Podcast Episode 147

with our guest Don Miguel Ruiz Jr

The Seven Secrets to Healthy Happy Relationships

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:00:00] What I do is I help people heal from the wounds that conditional love left in their lives.

Brilliant Miller [00:00:08] Hi, I’m Brilliant. Your host for this show. I know that I’m incredibly blessed. As the son of self-made billionaires, I’ve seen the high price some people pay for success. And I’ve learned that money really can’t buy happiness. But I’ve also had the good fortune to learn directly from many of the world’s leading teachers. If you are ready to be, do have and give more. This podcast is for you. If you are interested in learning to love unconditionally, you’ll be interested in the conversation I have today with my guests. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. is the author of five books. His most recent is The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships. We talk about what it means to live as an artist and to Toltec tradition. We talk about something called domestication, where we have ideas of who we should be and how we should live and what happens when we don’t live up to those. We talk about how we can heal from a lifetime of conditional love. We talk about what love is. We talk about how change happens, what a moment of clarity is, what to do when you’re blessed with one. We talk about the difference between guilt and remorse, the difference between an apology and forgiveness. But we also talk about the ego. What it is, how it operates, how you can understand it better to live a happier life. You can learn more about Don Miguel Ruis Jr. and his website. Which is donmiguelruizjr.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Don Miguel Ruizz Jr. Don Miguel, welcome to the School for Good Living.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:01:54] Thank you. Thank you for having me on your program.

Brilliant Miller [00:01:57] Will you tell me, please, what is life about?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:02:02] It always changes for me at the moments to enjoy it, to engage the people I love. Create the things I enjoy doing so you can say is to enjoy. That’s my current point of view of it, but it’s always changing. And when I was a kid, there was play when I was a teenager. It was to expand. When I was in my 20s, it was to find that strength as I find my voice. In my 30s, I was all about my kids. It’s all about how to raise them. It’s to enjoy it, you know, because you realize how quick everything is flowing, so it’s the things that is to me, it’s a moment where I stop taking for granted people I love and the times I have with them so as to enjoy, you know, enjoy these moments, enjoy my youth, enjoy my wife, enjoy my kids, enjoy my parents the way they are right now. I’ve lost people whom I love very much, not just to the pandemic, but with life. You know, the loss of my mom, my guy, my grandparents and the things. And you realize that life has all the right to say no to you, but enjoy it when life is saying yes. And that includes spending time with people we love, spending time doing what we love to do, working, creating, enjoying, playing. It’s you can say, in other words, to be present. Yes.

Brilliant Miller [00:03:35] A beautiful response to that question. Thank you for sharing in that response. You mentioned your grandmother and I understand that your grandmother, Mandara Cerita, was someone who was very special in your life. Will you tell me about who she is, who she was and what role she’s had and what impact she’s had in your life?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:03:55] Sure. Well, my grandmother, our little our mother decided she is the spiritual head of this family, even though she passed away 13 years ago and she was 98 years old, but she is that fire that gave life. Let this whole family and you can say she is the lion in the lineage, so the moment in time where the tradition was no longer just focus on the family, it just was internal. She’s the one who decided to share it with everyone. So you can say that it is her that who’s fostered to a following. People say sometimes I’m following my father’s footsteps, Domingo Ruiz. But that’s incorrect. My father, myself, my brother, are continuing what my grandmother started, which is to share the tradition with a whole community. Now, that tradition being is the total tradition. My brother, my grandmother was born in 1910 in a small little town called Jalisco in Mexico. You can imagine that traditional Mexican small town with all the big cats and the kind of you see in movies. That’s the kind of town she grew up in. And 1910, that’s the Mexican Revolution. So her childhood was shaped by that Mexican revolution. And all the going on about that then came for the Martiens were the Roaring Twenties and nineteen thirties. She had 13 children, my father being the 13th one. Wow. She’s a very strong woman. She had to be very much so, you know, and. One day. One of her youngest son’s women passed away in a car accident in Fresno, California. And for her, she got really upset and affected her health. That’s what sometimes morning does, you know, when you lose someone you love, especially as a mother. So her health was deteriorating and the family members, her sisters all and her started giving her healing. They started practicing the tradition with her in that. And you can say faith healing. My grandmother recovered. She had an experience that she couldn’t explain in one of those sessions, like she meditated. She had this moment and she felt incredibly relieved. And she wanted to share that that was the fire that made her share the tradition with everyone else gratitude. It was so grateful that she decided to share the tradition with everyone. So at that point, she was already living in Tijuana and San Diego, California, and she opened up a temple called Malaby in the 1970s. And there that’s when she started to teach our tradition to the whole community, there are a Barrio Logan, which is the Hispanic Mexican-American community there in San Diego, the very. But little by little, people just came to see her because she was first speaking to the to the to the neighborhood, but people came and people came to see her, not just to listen to her lessons because she would give on Thursdays and Sundays sermons. You know, that’s the translation. She would call up the address in Spanish. I would translate that to sermons on Thursday and Sundays. But from Monday through Friday, she would do healing’s and. People not just from the community went, but other people from the state of California came coming and also became national, they became international. People from all over the world came looking at her. And as she progressed and people got to know who she was, you know, there’s this newscast, the local the local NBC channel did a piece on her and talking about her ability to heal people who are actually heal, people who had cancer and all these other diseases. One of her most proud moments when she gave a lecture to a panel of doctors at UCSD back in the day, and she was the first woman to be hired by the state of California to practice her tradition with a community. So she worked here in San Ysidro. So she was a woman that had so much faith in life and God in herself that she just continued to help as many as she could. And she always said that she was just the instrument of life, of God to help other people. In 2007, the year before she passed away, she was inducted into the Sendhil Women’s Hall of Fame, where they were honoring her for maintaining a tradition. They honored her ability. And the reason why that is because her father and her grandfather on Acequia. They lived in Mexico, but there was still that taboo that, you know, after the conquest and the whole inquisition, that taboo that we speak anything outside Catholicism in Mexico was pretty strong. You can say that’s what drove them to just be secluded. You know, that’s the history of the whole of Mexico of explaining what was left of it. But by the time Rosarita reached that age, everything has changed. Now, the 50s affected, the 60s affected. And she was in the right moment to be able to share that which she was able to share. And that’s who my grandmother is, you know, a grandmother of a great grandmother, a great great grandmother, that was six when when she passed away, that was six generations living. Actually, her first baby, my uncle, was born when I was little. Sarita was 15 years old and she was about forty two when my father was born. So it’s like she had a lot of work to do. But her passion for joy, her love for faith was pretty much impressive and did the best she could. So it was a beautiful thing to witness.

