193 Turn Your Life into a Champion's Journey with Dan Millman

"If we have no destination in mind, there is no journey." - Dan Millman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/193 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 193 with international bestselling author Dan Millman.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  I am very excited about today's guest. He is a hero of mine, someone I've looked up to for years. His books have inspired me, his movie inspired me that his book was based off of. And his name is Dan Millman. He's a former world champion gymnast, Stanford University coach, Oberlin College professor, and martial arts instructor. He is the author of 16 books and published in 29 languages, including his classic Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which was adapted into a film in 2006. Now Dan's keynotes and seminars has inspired people from all walks of life, including leaders in the field of health, psychology, education, business, politics, sports, and the arts.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  And for me, this was a really inspiring conversation to be able to sit down with Dan and really dive into a lot of the different things, the journey that we all go along. Whether you're an athlete, an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter where you are, we all go through our own journey. And I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one, the only Dan Millman.

• 1:39Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. I'm very excited and delighted about today's guest. His name is Dan Millman. Thanks so much, Dan, for coming on.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Glad to be here and talking with you, Lewis.

• 1:50Lewis Howes?

  I am, you know, we have a lot of mutual interest, I would say, or connections. And I want to, I want to go over a few of them really quickly. One is that you are a former Olympic gold medalist. Is that correct?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  No, actually I was a world champion on the trampoline, but it was in London. And trampoline wasn't yet an Olympic event. So I didn't actually win any, anything. I didn't actually go to the Olympics, but I was a gymnast and a gymnast all around. Yeah.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  You're an all-American gymnast, right?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. In the vault.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Um, for most every event, yeah.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  Most every event, okay, cool. I think where I saw was gold medalists in gymnastics and some other world games or something, but it wasn't the Olympics, correct?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Well, the important thing is that sports and training is part of my past and it's helped to keep my work grounded and realistic rather than drift off into abstract concepts.

• 2:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. You also, from your Wikipedia page I'm reading, you joined the faculty at Oberlin College in Ohio, is that right?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:57Lewis Howes?

  And I'm from Ohio, I'm from Delaware, Ohio, I don't know if you've heard of that city.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:02Lewis Howes?

  And it's close to Columbus, so I think Oberlin, I believe, is only an hour or two away from Columbus, if I remember.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Right, I drove to Ohio State once down in Columbus and I think it was about an hour and a half or so, yeah.

• 3:14Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, okay, cool. So you're a former world-class athlete. Currently, I play on the USA Men's National Team for a sport called Team Handball, so I've played in the Pan American Championships a number of times and we did not qualify for the Pan Am Games coming up next month, which my goal is to go to the Olympics, but we haven't, we haven't qualified yet since 96, since it was in Atlanta, so I'm still on the path to try to get there. But we're both athletes turned authors. You've written a number of books, but one is that really impacted my life because I read your book and watched the movie around the time where I felt like I was going through the exact same experience that you did, or that you talked about in the book, Way of

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  the Peaceful Warrior. And as a cocky, egotistical, 21, 22-year-old, know-it-all jock, I got injured and had my own story of coming back and making, you know, playing professional football after a devastating injury and then playing with the USA National Team. So your book, your story, really inspired me to let go of my ego, find my own Socrates, and find meaning in my, in my passion. So I appreciate inspiring me and millions of people around the world with your, with your work.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. And you know, your story underscores that truth that sometimes difficulty and adversity, some dislocation in our life, in your case, an injury when you were an athlete like mine, it can shake us upward. I'm pointing up right now and lend perspective, which is the better part of wisdom. We become a bit more compassionate, a bit more realistic about ourselves. And you know, the whole idea about letting go of our ego, I don't even know what that means. The ego has, that word has gotten a bad rap in spiritual circles and psychological circles. But Freud, you know, coined the word from the Greek. It just means I. It's a practical way of organizing experience around this

• 5:20Speaker 01

  person we name ourselves. It wasn't meant to be a pejorative or a negative term, but so many people I meet along the path say, I'm going to get rid of my ego. But who wants to get rid of their identity? You know, it's just, we're here to transcend it, not get rid of it and see ourselves in a more realistic and maybe compassionate way. And that's what I teach. It's not about getting rid of the ego. I just thought I'd offer that.

• 5:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, no, I appreciate that correction and adjustment there. I mean, I guess, I would think when I think of the ego in that terms, it's more the things in the ego that doesn't serve you and others. So that part of the ego. So I'm curious, you've authored a number of books, I believe 16 or 17. Am I off? Have you done more now?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  At some point, I stopped counting, but I think it's around 16, yeah.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay. I'm curious, why is The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, is that the most popular book? And if so, why do you think it's the most popular one of all your books?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Well, it is my signature book. It's the one I'm best known for. In terms of sales, there's another book called The Life You Were Born to Live, which has captured the imagination of many people. It's sort of a fascinating system for clarifying one's life path. And it's been quite useful to many people also. But every book, you know, I didn't write strategically, Lewis. It wasn't like I planned a sequel. In fact, I didn't write another book after Way of the Peaceful Warrior for ten years.

