Dan Millman

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Of course, we don’t love painful feelings like anxiety or depression. We don’t have to love or even like them, but we do have to accept them, as difficult as that can seem at times.

Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.

Life is brief—a flash of lightning, a snap of eternity's fingers.

You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.

You are not here to contact your highest self; you are here to become it.

Someday, in the moment of death, your whole life will pass before you. In a few fractions of a second--because time no longer applies--you will see many incidents from your life in order to learn. You will review your life with two questions in your consciousness: Could I have shown a little more courage in these moments? Could I have shown a little more love? You will see where you let fear stop you from expressing who you are, how you feel, or what you need. You will see whether you were able to expand into these moments, just a little, to show love, or whether you contracted.

To be authentic literally means to be your own author.

Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be; just don’t let them run your life.

Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness--if you had little time left to live--you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you...you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason--or you will never be at all.

Master yourself—your habits and tendencies—and you can accomplish what you will.

When climbing a mountain, define each step in the right direction as success. We learn the alphabet before we write words; it works the same in sport and life. Many small successes add up.

Master yourself—your habits and tendencies—and you can accomplish what you will.

Competence breeds confidence.

As a peaceful warrior, I would choose when, where and how I would behave. With that commitment, I began to live the life of a warrior.

As poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore reminds us, 'We cannot cross the sea merely by staring at the water.' Simplicity has power. And living on purpose comes to this: Just do it. How much simpler can we get?

When motivation lags, your willpower takes over. You use your will when you stop waiting to feel motivated. Life has always come down to this: The ripest fruit grows on the highest limbs of the tree of life. To pick the fruit you make the climb, step by step, day by day.

Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.

To be authentic literally means to be your own author.

Discipline is the surest means to greater freedom and independence; it provides the focus to achieve the skill level and depth of knowledge that translate into more options in life.

Don't be like the preacher who thought about praying while making love with his life and thought about love while praying.

Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew.

When we feel stuck, going nowhere--even starting to slip backward--we may actually be backing up to get a running start.

There are no ordinary moments.

When you begin your transcendental training, focusing your best efforts, without attachment to outcomes, you will understand the peaceful warrior's way.

From a transcendental perspective, everyone and everything is perfect; from a conventional viewpoint, perfection doesn’t exist—excellence is the best we can achieve, and achieving it takes time and practice.

Competence breeds confidence.

When running up a hill, it is all right to give up as many times as you wish--as long as your feet keep on moving.

Emotions, no matter how painful they are, are not the problem. The problem is dropping out of school or work, putting your family or duties of life on hold until such time as you can work out your emotional issues.

There are no ordinary moments.

Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.

Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment—inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.

In the real world, those of us who are most productive, successful, and satisfied focus not on fixing feelings or manipulating thoughts, but on what needs to be done—and then doing it—no matter what thoughts or feelings arise.

You are not here to contact your highest self; you are here to become it.

Fear is a chameleon that can be a wise guide in one moment and a terrible tyrant the next. Respect fear, but never let it be your master. If physical danger is involved, listen well; if psychological danger challenges you, then do what you most fear—live as a peaceful warrior.

When you have seen what there is to see, when life has revealed you to yourself as you are, your search becomes how best to serve. Life itself—your work, family, and every interaction—is a chance to serve, to connect, to find meaning in the moment and purpose in the play.

Do you have the courage for it? Do you have the love? If you have enough of one, you will develop the other.

Life is brief--a flash of lightning, a snap of eternity's fingers.

When you sit, sit. When you stand, stand. Whatever you do, don't wobble.

Competence breeds confidence.

To deal with fear, act as if you felt courageous; to deal with self-doubt, act as if you felt fully capable of any such task; to deal with insecurity, act as if you felt centered and confident. Whatever else you do, act! Just do it. Just act, and let the feelings of fear, self-doubt, and insecurity fade in the dust trail you leave behind.

Life without emotions would be as calm as death, like a world without weather. Accept feelings as they are; pleasant or painful, they are natural and don’t need fixing. Let them rise and pass without allowing changeable emotions to run your life.

Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be; just don’t let them run your life.

Don't wait until you die to learn the warrior's way. Do it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you lived.

There are times to let things happen, and times to make things happen. Now is that time. You will either make things happen, watch what happens, or wonder what happened.

Find the heart of it. Make the complex simple, and you can achieve mastery.

As you have seen, the emotion of love comes and goes like waves. Enduring love of the awakened heart is not a feeling but an action. Combining love and will, you walk the same path as the saints by showing loving-kindness to all other beings whether or not you feel like it.

Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort—expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals.

It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living—but neither is the unlived life worth examining.

Simplicity has power. Founding our life on constructive, positive behavior is the simplest, most direct, and powerful approach I’ve ever found—simple, but not easy.

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is...The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.

Do you have the courage for it? Do you have the love? If you have enough of one, you will develop the other.

Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.

If you desire to dig a well to reach water, your efforts are more fruitful if you dig one 100-foot-deep hole than if you dig ten holes each 10 feet deep.

Find the heart of it. Make the complex simple, and you can achieve mastery.

When climbing a mountain, define each step in the right direction as success. Many small successes add up.

Every positive change--every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness--involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.

There are no enlightened people, no nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid people, either—only people with more (or less) enlightened, nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid moments.

Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort—expending the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals.