Philosophy for Life
Welcome to the Philosophy for Life podcast, hosted by Darron Brown, where we explore the profound questions and timeless wisdom that shape our existence. Join us on a journey of self-discovery and intellectual exploration as we delve into the depths of philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and the human experience. Through thought-provoking discussions, engaging interviews, and insightful analysis, we seek to unravel the mysteries of life and uncover the underlying truths that guide us. Discover practical insights and philosophical perspectives that can enrich your daily life, challenge your perspectives, and inspire personal growth. Whether you're a curious seeker, a deep thinker, or simply someone passionate about understanding the complexities of our world, Philosophy for Life is your gateway to wisdom and enlightenment. Subscribe now and embark on a transformative quest to gain clarity, find purpose, and embrace the profound beauty of existence.
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Philosophy for Life
Becoming a Peaceful Warrior with Dan Millman
Ever wondered how to balance tranquility with the fierceness needed to face life's challenges? Renowned author Dan Millman, the mind behind "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior," joins us for an unforgettable conversation that promises to illuminate the path to inner peace amidst chaos. Drawing from his own journey from gymnast to influential teacher, Dan shares profound insights on maintaining a peaceful heart while summoning the courage of a warrior, offering listeners invaluable life lessons inspired by his experiences in martial arts and teaching.
We then navigate the intricate landscape of thoughts and emotions, dismantling the myth of constant positive thinking. Influenced by the teachings of psychiatrist Shoma Morita, we emphasize accepting our emotional states and focusing on actionable behaviors to align with our purpose. This chapter serves as a guide to living a more purposeful and liberated life, encouraging actions rooted in courage and kindness, regardless of emotional turbulence.
Lastly, we uncover the wisdom that mentors bring into our lives, often appearing in the most unexpected forms. From Dan’s enigmatic character "Socrates" to real-life coaches and peers, we explore the profound lessons they impart. Our discussion extends to the holistic impact of martial arts and the significance of embracing the present moment, finding purpose through challenges, and balancing life's darkness and light. Tune in for a heartfelt exchange that aims to help you understand your unique path and find peace and purpose even in the most chaotic times.
Hey guys, how you doing. This is Deron Brown and I'm your host of the podcast Velocity for Life. I have a very special guest with me here today. His name is Dan Millman. He's a former athlete for the University of Cal Berkeley. He was a gymnastics athlete and he also was a gymnastics coach at the University of Stanford. He's famous for the book called the Peaceful Warrior and also he I want to say he's a martial artist as well. I'm not sure what martial arts, but we'll get into that. Dan, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hi, deron, good to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Dan, are you from the Bay Area, because I mean you went to a few schools out there. Are you born and raised out there?
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in Los Angeles for 18 years, then most of my life in Northern California, except for a stint in Ohio and Atlanta.
Speaker 1:Okay, because I'm from the Bay Area, so that's why you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we lived in San Rafael, the Bay Area. So that's why you know. Oh yeah, we lived in San Rafael. Moved to New York 10 years ago for two daughters and three grandkids.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, sounds good. You look good for your age too. Thank you, yeah, so it's nice. It's nice to have. I'm from Palo Alto, so it's pretty cool to speak with you here.
Speaker 2:But um, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that, um, I really want to get deep into um your book and basically like your research and your your journey. Um, I'm just curious, like you explain, on a few podcasts I've seen you talk about your book um, the way of the peaceful warrior, but I want to know, like who were you before you went on this peaceful journey? Like who were you growing up?
Speaker 2:Well, I was a kid who was sort of, in a sense, born again when I discovered an old trampoline at a summer camp a day camp and I just kept jumping. I just loved it and wanted to learn moves. Many people, young people, can relate to that and it eventually led to a gymnastics scholarship to Cal and all that followed. So yeah, I was just a kid who was an enthusiast. I was very much into self-improvement. I mean I learned speed reading, I studied memory courses and ventriloquism and juggling and martial arts and acrobatics. It was only years later that I realized, no matter how much I improved myself, only one person benefited. But if I could influence other people in some positive way, I had no idea how at that time, other than teaching gymnastics. That made my life more meaningful and that's when I think I had a call as a teacher or influencer in today's terminology. So that evolution took some years. I think it's important for anybody to trust their process as they grow. Some things don't pop up into our awareness until we reach a certain age.
Speaker 1:Your book, the title the Way of the Peaceful Warrior. It stood out to me because growing up I wasn't too peaceful. I'm an ex-college athlete myself and I didn't know it at the time, but I was very angry. I knew I was aggressive you had to be aggressive for sports but I was angry, I was unhappy and I really blocked myself from getting like good things, accepting good relationships, and I was completely unconscious of that. So I've been on my own peaceful journey since then and I'm wondering, like what inspired you to go First, what inspired the book title and then what inspired you to go? What first would inspire the book title and then what? What inspired you to go on this like peaceful path?
Speaker 2:Well, I imagine sports were a great outlet for you, as as they are were for me and for many people. And funny thing is the the way I coined the term peaceful warrior, because it for many people it doesn't make sense. How can you be peaceful and a warrior at the same time? I was teaching a martial arts course at Oberlin College in Ohio. I was an assistant professor there and I was teaching Aikido and Tai Chi. I'd studied Judo and Karate and Okinawan style Karate when I was younger, and later Aikido and Tai Chi and other arts. So I got some sense of breadth in the martial arts.
Speaker 2:But I was teaching this course for college students and in the school catalog I was going to call it the way of the warrior. But then I went well, you know that doesn't quite fit, because both Aikido and Tai Chi are more receptive, they're not aggressive arts really and so I had a light bulb moment and I went hey, why don't I call it the Way of the Peaceful Warrior? So when I ended up writing the book some years later, that title popped up. Hey, how about the Way of the Peaceful Warrior? It was just sharing all that I learned to that point in my life and I wanted to be practical and it seems like many people have related to it in, I think, 29 languages so far.
Speaker 1:What would you say are the characteristics of a peaceful warrior?
Speaker 2:Well more important in describing these characteristics and how they apply to all of us. I view everyone as a peaceful warrior. In training it's not something you can become or a club you can join. We're all peaceful warriors in the sense that everyone I know is searching to live with a more peaceful heart amidst the chaos of the daily news and the craziness. More peaceful heart amidst the chaos of the daily news and the craziness. We're searching for a sense of serenity, of equanimity, kind of learning how to be in the eye of the cyclone, with everything whirling around us, where we're more stable, and so everybody's searching for a peaceful heart in that sense.
Speaker 2:But there are times in our lives, as you well know, that we need a warrior spirit, and what I mean by that? It goes back to the ancient samurai, you know, or the martial arts tradition, and it's not necessarily about fighting, except maybe with those inner demons of fear, self-doubt, insecurity, that sort of thing. But really it's about rolling up our sleeves, about viewing daily life as a form of spiritual weight training, and if you don't lift any weights you don't get any stronger. So it's rolling up our sleeves and marching into life and doing what needs to be done in line with our purpose, our goals before somebody goes on that path to become a peaceful warrior.
Speaker 1:Um, what I want to say what do they have to accept or like, what do they have to acknowledge or go through to actually begin that journey to becoming a peaceful warrior and know, attacking their fears and insecurities?
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned a path and sometimes we feel like we're stagnating, vegetating, even slipping backwards, but we might be backing up to get a running start. It's a recognition, with the idea that we can't really lose our way. It may feel like it sometimes, but wherever we step, our path appears it goes up and down and around two steps forward, one step back. So we need to acknowledge our reality. That's the first thing. Awareness of, say, a problem is the beginning of the solution. But we have to be aware of it first. Where are our imbalances, our blockages? And sometimes that can involve looking at our past and how we're functioning now. You know a man named Shoma Morita, a Japanese psychiatrist, once said when running up a hill, it's okay to give up as many times as you want, you can quit as many times as you want, as long as your feet keep moving. And that's the key here is our feet keep moving. And so, again, it's an awareness of our reality, accepting reality rather than resisting it. And, by the way, one key I think and a lot of my work and a number of my books deal with this area is self-knowledge. Because if we don't have self-knowledge and it takes a while to really see ourselves realistically as we are. Carl Jung, the noted psychoanalyst, talked about our shadow side. Carl Jung, the noted psychoanalyst, talked about our shadow side, those parts of ourselves we deny. And so if we don't have self-knowledge, we end up making the right decision for the wrong person, the one we thought we were. And many of us have had that experience in relationships, in career choices and that sort of thing. So I think self-knowledge is key, that sort of thing. So I think self-knowledge is key. It's something that's agreed upon in all the spiritual, religious and educational traditions, psychological traditions. Know yourself, because then you can make wiser decisions. And that means really being willing to take a good example through self-image and hopes that we think we're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:And self-knowledge, very specifically in terms of choosing the right work for ourselves and so on, involves asking ourselves what are my talents, what am I good at, what am I not good at? And go with our strengths, play to our strengths. The second area is what are my interests? And a lot of us don't even allow ourselves to really say what am I actually interested in? We're too busy pursuing what we think we should do or other people think we should do. But what are my interests. And the third part, really, of self-knowledge in a practical sense is what are my values? And that can take 10 years after our schooling's done, to test ourselves in the world to find out what are my values, what are my talents, what are my interests, and that can help guide us to making wiser decisions for ourselves.
Speaker 2:And I need to add one more thing here I have great respect for your process, my process, everyone's process. What do I mean by that? Well, I don't believe there is a best book or teacher or philosophy or religion or diet or exercise system. I only believe that there is the best one for each of us at a given time of our life. That can change over time, so that life is an experiment. We have to find out what works for us. That's how I operate and that's what I recommend to other people.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you left with that note. One thing that my coach used to say, Coach, what he would say respect the process, respect the process. He said that the end of every, at the end of every practice yeah and when you just said everybody process looks different.
Speaker 1:You know you kind of answered my question because I was getting ready to ask you do you think everybody's truly walking along that journey? Because, from an outsider looking in for me personally, um, I have, I've had issues where I've evolved and worked on myself and I got, um, jealousy, envy you name it from people that I loved that I and I wasn't even aware of this, like I was. So as an athlete, you know, once I was just like I was in my zone with the sport. I can get in my zone with my self-improvement and just forget about the things around me and just completely dial in. And you know, not everybody in your social group is like that. So, although I'm on my process, I'm handling it the way that I am handling it. Do you truly believe everybody is walking along along that spiritual journey in their own way? It just looks different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question and I agree with that. I think everyone is on a spiritual quest, whether or not we use that term, because spirituality is kind of a loaded term. Some people it means new age or metaphysics, or the occult, or beliefs in this or that. But to me, you know, I asked my daughter when she was 10 years old. She read a lot and I asked her to name some of her favorite spiritual books, and she gave me a list the next day, and not a single book was about the occult or metaphysics or new age themes. It was all about things that uplifted her, that inspired her, that reminded her of life's possibilities and promise, and so that's why I sought to write such a book, you know, to remind people of our possibilities.
Speaker 1:You mentioned blockages around your journey, like what kind of things do people run into, what kind of issues do people deal with that are blocking them or hinder them from that slow down their pace along that spiritual journey?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, one of those things is, of course, a fear and, as you can appreciate, their own um custom model. A boxing coach once said one of the greatest quotes ever said. He said heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. They just respond differently. And to me that's the key.
Speaker 2:In fact, some people have said well, this way, this approach to living, you teach, dan. How does it differ from other people? You know there's so many teachers out there, and one way is it places an emphasis on what we actually do day to day, moment to moment. What we actually do day to day, moment to moment, because many of us well, barbara Rasp, a writer, once said the lesson is simple, the student is complicated. And we complicate our lives by trying to fix our minds, have positive thoughts, fix our emotions and just have the right emotions so we can live wisely and well. But really, you know, we have less control by our will, less actual control over what feelings are passing through us, like the weather In any given moment. Feelings change all the time Anger, sorrow, boredom, excitement just changes all the time. A feeling-centered life is chaotic because they're always changing. So we have less control over what we're feeling. We can't necessarily will ourselves to feel differently than we do in any given moment, but feelings pass and fade anyway. Now thoughts, you know.