Brilliant Miller [00:10:24] What a wonderful legacy to be a part of and to carry on. And what an incredible woman. And and if I understand correctly, as you’re saying that. Her ability to heal and her faith in her love, it sounds like they were deep in and maybe developed from the grief and the loss that she experienced.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:10:44] Yeah, it’s you can say that we grieve because we love if we didn’t have love, we wouldn’t grieve. So from that point of view, her ability to share came from love, and that’s what she did.

Brilliant Miller [00:10:59] Wow. And what’s the saying about, you know, pain or trials can make us bitter or better? And it sounds like in her case, she definitely chose better and not everyone does. What an amazing teacher you mentioned in in your sharing there about the Toltec tradition. Will you share with me a little bit more about it? What what is it? And how can we maybe understand it or even participate in it in a way that could improve the quality of our lives?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:11:31] Well, sure. The word Toltec is a Náhuatl word. That means artist in English. If I translate the phrase that Toltec transformation into one hundred percent English, it means the artist path of transformation. I am an artist and the work of art that I create is my life. You can say life is the canvas by which I create the work of art and the instrument I’m going to use to create that work of art. It’s going to be this body. It’s going to be this mine is going to be my will, my intent, my yes and my no. So with that, you can say that this canvas is continuously changing. With every choice that I make, I can create the most harmonious dream or the most perfect nightmare, depending on how I am and engaging. So you can say that I am a Toltec means that I am an artist that creates the work of art that is my life. And you can say that historically there’s a culture in Mexico that was called a Toltecs that existed over five hundred years ago. And it was basically, according to oral tradition, the people who created Fáilte. Well, that’s the oral tradition. But as a culture, they created Tullah and many other little cities across advisee Mexico. And you can say that they thrive as a beautiful culture, but they cease to exist either with the expansion of the Aztec empire or the Spanish empire. So when that ceased to exist, it became an oral tradition. So there’s fine and it’s in Mexico to teach it the way they taught it over five hundred years ago. And there’s people like my family who adopted it with each generation. My grandmother used to say to us, if you practice the turtle tradition the way I or your father practice it, you’re killing the tradition because all you’re doing is repeating it verbatim. To apply the tradition is to apply all the lessons that you’ve learned in life and the consequences of those actions is what becomes and teaches you in life is the thing that teaches you. Not just what a sermon or a lecture gives you, but the practice, the practicality of the consequences that impacts your life. So life is the teacher. Wow. So from that point of view, depending on the family, depending on where you come from, there’s definitely we know people who practice it as it was five hundred years ago. Then we have the families like mine that adopted. I’m speaking to you in English, so I’m already adopting it as far as by that action alone.

