals or purpose, not in line with Dan Norman’s philosophy and what we read in the holy book, but in line with our purpose. And so that was part of his teaching, but there was more to it I won’t go into right now 

Dan Millman Meditative Practices

(00:36:08) Sean: I am wondering, I know a lot of people are very curious, about all this year’s wisdom and practices. What are you doing currently? Both I’m wondering meditatively and then also even breathing. I know it’s been a major practice for you.

(00:36:25) Dan Millman: Well, currently, I’m speaking with you. And you know, we always know our purpose. This moment. We may not know our cosmic purpose or 10 weeks from now what my purpose will be, but right now I know my purpose. And that’s what I’m doing now if you mean in general daily life, I get up and I exercise firstly, my wife and I both do we soon as we get out of bed, and I don’t want to get into it now but I actually developed Senate bed exercises that are actually really good for waking up in the morning. They get it almost every muscle group, the whole core, and glutes the quads before I even get out of bed. And I don’t even disturb my wife. It’s very quiet and easy to do. But it’s a great way to start the day. And I focus on breathing all the things I do. So I do exercises every morning. What did I do this morning? I did our elliptical machine but usually, I walk around Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, or like around it all-weather pretty much. So that’s how I start the day and then finally come in the shower and have breakfast and then go about my day. We all have different things we need to do whether it is students, parents, we can’t all have that luxury. But that’s why I created a four-minute workout. The Peaceful Warrior workout which I’ve been doing is a core part of my workout that I do. I’ve probably done this for almost 40 years now. And hard to imagine. But yeah, almost 40 years, every day, a four-minute workout, and I do more but that’s the core. When I’m on the road. I always do that every morning in my hotel room. So I like to keep things efficient and I also created a four-minute meditation moment for clarity. I didn’t study with four managers and then go about parents and their words. Some of their wisdom that did come through that I hold on to that is a way to communicate simply and directly. But what they did was they opened doors within me to express my own teaching and speak with my own authority. So because I can’t possibly teach the whole training that the professor taught me, that’s appropriate within that school. I don’t serve as a guru who transmits the divine, you know, through sitting with people I don’t function that way. Nor am I quite as adventurous as the warrior priest was just an amazing charismatic guy, but I do what I do. You know someone once said, I cannot write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me. And that’s what I’ve been striving to do all these years. When

Dan Millman Process of Identifying his Own Journey

(00:39:16) Sean: When did you get comfortable enough that this was your journey, and not someone else’s to be lived? Because I think one of the things that I see often is so many people feel the need to feel like they need to live someone else’s life.

(00:39:28) Dan Millman: Well, we’ve all heard the sayings be yourself because everybody else has already taken. There have been different ways to put that. But one of my mission directives was one of the fundamental principles of this approach to living I call the peaceful warrior’s way. It is about where there is no best teacher, no best philosophy or religion or book. There’s only the best for each of us at a given time of our life. So it’s important for us to respect life as an experiment. We have to find out what works for us. So what I focus on is I’ve ceased comparing myself to anyone else and I recommend the same for anyone. Because as soon as we compare ourselves to someone else. we’re either going to feel superior or inferior. It’s a profound disrespect for our own process in our own way. Well, let me put it this way, when I was the coach, I taught beginning gymnastics classes, which were a blast and some people learn to somersault faster than other people. There are always those who learn things faster. But yet, I noticed that those who took longer to learn the somersault often learned it better than those who learned it faster. So we have to respect our own way of living and Learning. And I’ve had to do the same myself. So I’m comfortable in my own skin. I have my strengths and liabilities. You know, one of the things that have carried me through all the mentors is an increasing level of self-knowledge. Not just seeing my self-image, which many of us do, but actually meeting my shadow at the opening of the book under key terms. I define enlightenment as a realization practice. I have a quote by Carl Jung, the noted psychoanalyst. He said enlightenment consists not just in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. He added that the latter procedure is more difficult and therefore unpopular. But if we’re willing to look at ourselves and see ourselves realistically, something the sage was very helpful in it humanizes us. So I’ve come to know myself and make wiser decisions because of that. You see, if we don’t really know ourselves, we make the right decision for the wrong person, the one we thought we were, that happens to many people in relationships when they’re young, or in work choices, when they’re just starting out. They learn more about themselves, what are my talents, what am I values are, what are my interests, and then they start making decisions that actually suit them.

Is Dan Millman’s 18th book the last one?

(00:42:37) Sean: This can bring in a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit, which is the title of the 18th book. Anything else you want to leave the listeners with? Of course, we’re going to have links to where you can purchase the book, but any final words on the book and what you hope the listeners bring with them from.

(00:42:50) Dan Millman: when people hear the term 18 books that figure I just knocked out 18 books? Well, it took me 40 years and every book had to justify itself and everyone is on a different topic, but this is the true story. It’s my culminating work. I don’t see any more books in my future. I’ll continue to teach where I’m invited. But this book is special because it is the culminating work looking back on everything. And I think many people may relate to it. And that’s my hope. Initial letters I’ve received emails from friends who’ve read the book. I find it quite encouraging.

(00:43:26) Sean: Well, Dan, I can’t thank you enough for joining us here on what got you there.

(00:43:30) Dan Millman: And let me add, if anybody wants to if they’re curious about my work, they can always pop into peacefulwarrior.com

 (00:43:36)Sean: Fantastic. Thanks again.