• 6:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  But no, not for ten. I just felt I'd said what I had to say. The book, the book came out, it died, and then it came back. Another publisher put it out, and then word of mouth started. And that's truly the only thing that can keep a book alive for over thirty years now. It's still doing very well because people just pass it along among families and friends. There was something in that book, and I wish I could have, you know, I wish I had a pill, be smart enough to know what that factor is. But it just happened to touch a chord in many people, as you know.

• 7:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Yeah, there's only, there's only a few books that I really, it's, it's, it's challenging me for me to complete books. And there's only a few books that I could really finish and finish with ease. Yours was one of them. Another one that I recommend a lot of people is The Alchemist, which is a very similar feeling to me that I get when I read both of your books. It's kind of a similar find your journey in your path story. But that one's done extremely well over the time also.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I enjoyed Cuello's book, The Alchemist, as well. There's another one, if you haven't read it, I'd, I'd recommend, which is Siddhartha by Herman Hess. That's a classic. S I D D H A R T H A Siddhartha. And it's a little book, and it's one I used to read it once a year. It's a beautiful book.

• 8:13Lewis Howes?

  Now, I'm curious, when the movie came out, I believe that was, I don't know, five or seven years ago, it might be longer or shorter. But what happened to the book and to your brand and your message when that movie came out? Did it impact you in any way or not really?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Well, as an author, of course, I'm grateful when someone's willing to spend millions of dollars to adapt my book into a film. That was, that was really quite a nice thing. It took about eighteen years after someone bought the rights to the option and bought the rights, the film rights to actually make it into a movie. And it's a winding path. I can assure you, a long story I won't tell now. And, and many, often the case is if there's a major Your movie release for a book, the book sales go up. People know about the book and they put it on television and all that. Um, and book sales did take a bump and more people uh attended my seminars because they'd seen the film.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  So that was, that was a nice and refreshing and, and some people who might not read the book were able to get at least a taste of some of the spirit and uh content from the book. So.

• 9:22Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like they did a justice on the movie?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Um, you know, there's the, the book is the book. The movie is the movie. I, I didn't expect them to put every word, every idea up on, up on the screen. Um, the movie is very accessible. It's like a two hour meal for consciousness in, you know, in, in a finite time. It's easy to, to see, whereas the book takes a little longer for some people, but most of the time the book is better than the film in terms of depth and, and impact. Um, I, so both, both I think serve their own uses.

• 9:56Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Now, when you're, you know, a world-class athlete, um, in, in your early twenties and beyond, did you ever visualize yourself impacting the world in a way where you were writing books and doing seminars and selling millions of copies and having movies about your work? Did you ever think that was a possibility or were you only focused on being an athlete at the time?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Well, even when I was an athlete, I, I never, ever believed I was going to be a world champion. Uh, uh, but I never really believed I wouldn't either. I just trained. I loved doing the trampoline, which led to gymnastics and other things. Um, I just kept an open mind. You know, some people say we have to have high expectations and some people say the secret of happiness is low expectations. Um, I believe maybe it's best to have no expectations, just to recognize the truth that we can't control the outcomes in our lives, but we can control our efforts. And by making a good effort, we increase the odds of getting the outcomes we might desire. So I just made a good effort.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  And the stars seemed to align. I could tell the story about, you know, just when I was, I was a freshman. In college, they they flew me because of politics and different gymnastics associations. They decided I'd represent the the fledgling USA gymnastics back then, and they flew me. They didn't want to spend any extra money, so they flew me in the night before the competition. I got there at about midnight, and my luggage was lost. So about 2:00 in the morning, I was able to get to my hotel. The competition started in London at 8:00 a.m.

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  So I got very little sleep. I was totally jet lagged out. The other athletes had their coaches there with them. I was alone, you know, 18 years old. So and I saw I opened the door to Albert Hall where the competition was held. And I saw one of the competitors doing a move I'd never done, bouncing higher than I'd ever jumped. So I wasn't filled full of confidence going into the competition. But somehow, when the smoke cleared, I ended up winning the championships. I just had a good moment. Nobody doesn't matter who wins the warm up, right?