Brilliant Miller [00:14:14] Yeah, and we’re doing it through technology, right?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:14:17] Exactly. So that’s that’s the history of it. How does it benefit us? Well, it’s my brother likes to say this, this quote, In the total tradition, there’s nothing to learn but to unlearn. And what we’re unlearning is the thing that prevents us from living the life we want to live in by letting go of conditional love or domesticated point of view. So from that point of view, what I do is I help people heal from the wounds that conditional love left in their lives. Mm hmm.

Brilliant Miller [00:14:53] You will never be out of work. I don’t think. I want to acknowledge to this, I think I’m not sure what to call it, wisdom, generosity of, you know, that I’m hearing in your in your grandmother and in your father about if you’re practicing the way I am, basically you’re doing it wrong. Where my view I sometimes have these conversations with friends on road trips or with my wife on a slow, like a quiet weekend, just about I think that I think that religion maybe grew out of the the experience someone had of something divine or inexplicable or what we would call the numinous. Right. And we want to remain connected. We want to recreate it. How can we have that again? And ironically, our effort to do so kind of calcifies or fossilize, is it, and take a life out of it, in my view.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:15:49] And so I understand what you’re saying, and that’s in my point of view, because I share this very similar point of view in that regard. At the root of all religion, there is an experience someone had an experience with divinity, with life, with God, whatever term wants one wants to use now. And we use the language of the environment that surrounds us. For example, let’s let’s let’s say yoga. When you first start taking a yoga class, you go to the yoga class, you roll out the mat, you start paying attention to the teacher. You start moving, but here’s the thing, you don’t know what anything is, so you’re going into the position and you’re cranking your neck to see what the teacher’s doing in downward dog. And you’re cranking your neck and you’re doing all those other the movements, looking around, trying to see what that is. That’s when you first start you’re looking for how I said how is it? It’s like the mind wants to know. Yeah. With some practice, little by little, you crack your neck less and less and less as you start to recognize what those symbols are. The name is Downward Dog and things like that. Warriors put POWs and sun salutation. You hear those words and you automatically know. All right, I know what that movement is.