Speaker 2:Many times I ask people how many of you have read a book on positive thinking, the power of positive thinking and so on, and many people raise their hands and I go great, how many of you have only had positive thoughts for, say, the last week? And all the hands go down and I go, ah. But I'll bet you believe, if you'd read the book twice and if you had highlighted it and done all the exercises, maybe you'd still be having more positive thoughts and fewer negative ones. Well, you know, I've been around the block. I've done for decades various kinds of meditation, spiritual training and so on, and work on myself, and sometimes my thoughts are positive and sometimes they're negative, and that's just how it is.
Speaker 2:And instead of trying to fix our thoughts and control them because we can't control them thoughts happen to us. They pop into our awareness in any given moment, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but they just arise, they. We don't say I think I'll think this thought next. I mean, we can use our mind and our intellect to think about things, but that random mind that just pops up that noisy mind, the monkey mind it's called in the Buddhist tradition. You know, it's just wild, like they say it's a monkey stung by a scorpion. You know, just a wild mind.
Speaker 2:Sometimes when we meditate we go oh man, my mind's so busy and I'm going to give an antidote for that, if you like, a little bit later. Like a little bit later. So, rather than complicating our lives by trying to fix our mind and fix our emotions, I think we're better off focusing on the one thing we have control over, the one thing in our lives which, for example, if I thought I think I'm going to touch the tip of my nose, it itches, so I have that intention in my hand starts moving and I touch my nose. It itches, so I have that intention in my hand starts moving and I touch my nose. Now, unless I'm disabled, I can do that. I can control pretty much how I move my arms and legs and my mouth. It's part of my body, it's an action, and so I focus more on what I need to do moment by moment, rather than well, how can I have more positive mental state and emotional state so then I can live?
Speaker 2:Well, well, that's a little crazy making and many people are very much complicate their lives. Well, let me give an example. It's something I often remind people of and this may be familiar to a lot of us. To progress toward your goals, please choose one of two following methods. You can find a way to quiet your mind, create empowering beliefs, raise your self-esteem and practice positive self-talk To find your focus and affirm your power to free your emotions and visualize positive self-talk. To find your focus and affirm your power to free your emotions and visualize positive outcomes, so that you can develop the confidence, to generate the courage, to find the determination to make the commitment, to feel sufficiently motivated to do whatever it is you need to do. That may sound familiar and pretty complicated, but a lot of it's familiar to us. Right?
Speaker 2:The second method, which you learned as an athlete? You can just do it, because life is always going to come down to what we do from moment to moment, moment. Our lives right now are based on what we've done over time, the efforts we put in over time, and that's why this approach to living that I teach is founded on fine, what do you need to do now? So what this fellow, this Shoma Morita, the psychiatrist, recommended and I think it's some good guidelines for living wisely. And well, he said accept your thoughts and feelings as natural to you in that moment. You're angry, okay, you're angry, you're sad, you're sad, that's what your state is, but at the same time and you accept it as you would in a meditative state just watch it. You don't need to follow it, obey it, run from it, fix it, just notice it, it's there.
Speaker 2:The second thing is what is your purpose? You know that's his guidelines. Focus on a constructive or positive purpose. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want? And the third is do what needs to be done in line with that purpose, whether you're thinking positively or not, whether you're feeling confident or not.
Speaker 2:In fact, one of the most controversial things that I teach is I do not encourage people to feel happy or peaceful, or loving, or kind or courageous or confident, because that's not really in our control how we feel in any given moment. I encourage people to behave that way Behave with kindness, behave with courage, with confidence. For example, if somebody were really afraid to run out in the street with cars rushing by, but there's a toddler out there wandering in the street that's about to get hit, and so you find yourself, while terrified, running out there, grabbing the child and saving it, bringing it to safety. So you were afraid, and yet you behaved courageously. Now, is that pretense? Is that hypocrisy? Is that you know? No, I think it's a virtue. In fact, we can only show courage when we're feeling afraid.
Speaker 2:Not waiting for us to feel courage, but behave that way, respond differently and in the same way, someone can feel shy or lack confidence and walk up to somebody and say, hello, would you like to go out for coffee? Or someone can feel irritated, even angry, and they can stop, take a breath and say a kind word. It's not easy, but it's a form of liberation, practical liberation, to free ourselves from the tyranny of what emotions are changing and passing and what thoughts are happening and just focus on what do I need to do right now. And that is a different way of living. It's it's kind of radical in its way, but that's worked for me, for you know, you get better at any practice over time.
Speaker 1:It's not always easy, but it's an approach to living how, how did you gain that level of control over, um, emotion, over your emotions, or get to that level of acceptance? The reason I asked this question is because, um, there's I mean, for example, there's I'm in the self-improvement a lot. So there's books on relationships and it says, like these are, there's certain things that you can do to make yourself seem more attractive or to have a healthier relationship. But we both know that relationships challenge, especially romantic relationships. They challenge us more than anything. Sports itself, you know, and, um, there's a thin line between trying to behave and do things the right way and then also just being true with your, your, your emotions. You know, let's buy, you know how you feel in that moment, whether the moment, whether the next day. You know you feel better. You wish you would have handled it differently. But how do, how do you go about accepting the way that you're feeling and then handle it in a mature way?
Speaker 2:Well, good, good, yeah, I appreciate that Well, first of all. Good, I appreciate that Well, first of all. Yes, I think it was Sandra Ray who said relationships are the best seminar in town, because I've been married to well. I was married for eight years when I was young. I got married when I was 21. My wife then was 19 and it lasted eight years. So I experienced divorce, difficult relationship and Joy and I, my wife, my love of my life.