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And were you jumping higher than he was?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  No, but he just made a mistake.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And I happened to come through under the pressure. I was always pretty good at that. Kind of hardwired to do that. And it all the past led led me to that point. And then after that, you know, that was nice, but I moved on back to all around gymnastics with aims of the Olympics. But then, as you know, from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the movie, I shattered right leg in a motorcycle crash, put a damper on that for a while, maybe forever. I didn't know, but I just kept training and made a pretty strong comeback. So, you know, that's my story. But each of us, I emphasize, every person I know, everyone listening to this podcast has a story. It's their treasure, because there's not a single story on the planet exactly like their story.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  And we're each, we don't just have a story. We're a story in the making. We never know what the next chapter is going to be.

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and a friend of mine, Gary Vaynerchuk, said that we are one piece of content away from, you know, our entire life changing forever. You know, you were one book away when you wrote The Way of the Peaceful Warrior that probably changed your life in a big way, in terms of platform, visibility and impact. So it's interesting. We never know what could happen after one thing we do.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Well, speaking of impact, that motorcycle crash changed my life in a very positive way, too. Only I didn't fully appreciate it at the time.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, same with my injury. When I got injured playing in professional football, I was, you know, extremely depressed and down for, for months. I was in a cast for six months and then another year of just trying to rehab my, my arm. And I remember thinking my life is over. I had, that was my whole identity. I didn't have a backup plan. Um, but without that, I wouldn't be impacting people the way I am with my message and my podcast and books and things like that. So I'm extremely grateful and blessed for that experience.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  And a lesson. Now you say, um, it might be good to have no expectations. And I'm curious, when you were training so hard and you were focusing on just giving your best effort and not focusing on the outcome, did you have big goals or dreams or?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Well, sure, sure I did. You know, um, in the Peaceful Warrior movie, the character, my character, Dan, has kind of a revelation when he and Socrates walk, hike up to the top of that hill or mountain. And Dan realizes, you know, he said, it's the journey that brings us happiness, not the destination. And that's a nice thing to contemplate, but the fact is, if we have no destination in mind, there is no journey. We just wander around. So to our point A, we have to have some point B. So, you know, it's been said that the purpose of life is a life of purpose, of finding a goal we'd like to move toward, whatever that may be. In the moment, uh, you know, one of my books is called The Four Purposes of Life. So I definitely,

• 15:08Speaker 01

  and another book is called Living on Purpose. So I have dealt with among, you know, people know me as reminders about living in the present moment and why that's useful and helpful, but also living a purposeful life. So I'm certainly a believer in having some goal to move toward. Yes.

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. What, um, what's the goal for you right now to move towards?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Well, professionally and something, you know, part of what I'm here to do, it's very aligned with my purpose is I'm working on, uh, the third and final book in the Peaceful Warrior saga. Each of those books stand alone. People can read one and not the others, but, uh, they are part of a trilogy. It's called The Hidden School. So that's a book I'm working on. It's right up on my computer screen in front of me right now. And I'm working hard on, on that book. They, they say, uh,

• 16:01Speaker 01

  A difficult writing make for an easy read.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So I'm putting, putting the effort out.

• 16:07Lewis Howes?

  I just finished the manuscript on my book and it's been a

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  It's been a seven-year visualization journey and a year-long, you know, in-depth writing process. So hopefully that makes it an easy read.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Well, that's fantastic. You know, a book I wrote with my daughter called The Creative Compass, Writing Your Way From Inspiration to Publication, goes into that five-stage creative process. Every creative event, whether it's writing music, a painting, a sculpture, or particularly a book, it goes through those phases you'll recognize. First, the dream phase where you're coming up with ideas and what we call sticky ideas that stay with you. Then from that goes into the draft stage where you bring it into reality. You start to do the work of typing, speaking, whatever it is, to bring it from the ideal realm, the dream realm, into the world.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Then comes the important development phase where you really have to rewrite, shift, take a fresh look, get feedback, and that goes into the refinement phase, the refine stage. And the last one is the sharing stage, which you're now approaching.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  But what you do and what happens in the sharing stage really depends on what happened in the earlier stages and the quality that you put into it, as you can appreciate.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Well, I'm excited for the destination, but the journey has been a pleasure as well. So

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Great, great.