Brilliant Miller [00:17:16] And you’re not looking around, right? Like, am I doing it right?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:17:19] What’s it doing with some practice when eventually what’s going to happen is that, you know, the movements that all of a sudden you stop thinking about it and for the very first time, you bring your breath into it. Yeah. And all of a sudden, once you’re able to bring your breath into it, it’s almost like the moment where the mind stops getting in the way. And confidence comes in, I know what I’m doing enough to let go of the need to know because I know. Yeah, and you begin to breathe and you start flowing, you start to flow with the breath, start to slow, slow flow, and then eventually one day. Your mind goes away, your awareness is present. The breath took you there and you have a moment of clarity. A moment of what I fear that is. And you get to the point where you don’t even need to listen what the teacher is doing, you’re in sync with every single one because you know the flow, you’re in it. You’re you’re part of it. And all of a sudden, you have that connection of being at one. With your breath. When the session is finished, you go, wow. And you want to share? You want to share it the best you can, so you go to the words, you know, which is the language that you learn in that yoga studio, because that’s the only reference you have and you try to bring in something else from all over your environment to put it into words. Although at that moment you’re going on memory, it’s no longer the truth, it’s just a memory. But you’re trying to hold on to it. So little by little, you go into put into practice the yoga and you do your very best to go back into it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The person who shares your experience, because when you’re sharing that moment, you’re you’re basically tuning in to that memory, using your words, the worst, the person who is hearing you hasn’t had the experience yet, but they hear your words now. They have to follow what you do and you think you have to follow it as is because, well, that’s the way it happened to her and happened to me. This way has to how it happened to him. It can happen to me, too. So little by little. And you look for you look for it and you not get it, but you kill enough that I can do it again and again and sometimes your soul in your head that you never pay attention to it. Sometimes that happens. So some people who hear that tone are able to replicate it. Some people are not. But in our tradition, when we talk about is the main problem, the four agreements and all these other books deal with something called domestication, which is a system of reward and punishment by which we model the behavior of an individual, where if we live up to the expectation, we’re worthy of the reward. And if we fall short of that expectation, we’re worthy of the punishment. And since we are emotional beings who experience the full spectrum of our emotions, that reward feels like acceptance, which feels like love, and the punishment feels like rejection. And the lack thereof of love is the way we learn conditional love. I love myself if I love myself. If so, we get so used to that system would get so attached to the system so that we use that as a motivator to create, to achieve, because that’s what we’ve known. You know, get straight A’s, you get a reward, achieve this, you got a reward. We’ve got that like a reward system. So it gets to the point where we begin to corrupt things. An example would be the four agreements. The telltale sign that we use the four agreements as an instrument of domestication is judging ourselves, judging ourselves for taking things personal, judging ourselves for making assumptions and all the rest. In my case, hello, my name is Don Miguel Ruiz Junior. I don’t take things personal. I don’t make assumptions. I forgot the rest of it. But, you know, how can I call myself Domingo if I don’t know the four agreements? And there’s the downward spiral of judgment, punishing myself for not living up to that image of the perfect version of Domingo Ruiz Jr., who doesn’t take things personal, doesn’t make assumptions, always does his best, his impeccable with his word. And if I ever get a fifth one, be skeptical, but learn to listen, there’s a downward spiral look and how can I call myself Tommy Jr.? So we’re used to that reward and punishment model. Yeah, in the example here with the four agreements is that at the moment we’re no longer practicing the four agreements. We’re practicing the corruption of it, which is the four conditions. The four conditions is because we’re so used to that domestication that we judge ourselves for not being impeccable with the word and says, I can’t give what I do not have imagined. My wife, she was born and raised in Hermann. Honey, here is the four agreements, read it, honey, you didn’t think you’re taking things personally. You didn’t read the book. Oh, honey, you’re making assumptions. She’s walking into the door making noises as we speak. And we make judgments and we do all this thing. But at that moment, I’m use and judging her. Whenever I judge someone, I’m punishing them for an agreement they never made, but I’m forcing them to make the agreement through the judgment, that’s the four conditions and say I’m practicing for agreements, but I’m not actually practicing the four conditions. And here’s where a lot of religion and spirituality gets corrupted, not just spirituality, music. You can craft music, you can corrupt fashion, you can corrupt culture, can corrupt our skin color, can corrupt man, woman. You can corrupt anything. I accept you if I accept myself if. I can only call myself a yoga yogi if I have that moment of clarity, I can call myself a stick only if I live the agreements, the agreements on my Bible. By that moment, if we judge ourselves at that moment, we’re no longer using it as an instrument of healing in the same way that the four agreements or yoga helps the four conditions is just another way to subjugate ourselves, domesticate ourselves. And to pretend to be something we’re not. What happens there is that someone has that aha moment with religion, spirituality, they use the words best they can to explain what they’ve experienced. But for that person who hasn’t experienced it yet. Well, they only have those words, so they try to apply it sometimes they’re successful, they’re the ones in this case applying the four agreements, sometimes they’re not. And because they’re so used to that investigation that they’re practicing the four conditions, for me, becoming aware of the difference, the subtle difference between the two is a very important thing because is the thing that allows us to understand what free will is versus a subjugated will or domestication in this case. So for me, all religions are beautiful. Every religion talks of a truth, a moment of clarity or communion with a divinity somewhere along the line. Someone learn to practice it the way his own practice, the four agreements, or someone learned to practice the four conditions and they can’t tell the difference between the two. To be able to get to that point. Is the difference between learning from the consequences of our own choices or blindly following? Without even questioning if it’s the truth, then.

Brilliant Miller [00:25:43] Thank you for sharing that beautiful discourse on this and really the inverse of the four agreements, I mean, the four conditions and how. Those you know, that can happen with anything, like you’re saying, culture or a fashion or music. One thing one thing I’m curious to know is, clearly love and unconditional love is central to your work and to being this artist of life, as you describe. How can we learn to love unconditionally? What do we have to do? Who do we have to be?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:26:23] Well, that’s the thing, you know, as the question arises, who do we have to be? We already created an image of what is supposed to do. Ego is easier to understand as a function rather than a concept. The function of ego is to keep the illusion of life. That to me, that’s how I understand ego.