Speaker 2:We've been married 48 years, working on 49 this October, and it's not that we don't bump heads, but we love each other and we're closer and more intimate than we ever have been before. They're really rewards of staying together, going through the thick and thin together, if that's possible. And you know, it took me about 20 years of marriage before I realized, daron, that she wasn't criticizing me, she was improving me and I had to take it like that, you know. Oh, she's improving me. Maybe it was her job description, I don't know, but I don't always like the way how she delivers her feedback, enthusiastically improving me, but it's really helpful. And yes, relationships are the toughest because we're vulnerable, we're open and you know that saying you always hurt the one you love. So they are a challenge, but what a means of growth.
Speaker 2:You know, in the Peaceful Warrior movie that was based on my book, you know in 2006,. It came out with Nick Nolte playing the old service station attendant I called Socrates in the book he let's see that thought slipped away. Let's see that thought slipped away. That's fine, it happens when you're free associate like that.
Speaker 1:It just kind of OK. Well, let's talk about Socrates, it might come back to you. Sure, I did purchase your book. I haven't got through it completely, but I was very. I was confused. I wasn't sure if Socrates was a real person or if you made him up. You know why. Well, is Socrates a real person?
Speaker 2:Well, one way I can. One way I can answer that Deron is yeah, socrates is absolutely real. Dan Millman, however, is a fictional character and that sounds paradoxical, but he served as my muse. I was 34 years old when I wrote the book. Nobody's going to listen to 34-year-old former jock. You know, athlete? Yeah, you know how that goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know how it goes yeah it's like from.
Speaker 2:Socrates, you know, then they take that seriously and I wanted to create a character that shows you can find wisdom anywhere, not just out in the desert like the Don Juan books, carlos Castaneda, you know, but you could find it even in a service station from anybody friends, adversaries. There's wisdom around when we're open to it, and we've all had that experience of getting a life lesson like boom, a light bulb again. So that's the best way I can answer that. Yeah, in my latest book, peaceful Heart, warrior Spirit, it's a memoir and it's a true story behind my 20-year intensive quest, working with, with four mentors over that 20 year period as part of my preparation, because people thought, oh, Dan met this old guy in the gas station and then he started teaching.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot more to that story, a lot more preparation. And yet, you know, athletic training in any sport is a form of spiritual training. Any athlete knows that you learn spiritual laws, the law of balance, the law of process, the law of choices, taking responsibility for you know your behavior and actions and seeing the consequences of those actions. And so my athletics weren't just something I used to do, they were a foundational element for understanding spiritual laws, universal laws and metaphor for life, kind of yeah.
Speaker 1:I've met many mentors throughout my life and there's been people that I've met, you know, just briefly in my life, that have impacted my life for the better. Definitely, you know I'm just thinking about it One of the guys that when I, when I play, when I was in college, I was pretty just popular in general. I spoke to everybody, you know, even the homeless people that were always on campus. And, um, over the years, one of the homeless people guys, we became good friends and, um, he knew that I was getting my master's in business and he was trying to convince me. He's like oh, come on, brown, that's a crappy uh degree, why don't you get a master's in it? And then he's like I already know you like computers, I know you build things, why not do that?
Speaker 1:And I never thought about it being an athlete. People have always seen me as an athlete. My coach has never seen me aspire to do anything else. They never thought I was capable of doing anything outside of athletics, so I never thought about it. But that homeless guy brought me a board. He he brought me a brochure to the school of business it program. So because he went out of his way to do that cause I know he had to sneak through some buildings and do it, so I was like, okay, I'll apply to both schools and I ended up getting into the IT school, graduated changed my life and, um, I've met people throughout my life who have helped me in little subtle ways that made major impacts. I want to know. I did get. Just listen to your book, I knew that Socrates was some kind of mentor to you, so I want to know what role has mentors played in your life? And then how? How would you encourage the youth to you know, pursue, go at the mentors or try to learn from others?
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, I think, instinctively, a lot of youths look to their coaches. They look to other role models, maybe peers who you know. It's funny, speaking of peers, let me give an example of that. One of my teammates at Cal.
Speaker 2:When I was a freshman, I was always obsessing over girls who didn't seem to like me. They didn't pay much attention to me. I had to win them over somehow and where I kind of ignored the girls who seemed to be friendly to me. And my friend observed. He said Dan, some girls are going to like you no matter what you do, and some aren't going to like you no matter what you do. Why don't't going to like you no matter what you do? Why waste your time? Why don't you focus on those who seem to like you? Again, one of those light bulb moments. So you can learn from peers. You can learn from positive or negative examples From parents. We often appreciate that more when we get older, both their positive and negative examples, because we're meant to improve with each generation, both their positive and negative examples, because we're meant to improve with each generation.
Speaker 2:But in terms of speaking to youth, I really one of my missions is to make a plea for young people to stop comparing themselves to other people, because you know how many depressed youths there are today because they're using social media. There's nothing essentially wrong with social media, but they're seeing other people's best selves and they're seeing them selected in the best pictures when they look the best and showing how much fun they're having, and they feel that they're, in comparison, less happy than their friends and they get depressed Because it's hard to know that even those kids who were in the in-group were having their own suffering, their own mountains to climb, their own challenges. I'm very well aware of this. They just had better acts than some of us. So you know, when I was teaching beginning gymnastics and trampoline, I noticed that some people would learn somersaults quicker than other people. Maybe they had some background, they helped them to learn it faster, but at the same time I noticed that those who took longer to learn often learned it better than those who learned it quicker.
Speaker 2:So we need to each respect our own way of learning, our own way of living, and comparing ourselves to anybody else, we're either going to feel superior or inferior and it's a profound disrespect for our own path and our own life. There was Sir Walter Raleigh once said, I cannot write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me, and that's what we're here to do. You know, I think many young people don't appreciate their story. It's their treasure, their story. There's not a single story on the planet exactly like yours or mine or theirs, and so it's like a novel being written and we never know what the next chapter is going to be right? You know, the homeless guy suggesting maybe going to IT business with IT emphasis. We never know what catalyst will send us in a new direction.