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  It'll all be fun. Curious about the book, Peaceful Warrior. And what were the biggest lessons that opened up for you when writing the book? And what's the biggest lesson that's opened up for you since in the decades it's been out?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  The best way I can answer that is to say that I was, I was a pretty self-absorbed young athlete, like many young people and athletes, you know, individual sport, being centered, the downside of being centered tends to be self-centered, so, and I was very much into self-improvement, and I learned juggling, and I was playing guitar, and I was doing gymnastics, and I was taking memory courses and speed reading, you get the drill, and one day I realized that no matter how much I improved myself, only one person benefited, but if somehow I could influence other people, and I know you felt this calling too, because look what you do, if I could influence other

• 18:36Speaker 01

  people, that made my life more meaningful, and to reach out to those larger aspects, facets of myself, the larger world, so I started just kind of putting ideas together. There was something about improving what I'd written, making it shine and sparkle and polishing it, I liked doing, and it took about seven years to congeal ideas based on experiences I'd had and some insights, and it took many, many rewrites, over about a seven-year period, starts and stops, I was also influenced by, you know that old Kung-Fu TV series, David Carradine played this character, Kui Chang Kane, you might be young for that, but it was a very big TV series, Bruce Lee wanted to play the role, but Carradine did a good

• 19:21Speaker 01

  job, and it was about this Shaolin monk, who was a peaceful monk, nonviolent vegetarian, but, you know, he knew how to fight if necessary, and that archetype, not just the warrior, but the peaceful warrior impacted me, so I ended up putting this book together and calling it Way of the Peaceful Warrior, describing adventures with this old gas station attendant, I named Socrates, because he wouldn't tell me his real name, and that's how it took shape, and so it wasn't some revelation that happened all at once, it was just this book, and the book actually was subtitled, when it first came out, A Basically True Story. Well, the bookstores were not amused, they didn't know where to put

• 20:05Speaker 01

  So they didn't even want it. It got into very few stores. The book died. And then, yeah, no, the book just went out of print very quickly. They gave me the rights back and I, you know, my agent said, write another book because you're, you know, it's a failed hardback.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  But then this old fellow who was a retired publisher read a, he found a copy somewhere and, and said, I love this book. I'm going to put it out again. And he put it out as a paperback and, and then just the word of mouth happened and it started building. And it's, you know, it's sold many millions of copies over the last 30 years and, it's out in about 20, I don't know, 27, 28, 29 languages. So it was one of those things. I wish I could give people a trail of breadcrumbs or stardust to follow, to, to, but nobody can guarantee success. You just put it out there and if your book, if the particular captures the universal lessons and many people can relate to it, then you may make a contribution to many people.

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and timing is everything it sounds like too.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:08Lewis Howes?

  Now who, uh, did you ever find out Socrates' name? Do you still keep in touch?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Well, I wrote a book, probably my best writing, a novel I called The Journeys of Socrates. And it's about his life, growing up as a little boy in a military school in Russia. And what happens, how he became a man, why he became a warrior and how he, a warrior finally found peace. So that's The Journeys of Socrates. And my daughter, the same one who wrote the writing book with me, is, has adapted it to a screenplay and we'll see again, timing and luck and fortune,

• 21:43Speaker 01

  whether it ends up a movie down the line. Yeah.

• 21:47Lewis Howes?

  And so what's his name? Do you have his name or?

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Well, in the book, his name is Sergei Ivanov. He came from a Russian background.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  But there's more to the story I'll tell one day in my final book.

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  How much of it was fiction and how much of it was made up?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a fair question because people are used to something being either a novel, where it's fictional, or a memoir, which is not supposed to have any fiction, but just memory. And from the start, I let people know that the book is autobiographical, a lot of it really happened about my life, but there are fictional elements woven into the story. And for those, I don't want to do any spoilers for those who haven't read the book, if they're curious about it. But there are elements and at my website, you know, peacefulwarrior.com, I have a question and answer page there where I go into more about how much is fact, how much is fiction. But I will say this, Pablo Picasso once said,

• 22:53Speaker 01

  "Art is a lie that helps us to see the truth."

• 22:57Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that. It's a great quote.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:00Lewis Howes?