Brilliant Miller [00:26:43] So the illusion of the perfect thing, that’s what you say.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:26:47] That image by which we model ourselves or domesticate ourselves. You know, if that if the problem is domestication, which is that system of reward and punishment, there is a model by which I’m domesticated myself with, for example, to say the perfect version of me is to be twenty seven years old where one hundred and seventy pounds to be twenty seven years old. I say that’s my and have full set of hair. I look at myself in the mirror and that’s just not the truth. I weigh one hundred and ninety three pounds. I’m forty five years old. My hair is what it is, you know. Receding very nicely. That’s the truth, but if I look at myself in the mirror. And what I see doesn’t match my ideal, that image of perfection, that model by which I’m domesticating myself. Well, I’m going to castigate myself, you fat bleep, you old fat, bald bleep and all those judgments, that downward spiral of judgment. So that’s what ego is. We create an image by which we domesticate ourselves and we defend it at all costs, kind of like Don Quixote preferring to see giants instead of windmills. And if you see the windmills, it’s because of his arch nemesis put a huge spell on across the land to make all the giants into windmills just to make him look bad. At that moment, he preferred the illusion over the truth. What does that have to do with conditional love and unconditional love? To put it in a way, the difference conditional love only sees what it wants to see. I love you “if…” which means the opposite of is unconditional love is the willingness to see life as is. The willingness to see myself as I am. The willingness. To accept myself, this is who I am, the sum of every decision that I’ve ever made and the youngest I will ever be. If we can have that for ourselves, then we can see that with everyone else. Instead of my wife, I see Susan, the woman who loves me and whom I love, whom we both said yes to. If I only see her as my wife and project a mask of who she’s supposed to be, then I have run the risk of not knowing who she really is, especially if I’m domesticated to my own point of view, just like Quixote, Don Quixote doesn’t see the woman that Dulcinea really is. He only sees Lucy in there and he’s going to domesticate that girl or that woman. To live up to that image, because that’s what he wants to see, so conditional love is that love with or without conditions. Let’s just say that love is an energy that that allows us to create a bond. With ourselves and with other people, let’s just say that that’s simply energy. And I’m the source of that energy. Just like I’m not this body I’m the force that animates it, I’m not this mind, I’m the force that animates it. And I know that because in that moment of my last breath, of my last heartbeat, I don’t think either one of them with me. Then my love only exists because I’m here to manifest my love, exist because I exist now. Am I going to share that with conditions the way I’ve been taught? You know, through society, through community, through whoever was in my life, with domesticating me to their point of view, that love. Has to be earned by living up to an image that doesn’t exist. Or I’m aware that my love exists and I can share it with anyone I’m with. All that is required is take myself, get myself out of the way so that it’s very minimal that take up all the filters, all my distorted point of views. And be willing to see life as it is to accept. So to me, that’s what unconditional love is, the willingness to see the people I love just as they are, as opposed to whatever image I project onto them, which requires, of course, the willingness to listen.

Brilliant Miller [00:31:14] Yeah. And to see right.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:31:17] To pay attention to be present.