Speaker 2:And I mentioned in the new memoir the four mentors who most influenced my life and work. And I'll just say the first one I called the professor because he taught a school for enlightenment, a school for awakening, and it was really intense. It started out with 10 hours a day for 40 days and then there was an advanced training and so on and so forth. But that was the professor, it was an approach Do these exercises, you'll get these results. The second, and I worked with him for quite some time, a couple of years.
Speaker 2:The second one for eight years I called the guru and he was a spiritual leader and we would sit with him and he would transmit this divine sort of vibe let's say, for lack of a better, more extensive explanation and very powerful, very powerful.
Speaker 2:For eight years I was in his community with my wife, joy. She was with me through all this and then, but eventually, I moved on after eight years, for various reasons, and then I met the warrior priest. He was kind of a spiritual rascal but he was a gifted healer, former martial artist, martial arts teacher, and I learned a lot from him that I shared with other people. That stimulated me to start writing again. After 10 years I didn't write a book and then I dove back in and finally, the sage. That was my fourth mentor, major mentor who brought me back to earth from the metaphysical realms and all these ideas and that were speculative, that couldn't be proven or disproven into grounded reality. So these were four major mentors in my life and they represent different approaches to call the spiritual quest our own evolution. But I've had many, many other role models and I think it's important for us to learn wisdom wherever we can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, important for us to to learn uh wisdom wherever we can. Yeah, how did you deal with uh comparison growing up? Reason and reason the reason I'm asking this because I really didn't have. I think we're all born with a certain degree of whether you put athleticism at the top degree or there's a lower degree. I think, when it comes to happiness, envy, et cetera, we all lay at different degrees of envy or jealousy, and I feel like I was on the lower end because, being an athlete, I was always surrounded by guys that were stronger than me, faster than me, more talented than me. You know, and I'm I'm talented myself, but I understood, especially at the D1 level, that these guys are elite. Somebody can be 300 pounds and run like the wind. So I had to, I had to kind of put my mind, I had to have the right mindset to even step into that space. I want to know how did you, did you ever deal with envy or jealousy, comparison? If so, how did you deal with that?
Speaker 2:I think I was sort of blessed with a background where there were kids in my neighborhood older than me who could do more than I could, and also younger than me who I could do more than, and I was a leader. So I got to be a student, a follower but also a leader to the younger kids. So I think growing up I was always the youngest in my class so I didn't quite get what some of the other kids understood. But at the same time I had that perspective and you mentioned a lot of these guys in Division One were stronger and so on. But there were also people you were more skilled then and you knew that you may have focused on the people you wanted to strive to be more like, because they were role models, but you also knew there were people who weren't as skilled. Maybe that's the middle child's blessing sometimes, where you have older and younger siblings and you get that perspective. One thing I would recommend there are two things that come up for me right now. First of all, regarding the happiness now I remember what I was going to tell you before about Socrates in the movie. Yeah, yeah, in the movie they made a big deal about happiness. Socrates said it's the most important thing happiness. And that's what I believed when I wrote the book, because I said, whether it's a new car, better relationship, you know, all this stuff seems like at the end of it it promises we're going to be happier at the end of it. So I thought that was the key how to be happy. But you know, I don't think our evolution, our ultimate human evolution, is just to walk around with a gleeful smile on our face. And I say, one of the best things about going to college is you find out it doesn't make you happy. You don't get it with the diploma, maybe for a few minutes, but then there's life and it keeps coming at you. It's fired at us point blank. You know life. So some people who never went to college they think, um, so some people who never went to college, they think if only I'd gone to college, I'd be happy. If only I had a better relationship, I'd be happy. If only I had children, I'd be happy. If only I hadn't had children, I'd be happy. If only I made more money, I'd be happy. If only I got more respect, I'd be happy. If only I had more. If I traveled more, I'd be happy. If only when I retire. I'll be happy Until we realize there's no such thing as future happiness. We either are happy now or we're not.
Speaker 2:And one again way that I emphasize the path of living a little differently from some other teachers is for me, happiness is not something that happens to us, it's something we bring to life. Again, it's an action. We may not always feel happy In fact we won't. We feel all kinds of different things and, depending on our life circumstances, our income level, all kinds of things. So to me, happiness is a practice. It's what we bring to life, what we bring into the world. And what I mean by that is we all know how it feels to be happy. We've all had moments of happiness, and so when we do, when we're happy, aren't we more present? Aren't we more enthusiastic? Aren't we kinder to others? When we're feeling happy, more expansive? So let's behave that way. Let's treat that as a practice that we improve over time. And what we bring to people in our interactions with them is presence, giving our attention, enthusiasm, and that is a way of practicing happiness in the moment. And that's within our control because it's a behavior.
Speaker 1:You know, as you were telling me a story around happiness, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine about two months ago. I was having relationship stuff, relationship issues, and spoke to him to vent and to kind of get some words of wisdom but mostly vent and literally the next day everything was OK, Right, you know the relationship was good. And then I had called my friend again, right. And I said, know, the relationship was good. And then I had called my friend again right, and I said, man, it's a while. And I was like yesterday I was down, now I'm happy. And I said, man, you know, what I realized is that, no matter who it is if it's your wife, your children, family members, friends, et cetera, like you can't place all of your happiness on people outside of you because people are going to consistently disappoint you. I was like you have to find, you have to have that internal peace and get happiness within yourself. You know, I think that's primary. That's why I was basically communicating to him. But I don't know if that's if that's right along the lines of what you're communicating. But I have my own epiphany when it came to just being happy and accepting.
Speaker 1:What I wanted to know is you talk about martial arts. I'm a martial artist. I do shot of karate, competed in boxing as well, still really passionate about it right now. What role has martial arts played in your life? You said that you did Aikido when you created the title for this book, but you also mentioned other martial arts. What role has it played in your life?
Speaker 2:Well, I think boxers are one of the ultimate martial artists. You have to be strong at striking in the octagon in the ultimate fighting championship. There's a really big difference in the martial arts of working with compliant partners and non-compliant partners. In boxing it's a non-compliant partner and where Aikido is a wonderful art form, it's a metaphor for living, for blending with other people and flowing, beautiful metaphor for life. But you're constantly working with more or less compliant partners who are going to flow with you. They're going to throw the attack you want and then you can throw them and they'll roll. It's all very nice and many martial arts are like that, whereas judo, karate, sparring, you're not really working with a compliant partner, so it's more realistic. So I'm very into reality-based martial arts. Again, I started with judo, then other arts.
Speaker 2:One of the most interesting arts I've ever studied is called sistema, like the word system, with an A at the end of it. It's a traditional Russian martial art that was taught by Vladimir Vassilyev, who has a school up in Toronto near Toronto, canada. That's headquarters, and I went to Russia and Moscow and of course the brand, the Russian brand, is considerably tarnished today because of the leadership there, but nonetheless they developed some very interesting arts and what martial arts taught me. First of all, there's a seriousness and a sincerity in the martial arts, because in sports in tennis, in swimming, in golf you can win or lose a point, but in the martial arts potentially, in the lineage, you can lose your life. So martial artists knew physical skill alone was not enough If the emotions are in turmoil or the minds confused or busy or not focused. So there was a holistic approach to training in the martial arts that, as we saw in the Karate Kid, for example, mr Miyagi, you know that idea that you have to approach it with a certain degree of sincerity, I would call it. So their lineage is connected to that.
Speaker 2:That's what makes it different from sports. Even though many martial arts have become sports, you know, in the Olympics and so on, it didn't start as a sport. It started as a way to prepare people, to get them limber and focused for meditation. A lot of the Kung Fu practices were just about physical exercise to stay healthy and prepare to meditate properly. But you can learn many of the same. By the way, there are certain sports that are warrior sports, simply because you can get hurt really badly if you're not paying attention. Gymnastics is one, and there are many extreme sports. You know skydiving and this and that, by the way, you may not know this, but I've discovered that you can actually skydive without a parachute. You just can't do it a second time.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:A little levity. But there are certain warrior sports where you have to pay attention or die, and gymnastics is one of those. You can't be distracted when you're flying off the horizontal bar and certain martial arts again have that element to it. Whereas some sports are great for physical, you know, for physical development, eye, hand coordination, but all the consequences are you can lose a match or a sport.
Speaker 1:Do you? Do you still have that athletic fire Like I've playing football? You get used to play with injuries. I recently got over plantar fasciitis. I had it for about six years. I had it because when I initially got hurt I should have just rested, but because I developed a poor mindset in sports playing through injuries, I just made it worse. Since I've gotten better my strength. I'm still strong and fast than most people, but not that I'm healthy. Healthy. I noticed that my speed, my strength has not only went up, but like my ego is returning, like the athletic aggression, like I can't even feel, my spirit is like on fire. I'm wondering. I don't even know if that's a good thing or not, but I'm wondering for you as somebody that has that background. You were in a sport like gymnastics where you confronted death routinely. You got into martial arts. You have that fire. You've written books. You have that go-go energy. Do you still have that at this age?
Speaker 2:um, probably I've applied that spirit say to my writing to persist, you know, as long as your feet keep moving, that kind of idea. So I like the idea of spirit rather than ego. You know the ego gets a bad rap in spiritual circles, I see. You know people go. You know it used to be. When someone misbehaved it was like, oh, the devil made me do it, and now my ego made me do it. You know we have somebody to blame, as if it's some part of us and negative voice on our, in our insides.
Speaker 2:And Freud just used the term ego. He coined the term and it was just meaning self identity, uh, the conscious self around the head, our sense of self. And we need that. Um, I use my ego, my personality level, to teach, to learn and to serve. So I'm not trying to get rid of it, but there's a big difference of trying to get rid of the ego and to transcend it through insight and humor. So, anyway, I thought I'd mention that, because you used the term ego, I'd prefer to say you got that spirit back. When you're not hurting, when you're not injured, you get a sense of pride, and there's nothing wrong with feeling, you know, patting yourself on the back now and then because we beat ourselves up enough. Why don't we pat ourselves in the back some right?
Speaker 2:yeah you know when, when we do well, we've trained hard, so I still go to the gym a couple times a week do some weights and swim some laps. Um, and I'm 78 now you, so I'm getting on in age. Years ago they moved my books from the new age to the old age section of the stores.
Speaker 1:That's that lets you know. Well, I just turned 36 this past weekend and it just dawned on me that I'm getting older. I can still move, but I'm getting up there and I was like man, I'm not going to be able to do this at this level forever. And it just dawned on me that I need to embrace my body while I still have it lift run as hard as I can. I've been doing it every day since my birthday and it's kind of like um, even when I'm tired. Usually, you know, in sports sometimes you get tired and you think like um, I can't wait for this to be over Now. I think it's like, oh, just just keep pushing a little bit more, a little bit more, Cause I know I won't, I won't be able to do it. You know, it just comes one day. Well, enjoy.
Speaker 2:Well, enjoy that vital energy while you can. I remember it, I competed in my last master's gymnastics meet when I was 49 and I still did a double twisting, somersault and you know a pretty advanced routine. But, um, I started noticing age. I'd never really noticed, I felt ageless until I was about 55 and at 55 I started kind of, hmm, some of the hormones change a little bit and this, and that Older people need more exercise than younger people. But a different kind of exercise. Again, no best exercise, only the best for each of us at a given point in our life. So we adapt and we change, we get wiser, it's not so there's no reason to drive ourselves quite as hard now. I don't know if you've ever heard of jack lelaine, you know that I remember.
Speaker 1:I remember him when I was a kid. I used to see him on like the, the late infomotions when I was a kid well, he was an awesome guy.
