World class athlete, college professor and bestselling author of the classic “The Way Of The Peaceful Warrior” Dan Millman offers us twelve gateways to personal growth in his outstanding book, “Everyday Enlightenment.”
- Discover your worth – Life is full of gifts and opportunities; you will open to receive and enjoy them to the degree that you begin to appreciate your innate worth, and offer to yourself the same compassion and respect that you would give to others.
- Reclaim your will – Inside you is untapped strength of will, of spirit, of heart. You have only to remember your purpose — great strength of will resides within you, waiting for expression.
- Energize your body – If you lack vitality, nothing else matters. If you have your health, anything is possible.
- Manage your money – it can serve you or bind you, depending on how you manage it. Clarify your goals and use your gifts, and you can make good money doing what you enjoy while serving the higher calling of your soul.
- Tame your mind – You perceive the world through your beliefs, interpretations and associations. As your mind clears, you perceive reality simply as it is.
- Trust your intuition – Your subconscious mind holds keys to intuitive wisdom, clear sight, and untapped power. All you have to do is look, listen and trust, paying attention to dreams, feelings, and instinct.
- Accept your emotions – emotions are like waves on the sea or weather in the skies, rising and falling on their own accord. You cannot control your feelings, so you are not responsible for your feelings, only for your response to them. Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be, just don’t let them run your life.
- Face your fears – Fear is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Like pain, it can alert you and advise you, but may also cloud or limit your life. Your fears are not walls, but hurdles. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it.
- Illuminate your shadow – As an infant, you were pure potential, but in growing up you disowned parts of your being, and you became “this” but not “that.” By illuminating your shadow, you become whole again, and real.
- Embrace your sexuality – Hungers and appetites for food, sex, and life are natural. If you suppress the power of your drives, you create obsessions, compulsions and guilty secrets. Life is not a matter of indulging or denying the energies of life, but of observing, accepting, and wisely channeling them.
- Awaken your heart – Love is life’s great secret. Love endures not from words or feelings alone, but from actions that carry you beyond the interests of separate self. You are not here to contact your higher self; you are here to become it.
- Serve your world – Service is both a means and an end, for in giving to others, you open yourself to love, abundance, and inner peace. You cannot serve others without uplifting yourself.