Brilliant Miller [00:31:20] Even when we don’t like what we see or we don’t agree with it. And I can see here, I think, where your brother talks about to unlearn the expectations and know so forth of how things should be, how people should be. So this is maybe the very Western rational part of me asking this then. OK, so say. Say, I understand, so somebody’s listening. OK, so they hear what you’re saying it can is something they want, but they don’t know how to do it. How do we do this, is this a plant Churney, is this more meditation? Is this like some chanting? Is there some ritual or ceremony? Like how do I get myself to be less judgmental? How do I get myself to see without the filters? Like, as a practical matter, how do I do that?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:32:13] In a moment of clarity in the same way then an alcoholic or drug addict wakes up one morning to see the truth of what they’ve created. They have a moment of clarity, a moment of clarity without any action is just a thought that passes in the wind, but a moment of clarity followed by action becomes a pivotal moment in our life. It is the moment where we become aware of what we’ve created, what we’ve done, how I’ve used my own intent to continue to believe. There’s a couple of phrases that I love that I’m going to quote here. Again, I quote this a lot, so I love saying it because to me they resonate. The first one is Eleanor Roosevelt. No one can make me feel inferior without my consent. In other ways, no one can domesticate me without my consent, and how do I give consent by believing it is like the image of a Siddharta with Mara when after you after Siddharta is able to maintain his discipline and resist the temptation of moral status, markets so upset that he couldn’t get Siddharta. So he sends his armies to destroy them. And those armies send all these arrows and Siddharta sees those arrows. And he turns them into roses because he didn’t give them permission to hurt them. I see that analogy that. All the beliefs in my belief system have power because I keep saying yes to it, yeah, all those domesticated point of views, all those judgments have power in me that resonate with me because I keep saying yes. Which leads me to my second quote. I’m going to say, Neil, Neil deGrasse Tyson says the truth exists whether you believe in it or not. Of course, before that, he says that’s the thing about science. The truth exists whether you believe in it or not. But that phrase, the truth exists, whether you believe in it or not. It doesn’t need humanity for it to exist. The truth exists with or without. You know, it exists with or without me. In contrast, this is me learning from that phrase, a belief, a belief only exists for as long as I say yes to it. And the moment I change that yes into a no, that believe will cease to exist, which means as soon as I don’t believe it, it ceases to exist, which means, I believe only exist with me. It needs me. It needs humanity for it to exist. Just like the four agreements and the four conditions, they we can tell the difference between the truth and a belief or lies or ideas with the kind of thing. But I believe it’s more important than this one reflects better. If you can tell the difference between the truth and the belief. Then you can say that that which I see in the mirror is the truth. The judgments I hear about what I see in the mirror, those are beliefs, all those judgments about being forty five, being a little overweight, a little bald, and whatever other judgments that anyone can resonate with those who only have power because we said yes to it. At that moment, that’s the moment of clarity, all those judgments I have. Only have power because I said yes to it, I continue to believe my domestic haters and here’s the thing, my domestic haters stop domesticating me a long time ago. But I continue to tell myself that over and over by continuing to say yes to it. Yeah, and there’s an image, my brother says, that I also like to use here. It’s like a scorpion stings itself over and over again with its own tail, administering the poison that it means for someone else to oneself. Well, those beliefs by which we continue to hurt ourselves is kind of saying yes to them when we believe them is exactly. Drinking our own poison or a scorpion stings itself over and over again. Yeah, so the moment you become aware that you’re doing it. That’s the moment of choice. If you choose not to do anything about it, the cycle will continue. It’s just the thought that passes in the wind. But if that moment of clarity have you made the choice? You know what? I don’t want to do this again. Liability, we shift an alcoholic or drug addict. We take a step in a different direction and we change life and we go through that. That hangover, you know, when you’re when you’re going through that alcohol withdrawal, the best with what you’re used to is where one one is used to. It’s the hair of the dog. Take a sip of beer or something and the headache will go away. But you just punted. The problem just kept going. Well, if we. This side that in that moment of clarity to change direction. The whole world changes and all of a sudden. All these beautiful traditions have so many instruments that allows us to let go of conditional love. Not just the four agreements, but the teachings of Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Jesus, Buddha, Siddartha Muhammad, psychology, psychiatry, Alcoholics Anonymous, all these beautiful traditions teach us how to let go of conditional love and embrace unconditional love. But if you begin to clean it out to clear all that filter all those attached beliefs. Do we can see that all of those have instruments that allows us to heal? We just go to the one that resonates is kind of like going to the one therapy center that resonates with us or that psychiatrist, psychologist or group setting or workshop or uncle or aunt that you have confidence in or brother or cousin that you decide to us and share with them. And you let go at that moment. These are all instruments, and you will go with the one that resonates with your actions. So. You can say that a teacher once taught me this lesson just to close that question up. Enlightment. The key to enlightenment is effort. That’s what she said, the key to enlightenment effort to me effort is using the energy that animates this body that animates his mind to manifest something. That’s what effort is putting one foot in front of the other. Discipline is simply remembering. To make that choice every day or you can say discipline is remembering to apply that effort every day, that’s it. Forget about the drill sergeant. Your head is just remembering that today. I want to say yes, but I want to say no to it. And success is simply following through. And that is going to adapt itself to whichever method. It could be prayer, it could be a group, it could be action. It could be creativity. It could be. Therapy could be. An incredible array of things, because there’s so many people out there that similar to my grandmother, City had a moment that helped them and decided to help others. And. That’s what we go towards, we find we give ourselves the permission to heal, and that’s what it is. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:40:07] It reminds me of something I once heard about, there are many, many paths up the mountain, but the view from the top is the same. I like all of these different approaches and we might or the teachers we might choose to learn from. But in some fundamental way, you know, I think we’re ultimately arriving at the same the same place in this idea to about our thoughts and this domestication. This was an idea that transformed my life. Just even knowing a thought isn’t true or false. It’s a thought. And you can choose to believe it or choose to disbelieve it and and that we always have choice. So what can in some way be so simple to say in a conversation like this literally has the power to transform one’s entire life, if we remember, and apply it?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:40:55] Yeah. And it feels overwhelming at first like anything, you know, like. I can see it right now, for example, I’ve I ran six full marathons and I ran twenty five half marathons.