Speaker 2:I mean, when he was 70 years old he swam one mile in the san Francisco Bay pulling 70 boats, 71 for every year of his life. But he was pulling the boats with a rope in his teeth because his arms and legs were shackled and he was fighting wind and currents for one mile to show what was possible. But these are extreme examples. Now I worked out with Jack once at Santa Monica Beach. We were doing handstand pushups in the parallel bars and he used to say I hate to exercise but I love the results, because people assume you love to exercise. And yeah, there is that endorphin high, the dopamine and all that um, the runner's high and and you know, we get a pump on. But really exercise is hard. That's why it's called exercise. We have to use, uh, muhammad ali said uh, there's skill in this will, but the most important is the will. And so some days you don't feel like it. You just put one foot in front of the other and you move through it and you're glad you did so.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to. I was going to ask you a question about Jack Lane, or I was going to wonder if I should transition back to the spiritual aspect. I think I'm going to go into that. I really want to know about Jack Lane. I mean, I well, how was it like working out with Jack Lane? I remember he's like the first major fitness guy we had in our country. Like was he? How strong was he? What was he like?
Speaker 2:well, he was really built, you know. I mean he was huge biceps and pecs. I mean he was, you know, like a sculpted guy and he used to talk about how, um, he was a heavyset, pimply-faced, unhealthy kid. And then he came across a mentor named Paul Bragg. And Paul Bragg wasn't really always science-based, but he was inspiring and he inspired Jack and he started doing training and changing his diet and he got so inspired he really changed his whole lifestyle and that's when he started training regularly over time. Now Jack died when he was 96 years old. He exercised. The day he died he had a workout. His wife, elaine, is still alive. She's 97 or 98 now. I read a newspaper article about her recently and she's still exercising, 97 or 98 years old.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm just thinking about his story. You said he had 70 boats, 70 boats, 70 boats at the age of 70, and then he lived another 26 years after that. Life is long and it's short at the same time. Yes, looking back.
Speaker 2:it's short yeah.
Speaker 1:I was going to say how, because we're almost close to the end. I want to know for the kids. Well, for the people, because we're all on our journey. But there's some people. I've always had purpose. I've always had drive, ambition, and it's helped me meet great people along my journey and helped me evolve into a better version of myself. There's a lot of people who feel lost in life. How would you, what advice would you have for people who are lost in our trying to find purpose in their life?
Speaker 2:Well, I've written three books on that topic and I'm, you know, there's in the movie, dan, the character who plays me. He and Socrates hike up this big hill and Dan said, socrates, I just realized it's not the destination that makes us happy, it's the journey, and there's certain wisdom there. You know, most of our lives are spent on the journey. I would define success as making progress, even if it's slow. Making progress toward a meaningful goal. Because I believe, you know, when I watch my granddaughter crawling across the floor, she's not doing it for a workout, she's doing it because she wants her brother's toy, her big brother's toy, and so there's something she wants.
Speaker 2:I believe we're hardwired goal seekers. From our point A, we need a point B, we need a goal, a purpose, and many people say, oh, I don't have a purpose, but we do. We may not know our cosmic ultimate purpose for being here on Earth, but we always know our purpose in this moment. You know, I know my purpose in this moment, right now sharing with you. You know your purpose right. So we always know our purpose in the moment, and by moving toward that, we find then another purpose, and so it's not a matter of having absolute certainty of what we're here to do, what our job's going to be, because we may have many jobs over time, but it's focusing on what's in front of us, what is our purpose right now? Because the quality of our moments now will determine the quality of our life and it's important for young people to form a foundation for their life, whether it's education and sports.
Speaker 2:By the way, I've never met a dumb athlete, never I've met athletes who weren't academically motivated. But athletes, by definition, are training physically and they're developing their nervous system. And if they have a smart nervous system, it's connected to the brain, it's part of our nervous system. So athletes may not be academically motivated all the time, they may not find meaning in abstract ideas, but I've never met a dumb athlete.
Speaker 2:Athletic training, you know healthy mind and a healthy body, so stay active. In fact, people sometimes come to me for consultations and they go. You know I've got an emotional problem, I have a relationship problem, I have a spiritual problem. But I always ask three questions Are you getting regular, moderate exercise? Stay staying active. Two, are you eating a nutritious diet for yourself, a balanced diet for you? And three, are you getting enough rest? Because if we do those three things regular, moderate exercise, a balanced diet for us, in other words, a little more of what's good for us, a little less of what's not, and getting enough rest that helps us face whatever comes to us in everyday life. Again, it's that spiritual weight training Sometimes climbing out of a dark hole can give us strength to climb the mountain.
Speaker 1:It's funny. You said that you never met a dumb athlete. It's funny when I look back, when I look back at myself and just playing ball and being in the locker room with certain guys on my team. You really don't have any outside of the football team. You really don't think much of your teammates. I have my goals, my ambitions. I always had that in my mind. I knew what I was going to go for.
Speaker 1:But when I look back and I reconnect with even with some of my teammates, I'll see them occasionally around town or whatnot, and, um, all of them are doing fairly well. Some of them have businesses, but they're pretty mature, like you can feel. You can feel the present. Their presence is just different from um, I don't want to say regular, that's like a word I can really think of, only word I can really think of. Or non-athletes maybe. Okay, yes, non-athletes, because I've been around athletes since I was four and then you know, I thought that's how people were. But then when you get out into the real world and you've been in the real world for about a decade you realize that most people don't have the athletic mindset or that type of demeanor. And, um, yeah, I just noticed a lot of my teammates. They're doing fine. They're doing fine. They're doing things I just didn't think that they were going to be doing. Even the ones who were dumb went on to get masters and something right, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:You know and look, because they learned. They learned from their athletic training and they carried that over into everyday life, or the lessons of sport. And again, this is true for artists, painters, it's true for musicians. They can also learn valuable lessons pursuing their art. It's different kind of lessons, different kind of spirit, but it's definitely there. So it's not only athletes. Not everybody has to become an athlete there. So it's not only athletes, not everybody has to become an athlete.