  So I'm curious about your visualization process as an athlete and how you've translated it into, you know, your career with, with writing and with the workshops you do and all the work you do. Is there a process that you follow when, before you're about to write, before you start your, your big competition, you said that you always seem to perform well under the pressure, under the bright lights. What was your mindset process like, your visualization process, your, your strategy to prepare yourself for those big moments? And today, still?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Sure. And for any athletes or musicians or people who are going to do public speaking and they're a little nervous about it, it does help. Visualization, it can be a powerful tool, simply because our subconscious mind doesn't really differentiate very much between what we see with our physical eyes and what we can see in our mind's eye. So it becomes real when we can vividly picture certain things. It's not a magical solution that will make you successful and rich and all that. But it is a useful tool and I used it in a practical sense when I was trying a new movement in gymnastics and there's a certain level of risk.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Because I didn't really like being held in belts, you know, these overhead spotting belts that holds you up in the air. I got tangled up and I found them too inhibiting and they didn't have the foam pits and all that you could land in that they do today. So it was just careful progressions and throw and go and hope it works out. So I would always visualize in the sense of feeling myself going through the movements before, many times before I actually tried it. And so I felt like I'd already almost done it successfully a number of times, even though it was the first time I was physically doing it. So that was helpful to me. And it's based on a study that was done some years ago. People, they had three groups of people.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  They were all like college students and some, they were all beginners in shooting baskets. They hadn't really done basketball much. And they had one, one third of the people actually practiced a set number of free throws in basketball each day for a period of time. And they improved because they pissed. And the second group just visualized themselves. They imagined themselves standing there bouncing the ball a couple of times and then shooting. And they saw the ball go into the basket and so on. A third group just watched television or did some unrelated task. And the, and the study found that the people who visualized shooting the baskets vividly improved almost as much as the ones, they did improve.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And they improved almost as much as the ones who were physically shooting the ball. So it's not equal, but it's extremely helpful to visualize or mentally rehearse for certain events. Doesn't mean they're going to turn out exactly the way you think, but it just puts you in a mindset where you're kind of more used to it. I don't do those sorts of things today as much. I kind of live in the moment. I show up and see what's in front of me and just present, because I, I speak all over the world.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  You're, you're a seasoned pro now.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  You've got it down.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Well, you know, competence breeds confidence.

• 26:13Lewis Howes?

  There you go. I like it. For me, I remember, you know, in college, I was also a decathlete and was an All-American. And I remember being very challenged by the pole vault. And I don't know if you ever did track and field, but the pole vault.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I tried pole vault, yes.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my God. As a gymnast, pole vault is probably the best event for you. And I remember it was just so challenging. It took me six months to really learn how to bend the pole and be comfortable going upside down and just, you know, putting it all together. There's so many moving parts to the pole vault. And I remember I watched videotape of highlights of the best pole vaulters in the world with inspiring music behind it. Every night before I went to bed, I would watch this for about 30 to 60 minutes and just on replay over and over. And I started to see that, you know, by putting in the actual work and training every morning at it and doing the visualization every night, that I felt like it accelerated

• 27:07Lewis Howes?

  my, my learning curve and prepared me for those big moments as well. So I found it very, very helpful. I'm not at the level where you are, where I can just show up without visualizing and preparing that well, but hopefully one day I'll be able to get there. I'm curious about, do you still do martial arts?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  I do. In fact, two weeks ago, I went up to, flew up to Toronto, Canada, in that Toronto area.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  The most recent art, and I started when I was nine years old. I did martial arts before I did gymnastics. And I, you know, I started with judo, then different styles of karate, including Okinawan style. And then I got pretty decent, pretty quick moving and so on. But then I had a 10-year latency period, no more martial arts while I was training in gymnastics. And after I started coaching gymnastics at Stanford University, I decided to take up aikido. So I did aikido. It's very nonviolent, flowing art. And then later I learned the long tai chi form, more Chinese art, and later a little bit of a

• 28:14Speaker 01

  screma or nishkali movement, knife fighting, stick fighting, but just, just a touch. And more recently, sistema, which is the Russian martial art, quite a clever art based on combat in all terrains.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And I was up in Toronto doing some system of breathing work and precision movement work. I found quite interesting. So yes, I'm still involved with the martial arts.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  How, what's the biggest thing that someone could take away and who hasn't done martial arts that you've learned that could vastly improve the quality of their life? Would it be breathing techniques? Would it be, you know, something else? What's something someone could take away?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, I would, I would make a clear distinction between martial arts as arts, movement arts in different forms and styles and cultures and self-defense. Practical self-defense doesn't look like the fancy martial arts you see in the movies or even in the schools. And the best self-defense course I've ever come across, and I've been trained as an instructor in that is called FAST Defense. And one can look it up, FAST, F A S T, defense.com. FAST stands for Fear Adrenal Stress Training. And it's very practical. It has boundary setting, de-escalation, how to get out of situations,

• 29:43Speaker 01

  not have them get worse, and verbal defense, which is a very practical thing. But finally, if it's on and there's no way you can avoid an attack, how to disable and knock out a single unarmed assailant. They have weapons training as well. So, and it's just very, very useful. See, the martial arts has a different lineage. In sports, we win or lose a match, win or lose points, you know, get a better or worse time depending on our sport. But in the martial arts, it comes from a lineage of life and death. So even though we're not probably going to die doing a martial art today, there is that seriousness, that earnestness, that knowing we have to train body, mind,