Brilliant Miller [00:41:08] Holy cow. Congratulations on that, by the way.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:41:10] Thank you so much. Eight years ago, I could barely run two miles. I had this issue with my back, my lower back that my legs went numb and I had to relearn how to run again or walk along. But I started with two miles and then I created a playlist where I ran what one song ran one song walk. Then the intervals change. I ran two songs. I ran three songs little by little. It was hard work, obviously, and running a marathon, half marathon is hard work, 18 weeks. But it all sounds it all sounds easy when you’re on the other side. But the effort is. Worth it, know what, the first time I ran five miles, a huge epiphany happened to me first. It was the first time in my life that I ran five miles before. I hate my sport before running was soccer and, you know, stop and go, stop and go and youth. I didn’t think about it. I wasn’t really paying attention to it. But in my 30s here, I am learning to do this. So when I finally cross five miles, whatever for the very first time. I crossed a threshold myself that told me I couldn’t cross, I prove myself wrong. And the best question of my life came. What else can I do? And it came with the best response I could ever say. Anything. Knowing that I can it takes effort, it takes all this hard work, but it’s so worth it because it’s something you get to create and there’s nothing. Well, there’s a lot of things, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you cross thresholds that yourself that you couldn’t cross and realize you can. And not just in my case, a physical activity. When you write a book, when you create music, when you’re doing the job, when you’re when you let go of alcohol or all these things like you, you stand by and you look at what you’ve done. Sometimes we do our intent just to run, run, run, run, run. You put your pet down just like work, work, work, work. And listen, if you look, look up and look around and you see all the fruit of your labor, all the stuff you’ve achieved, you go, Wow. And the funny thing is that as soon as you say it, it sounds easy, and the only reason why it sounds easy is because the words make it sound easy. Yeah, but the effort that we actually apply for it while we’re doing it is tough. So you always have to find what motivates you so you can see what happens when you let go of the mastication. Because the thing about domestication is that there’s a motivator that drives you to do it, you know, the grass is greener. I love myself. As soon as I as soon as I graduate high school, as soon as I graduate college, then I’ll be somebody. What happens when you let go of that motivator, which is conditional love? That’s the thing about that domestication. The motivator is conditional love. Passion. Passion is not let’s not confuse it with the corruption of it, which is obsession, obsession is like. Only focus on this one thing, and I can only achieve it, I can only accept myself if I have it and I have it, and if you do achieve it, you. Create another example, let’s say I qualify for Boston, I can only call myself a runner if I qualify for Boston. If I don’t, I’m just a jogger and I know people who do that, like, oh, they they put people down by calling them joggers. And I know he’s not a runner and he’s a jogger. What does that but let’s say that you’re obsessed with it and you qualify now. You know, now I have to break the record and I won’t call myself a runner until I break that I’ll be a runner. You never accept yourself who you are. That’s an obsession. Passion, on the other hand, looks different. The goal is just excuse to do it. Run training that Sunday. When race day happens, it’s just an excuse to run for 18 weeks prior. That’s the difference. I enjoy doing what I love to do and it’s like I enjoy doing the craft that I do. And that’s the difference. Instead of chasing the illusory carrot, I’m eating the carrot that nourishes me to take a step forward.

Brilliant Miller [00:45:45] I love that view. I love the view that the goal is just an excuse to follow the passion. That’s that’s fantastic. And I’ve maybe this is some of the Eastern studies I’ve had, but some of my teachers have said goals are useless, all goals are useless, or at best, you know, their value is in what we become or what we learn and experience along the way.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:46:07] Yeah, well, that’s the thing. And I can see why they would say that because. We are so used to domestication that we will corrupt those goals we will use, it’s a slippery slope and identity is a slippery slope and identity can become that model by which we domesticate ourselves. In my case, Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. You can also say my goal is to live the four agreements every day, and you can see already the slippery slope of using the four conditions there. Yeah, well, if we use goals as an instrument of domestication, all goals are corrupted. And I can see where the teacher would say they’re useless. Yeah, but once you clean it up, once you clean it up and. I’m perfect just the way I am because I’m alive. This is the grass is greener where I’m standing because it happens to be where I’m standing right now. This is where I’m at. Right. A goal just becomes, all right, where do I want to focus my attention? Where do I want to focus my intent? I want to go in that direction. OK, why do I want to go the direction? Because I want to enjoy the journey there. Right. It’s just a focal point.

Brilliant Miller [00:47:18] And and I think the tendency too the goals have of taking us out of the present moment. Right. Like you’re saying about I will only be worthy or I will only be complete if I achieve this or measure up. But the the act, while moving in a direction, being fully present and engaged, you know, being able to do that. And I think it’s an interesting view that you’re offering about the corruption of goals. And I tend to think your goals. I don’t I don’t necessarily agree that goals are worthless, but I can see how there can be a way that they they divide us or they become an instrument of that domestication.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:47:51] Yeah. And it all requires the willingness to do the work within us, because if we don’t we haven’t done that work, then we will get going back to that image. Well, I can only practice yoga only until I have that moment where my breath and moving with my breath. Until then, I’m not a yoga practitioner, although you can see how that happens. You know, we can see that in spirituality. We can see that with our diets, you know, with the way we eat with music. That’s why I say we can add all these beautiful things, because somewhere in creating hierarchy is the result of that domestication. You know, if I’m below on the hierarchy, then I’m not worthy of love. I have to be the very top. Otherwise I’m nobody. And because we kept we keep believing in the person that told us that you’re nobody until you reach that goal.

Brilliant Miller [00:48:43] Yeah, yeah. Miguel, I want to I want to ask you about your most recent book. So I know in twenty eighteen you released the Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships. And this is your fifth book?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:48:57] I wrote my whole book with my dear friend Heather Xiomara. Yes.