Speaker 2:But if pursuing something you can, just the way we do anything is how we do everything. And by getting good at one thing, finding our strength, finding our way, our own way, you know we're not here to become somebody else that's already taken. We're here to become, as you said, the best version of ourselves and to trust the process. That's what I would advise people that you know you live in Palo Alto.
Speaker 2:If you ever went up to Marin, you drill through a rainbow tunnel and then you go into Sausalito and then down the hill, then into Mill Valley, then up a hill, then down a hill into Larkspur, corte, madera, then up a hill down into San Rafael. You can't see what's beyond until you get to the top of the hill, and that's when it becomes clear. And it's been said that we're like cars driving at night. You've heard this that we can't see beyond our headlight beam, but we can make the whole journey that way that we can't see beyond our headlight beam, but we can make the whole journey that way. And so we need to trust each step along the way that the path will appear beneath our feet and just keep building and pursuing and living constructively and positively as much as we can.
Speaker 1:I have one last question for you. What advice do you have for someone who is feeling lost or disconnected from themselves in life?
Speaker 2:Well, I'd have to understand better what that individual. You know what it means to them to be disconnected from themselves or their path or their goals. That's why I repeat that we cannot lose our way, that the path will appear even if we feel lost. There was a man I spoke with once who said I have no purpose. Now. He paid me some money in cash for a consultation and he said I said well, surely you have some purpose because you're here. You want to get something done. I can help you with that. He said no, I have no purpose. And I went well, if you have no purpose, it was nice meeting you, but have a great day.
Speaker 2:And I reached out to shake his hand and he went wait a minute. I paid you good money, dan, I have the next 60 minutes of your time. And I went oh, I think you've just discovered a purpose. And I said when you go back to your car to drive home, you're going to find another purpose to get where you're going without hitting any objects or people. And when you get home, another purpose will appear. So when we think we're lost, it's just a period of time. In fact, when I was 60 years old, I decided to learn to ride a unicycle. Now that's really humbling. Have you ever tried, daron?
Speaker 1:No, I'm trying's really humbling. Have you ever tried Daron riding a unicycle?
Speaker 2:It's really humbling and you get up on it and whoop goes out from under. You Get up on it again whoop, even if you're good at bike riding. Is that the one-wheel bike?
Speaker 2:The one-wheel bike. Yeah, it's very, very humbling, and a friend of mine has loaned me his unicycle and he said practice in a tennis court you can get a death grip on the chain link fence to try to pedal around that thing while you're holding on to the fence and I practiced for a week Didn't improve much. I practiced for two weeks Every day, I came back every morning, and after three weeks, though, I had a breakthrough and I was riding figure eights around the court. Now I relearned a lesson that I'd forgotten from my earlier athletic training, and I learned two things from that experience.
Speaker 2:One is everything is difficult until it becomes easy, and the second thing I learned was there are crisis days where you're worse than you were four days before, where you're worse than you were four days before. You seem to be getting worse. Your mind is confused, your body's confused, but I also noticed that the next day I often had a breakthrough, and you brought this up in relationships earlier, and so I learned that these crisis points, these so-called bad days, are actually when the learning is happening. It's going from our front brain to our back brain, to our instincts, and that's why we feel so confused and messed up, but if we persist through it in a relationship, for example, a crisis if we persist through it and stay connected, we can break through to deeper levels of intimacy, and it happens to any endeavor. That's why I mentioned that story about learning to ride the unicycle True story, and those are the lessons I learned, and it's good for any of us to just persist a little longer.
Speaker 1:It's funny you mentioned that. You made the relationship reference. I remember, as I was going through it and I was feeling it, I knew I was going against some of the self-improvement stuff that I had read and I was just like you know what. This is how I feel in the moment. This is true to who I am. I'm just going to say it anyways. I wasn't disrespectful, but I said how I felt and this morning I was like, hey, you know, I was really upset and didn't apologize because I didn't say anything bad. But I know that after I had acknowledged how I felt, told the person like, hey, I was just angry, you know, but let's, you know, meet up and get some food or something. I was completely at peace. I was at peace because I felt like, because I accepted who I was and I was true with them. I accepted who I was and I was true with um. I was just being true to myself. I wasn't trying to pretend to be anybody else, you know be something. I wasn't trying to act phony. Basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I get angry. My wife and I bump heads now and then uh, that's being human, uh, but it's a good thing to be able to say two things more. Thank you, and I'm sorry, because we have justification for justification for saying both things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right, Dan, do you have anything? I usually ask my guests this what is your philosophy for life? What would you yeah, what is your philosophy for life?
Speaker 2:My philosophy and my practice is daily life. It's. I don't have one catch word or catch phrase or principle or ethos, it's really what I've expressed. You know, Stanislaw Leck once wrote. He wrote in a book. He said I wanted to tell the world just one word. I'm able to do that. I became a writer, so I don't have one phrase that wouldn't sound like a platitude in terms of my philosophy for life and appreciate its temporary nature and make the best use of each day without laying any perfection standards on ourselves, Because we're going to make mistakes. That's how we learn. You know, in sports you fail until you learn, you fail and fail and fail again until you achieve. You fail your way to success, and maybe that's a kind of philosophy.
Speaker 1:Dan, thank you for coming on to the show. I felt like this was going to be a good one because I felt like I could relate to you on different levels, and I love the title of your book because I've been on my own peaceful journey and sometimes, honestly, going on the peaceful side, you can lose yourself either way. If you go too deep into the darkness which is where I was comfortable with for most of my life you can lose yourself, and if you go too close to the light, you can lose yourself. So I feel like I'm at the stage in my life where I'm creating some kind of balance between the two.
Speaker 2:That's a great great point to end on, and one phrase I remember is sometimes we have to deal with the darkness before we can see the light, and we're all of us in this, together, stumbling toward the light.
Speaker 1:Dan, thank you, and hopefully we can do this again sometime.
Speaker 2:That'd be great, thank you, and hopefully we can do this again sometime. That'd be great, though, rony.