• 30:27Speaker 01

  and spirit. It just, the physical skill alone you can learn, but that's not really enough. That may not prevail. You have to know something about mental focus and, you know, living in the present and how to really get into that flow state. So, you know, whether we call it martial arts, yoga, sports, it's all about movement, stillness, breathing, attention. So it's like a master metaphor. Anyone who's trained in a sport or who has done dance or played a musical instrument, anyone who was trained in any field can view that as a metaphor of their life and transfer some of those skills, those general strengths into whatever they do. You know, one of my books, I don't know if you've read it, Lewis,

• 31:11Speaker 01

  but it's called Body-Mind Mastery. And that is my gift to athletes. And that, that can be quite helpful to anybody who trains.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  I'll have to check that one out.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, Body-Mind Mastery.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yeah, I like that. When you, uh, when you experience any type of stress or any type of a breakdown in your life, whether it be minor or, or major breakdowns that occur, what is your practice for overcoming those breakdowns or those minor moments of stress? Do you have a practice or a ritual that you follow? A breathing technique, uh, you know, a way of being that you, that you shift into?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  There are techniques, uh, one can learn. But at some point, you know, and I believe me, I've had them coming out of my years. I've had so many, I've learned so many techniques over the decades for this or that. Uh, but let me just address stress. Stress is part of everyday life. Um, if, if I can tell people two things about stress, I can say, stress happens when the mind resists what is. In other words, whatever's arising in life, if we resist it, it creates some stress, psychological stress, maybe translated to physical stress as well, blood pressure and so on.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  So when we learn to flow with life and kind of dance with it the way any good martial artist would do, not fighting the force, but learning to use it, um, getting out of the way, we experience less stress, first of all. But the second thing is, stress is a normal part of life. The only way to avoid stress is don't care about anything. But most of us do care, so we're engaged with life. Sometimes we get the elevator, sometimes we get the shaft, as the saying goes.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And things happen, changes, disappointments, and we feel stressed. A flat tire on the way to an important appointment or a date. These things happen. And, but there is a big difference between stress plus tension or stress without tension. So we can't really control this abstract idea we define as stress. But we can control our degree of tension. Any of us can, right now, any listener can tense their body. We have that ability, tense all our muscles. And if we can tense, we can relax, just the opposite. Let go, shake, take a breath. And you know what? Relaxed stress is a very different critter from tense stress.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  So whenever a stressful element happens in our lives, we can take, use that as a, just kind of a signal to take a deep breath, let it out, shake loose, and see how relaxed we can be, even as we face the stress. And you know, this is especially true in the stress if you're ever attacked by multiple attackers. That's quite a stressful situation. And that is exactly when you need to learn to move and relax. Because most people don't get beaten up because their techniques aren't good enough. It's because they get too tired. And so by staying relaxed and moving and flowing, which this martial art that I'm studying now, Sistema, emphasizes, it really, really helps us prevail in everyday life and everyday stresses as well.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, or they just stop breathing, you know, with ease. They start shortening their breath or they hold their breath.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's typical. Yeah, that's typical.

• 34:31Lewis Howes?

  If you can't breathe, it's hard to do anything.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  You know, the only difference between fear and excitement is whether we're breathing.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting. I like that. What did you find, uh, what did you find was more fulfilling for you? Competing as an athlete, a world-class level, or coaching world-class athletes?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  You ask such interesting questions. I enjoyed both in their time. I never actually felt like I was competing. It's an irony because my coach said I was one of the strongest competitors he ever knew. But I didn't feel like I was competing because, you know, in gymnastics it's different from boxing or running track against another. If somebody's next to you and you're trying to get to the finish line first, that really feels like a competition. But in gymnastics, it's really, you know, they're, all they do is give you a number and compare the numbers to see who was best. But it's more about performing. So I always viewed myself as performing and it was like I had a routine. How well was I going to do it?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  That's what counted, not what everybody else was doing. I couldn't, I couldn't control what someone else was doing. I could have the best day of my life, but they might've just had a better day. So I just focused on what I could control, which is what am I going to do here and now? So I did enjoy that. It was quite stimulating, exciting and satisfying because having a goal to move toward and train for and having teammates, you know, that was fun too. But I don't think it even touched the satisfaction of being a coach. Really? And reaching out into all those lives. No, I just loved coaching. And in fact, what I loved even more than coaching elite athletes, and I did coach at Stanford, the top U.S. Olympian at the time.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  And the team went from the bottom of our conference when I started coaching there to one of the top three teams in the nation three, three years later. But what I loved was coaching beginners because they, they loved it so much. And I, you know, I still, in fact, this month I'm teaching once a week. I go to a place called the Circus Warehouse in, in Queens, you know, in Brooklyn and

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And I teach an adult trampoline class.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I love, I love teaching because it can touch the lives of other people and see them going through changes and having a great time. So, yeah, I really, uh, I do love teaching.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  I've done some, uh, I've done some acro yoga.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  With my girlfriend at the Brooklyn Zoo, which has a nice trampoline. I don't know if you've been there.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  No, no, I'll have to look it up.

• 37:08Lewis Howes?

  It's called the Brooklyn Zoo. It's kind of like a parkour gymnastics, uh, trampoline facility. It's really creative looking inside.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Thanks for the tip.

• 37:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they have a big foam pit. They have, you know, mats, everything. So.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  Uh, it's called the Brooklyn Zoo. You should check it out.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  I will.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Um, that's cool. That's interesting to know that you are enjoyed and are more fulfilled with coaching beginners over competing yourself or performing yourself and, uh, coaching elite athletes. If there were, if this was, you know, if everything that you've ever written was erased, let's say, all your works, everything was ever, was, for some reason, it was all erased. Everything was erased in the world.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 37:50Lewis Howes?

  And you had a piece of paper and a pen and you got to write down three truths. Everything that you know to be true about, uh, life, the world, and what you want to really leave behind as your message, the three sentences or truths to give back and no one else would have any other work you've ever created. What would those three truths be?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Well, I'm making notes now because one is tough enough. Um, everyone wants to know, what is the one thing? Well, you've got three. Wow. Wow.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  It's like a genie. I'm like, uh.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, they say you teach what you need to learn, and I must have needed to learn a lot with seventeen books. So you're saying, Dan, would you distill, please distill your seventeen books down to three sentences? Who was it that said, anything that can be put in a nutshell ought to be best left there? Um, but I will, I will see what comes up. Um, one of the things that I emphasize in this approach to living that I teach my seminars and workshops, uh, obviously in much more depth, but I would say, um,

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Because there's so much emphasis today in fixing our insides and finding inner solutions, having the right thoughts, positive thinking, clear mind, and visualize this and that, and having the right feelings to be motivated and courageous and confident. And there's so much emphasis on that, that I actually would like to suggest that what are a lot, what the main force that shapes our lives are what we do over time. If we look back on our lives, it's really what we've, what we've done. The horse I'm betting on

• 39:35Speaker 01

  is effort over time, not laws of attraction and visualizing positive outcomes, but just questioning what we will do moment to moment. In fact, one of the quotes I'm known for, and I picked it up from a former mentor as well, "But to progress toward our goals, we need to choose one of two following methods. We can find a way to quiet our mind, create empowering beliefs, raise our self-esteem, and practice positive self-talk in order to find our focus and affirm our power, to free our emotions and visualize positive

• 40:14Speaker 01

  outcomes, so that we 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 we need to do." Exhausting. Or, we can just do it. And that's what it's always going to come down to. Now, that's a lot of words for just three points. But the first one is, our lives are shaped by our actions over time. That's the first one, if you want a soundbite. The second one, I just remind people to trust the process of...

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Your life unfolding. Because we second guess ourselves so much, Lewis. I should have done this, I could have done this, if only I'd done that. I don't have enough willpower. And we're just constantly doubting and second guessing ourselves. If we can come to trust the process of our life, that in some sense, some transcendental sense, it's unfolding perfectly, including the accidents and the, you know, as you and I know, it just directs us like a boulder rolling downhill, bouncing off different trees. We end up being directed to where we're going. So that's the second thing.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  You want the third thing too?

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes, please.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, let me, let me end with a story then. And the story is, is this, it's a true story.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Aldous Huxley, famous author who wrote a book called Brave New World, was in hospice care. He was, he was dying. And he was visited by his friend, Huston Smith, who wrote the book, literally, on world religions. Huston's still alive, but he's getting pretty frail. And Huston asked his friend Aldous, he said, Aldous, you have traveled the world for decades, studying in depth, practicing every spiritual and religious tradition, doing all these inner practices, various kinds of meditation and insight training and models of reality. And he said, is there any way at this time in your life that you can summarize all that you've learned?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  And Professor Huxley said, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I can probably summarize it all in about six words. And those six words are, try to be a little kinder. And, you know, maybe it all comes down to that. Nice counts.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  In fact, you know, at my, for those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter,

• 42:56Speaker 01

  just search for Dan Millman.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  They, I put quotes, a couple of quotes a week. I usually contribute to people and they seem to like these quotes. And I've got a lot of followers.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  And I just did a quote last, well, a couple of days by Barbara Bush. And she said, be yourself. She said, oh, but make that a little bit nicer self.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  And you know, that's the third thing I might offer, just that simple reminder. When we can remember to do so, a little more courtesy, a little more compassion, a little more kindness. We don't have to feel compassionate. We don't have to feel peaceful or happy or loving or confident. But we need to learn to behave that way, just as someone who is feeling afraid learns to behave with courage.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  I love that. I've got a couple of final questions for you really quickly. One is, what's the thing? What's the one question that most people never ask you that you wish they did?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I could probably come up with some clever quip, you know, but I don't really wish people would ask me something different from what they ask me. I would, I would offer it freely, even if they don't ask it. So I think it's, it's, it's good for us to continue to ask questions of ourselves. Because that's how I've come up with these 16 books, asking myself certain questions. Like I asked myself a question, what is personal growth? You know, we talk about that all the time. What is it? We use the term personal development, personal growth. And I ended up, boom, the answers came, 12 areas of life, which I've used in various books. One of them, yeah, one of them was called Everyday Enlightenment.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  In my little book, The Four Purposes of Life, I also summarized these 12 areas of life. 12 courses in the School of Life we're here to master. But it all came from that one question. What is personal growth? The book Body-Mind Mastery came from the question, what is talent? You know, we use the word talent a lot, but maybe we misunderstand it. We see someone who's very good at what they do. We say, boy, are they talented? They may not be talented at all. They may just have used a lot of effort over time to develop their expertise. And often we think we're not talented at something because we try it and it doesn't come easily. But it takes time to nourish talent.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  So just asking ourselves questions and waiting for the answers, that's quite a great process.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  Is there any question you have yet to answer yourself?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, how's this next book gonna turn out?

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  Perfect.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  I never know.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'll be, I'll be happy to promote it for you when it comes out.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 45:50Lewis Howes?

  So let me know.

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask you, actually, okay, two final questions. One's a, a quick one, but this one is if you had three books to leave behind to, besides your own, to the world, what would those three books be?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I'm sort of a Piscean dreamer and, and I like stories. There are many wonderful nonfiction books and documentaries and histories, but what captured my imagination, it was, I'm a little embarrassed to say, but I love the book, Once and Future King, about Arthur and the Round Table, maybe my idealist part. And I also, of course, I'm a big fan of Lord of the Rings. Before the movies came out, I loved the trilogy.

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  And you liked the movies?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, the movies were great. They were terrific adaptation to, I loved them, but anyway, you know, and I could mention 50 books or I could mention just a third to satisfy your question, but I'd rather say that the next book maybe hasn't yet been written.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that, okay. Well, a, a final question I want to ask, but before I do, Dan, I want to take a moment, and you're a Pisces as well, right?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  Like we said, yeah, I'm a Pisces also, that's why I'm even more connected to you.

• 47:09Lewis Howes?

  I want to take a moment just to acknowledge you, Dan, because you've been such a huge impact in the world, like I said earlier on, and you've impacted my personal life in such a powerful way, without me ever even getting to know you or talking to you, just by the art that you put out in the world and the performance you put on paper and which was created into movies and how you've created a ripple effect in the world. For me, I am just so grateful for your life and for your story, because you're able to show me and so many others like me how to overcome adversity and obstacles when it doesn't look like anything else is possible to come from those moments. You really create possibility for people like me.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  So I acknowledge you for the gifts you've given to the world, your consistent commitment to excellence and giving your best effort and everything you've created over time. So I want to acknowledge you for that, Dan.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Well, it's gratifying. Thank you very much.

• 48:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  It has nothing to do with being great in the eyes of the world. I believe celebrity is a form of adversity personally. And that's a whole, subject of a whole other podcast sometime. But to me, it's, as I said, since we can control our efforts, not the outcomes, it's giving our best effort. And I see daily life as a form of spiritual weight training. We don't have to seek adversity. It's a part of life. And I think greatness, everyday greatness, is when we roll

• 48:54Speaker 01

  up our sleeves and tackle what we need to. I think daily life is a training ground for greatness, depending on how we approach it.

• 49:05Lewis Howes?

  Dan Millman, thank you so much for coming on, and we'll talk to you soon.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  It's my pleasure, Lewis. Great talking with you.

• 49:14Lewis Howes?

  Thank you, guys, again, so much for listening to this episode. I loved connecting with Dan, and I was so grateful to hear his responses. Make sure to head back to LewisHowes.com/193, where you can get all information about how to connect with Dan online, all of his social media, his website, his books, etc. Again, if you enjoyed this episode, and you want others to hear about it, and you want to inspire greatness in others, then spread the message and share this forward. Go ahead and share this link, LewisHowes.com/193, with your friends on Facebook and Twitter and social media, to get the word of greatness out there and inspire others who want to get to the next level in their life. Thank you again so much, everyone, for being here, for supporting

• 49:55Lewis Howes?

  this mission to inspire 100 million people around the world, and teach them how to make a full-time living doing what they love, and step into their own greatness. You guys are incredible. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.