Brilliant Miller [00:49:00] Yes. And and I also understand that this book is as a result of workshops that you taught. So you took the content from from what you had been teaching in person and then you put it between the covers of a book and in the world. I read it. I enjoyed it immensely. It it it was one of those books for me that it gave me some new new language, like I didn’t have the concept of domestication, but I saw it in myself. And it also did the thing where it said, oh, I knew that. I just didn’t know. I knew that in a lot of places, you know. But let me ask you so with this book, The Seven Secrets of Healthy, Happy Relationships. Why did you write it? Why did you devote so much of your life to creating that workshop and then ultimately to writing the book? Why was this book number five wise? Who is it for and what’s it meant to do for them?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:49:45] Sure. Well, the book was Heather’s baby as she came up to me and asked me if I wanted to participate to participate in this program. Now, when she came up to me, it was a project and an audio class, an audio workshop for sounds true. And then when our publisher, because we have both at the time, the same publisher, Hierophant Publishing, Randy Babila, he heard about it like, oh, let me get the booklets for that. So now we had a workshop and a book, so. When she asked me, I was in a particular part of my life, I had healed the relationship with my first love. My relationship with my love, I was 18 years old with that high school sweetheart that we loved each other, but, you know, when you’re that young love is an instrument that is beautiful but can also hurt. So you can say that it’s like the image of two porcupines kissing our quills just fit the right place every time we want to get close, you know, and we know we did that. So time and time again, we broke up. We got back together because we love each other. But every time, you know, we would hurt each other and, you know, we broke up again and then we try to be friends and we will hook up because that’s what we used to. But then the Quill’s hit you and it was like that for several years until it hurt. And we got angry just by the thought of hearing each other, but, you know, looking back on it is the relationship that impacted all my relationships like that is the head of the freight train that when it finally hit, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, it’s like that one. Eventually it all came to a head because I fell in love again and the woman I wanted to marry. But all of these wounds, all this stuff just infected my present. And I was like, is that carrying the weight of an old corpse? And meaning myself, I was holding on to all these old wounds and it was infecting every relationship. And that thing was heavy and was thinking and it finally crashed. And the thing is that. Before I could project blame. But this is someone I couldn’t project anything, she did nothing wrong, it was all my self, my insecurities, my own selfishness, my own. It’s a moment it’s my moment of clarity. You know, people have moments of clarity. My father had a car accident. I broke. My brother went blind. My grandmother almost died. I had a moment of heartbreak. I lost someone I loved and I couldn’t project blame. It was all me. I wasn’t what I pretended to be. And you can say something where I really began to practice the family tradition, yes, at that point. I’ve been apprentice since I was 14 years old and I can recite and give a class and all that. But then I had a moment of clarity when I was a certain age at the age of twenty three, twenty four. And then by twenty seven, it all fell apart and I. Finally put it to work. I started to work on myself, I really applied the lessons. I really I took a whole year off from relationships so I can really give myself that time to heal and move places. I changed my whole thing and focused on myself. And luckily enough, I. I heal. In time when when I met my wife, you know, we were I was ready, I wasn’t I wasn’t afraid, I, I wasn’t afraid to say no. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid to love anymore, and luckily for me, my wife came when she came and we continued to work through things. You know, she and I have worked through a lot of things. And then. Social media came in at a time, MySpace, eventually Facebook, and became friends with a lot of my high school friends and all of a sudden the name appeared and there she was, the woman.

Brilliant Miller [00:54:04] The girl from when you were in love?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [00:54:06] Yeah, my first love. I was like that. Yeah. I sent a friend request and she accepted and we started talking and kind of like, OK, how are you doing? You’re doing good. The time I was living in in Rockland, California, she was living and still in San Diego where I was born and raised. So the next time I drove down was like, let’s let’s meet up. Let’s let’s introduce our family. She was married and has her son. And I’m married and I have my two kids. We came together and we got the families together, kind of like that was our safety not going away like this? We’re surrounded, safe and we’re talking. And it happened for a good four or five years that we now talk to. We were friends. And then on the eve of my second one of my first marathon in San Diego to San Diego, Rock and roll, rock and Roll Marathon, I went down there by myself and she and I hung out with her son or someone to play it. And we just talked for the first time. We were alone and we started talking. And I finally. I apologize, I apologize, not the apology of an boyfriend. But that of someone who knows the difference between guilt and remorse and what I mean by that is this. Guilt is punishing yourself over and over again for something you wanted to do, and every time you think about it, you judge yourself or me or you judge, judge, judge. But if life was given the chance to give, if lives were to give me the chance to do it again, you would still do it because that’s what you want to do. That’s guilt. Remorse, on the other hand. Is that you see the consequences of your actions, you see the ripple effects of the choices you made and how that affected other people. And you see that pain, you see the consequences, you know that you’re not projecting, you’re seeing it. You’re owning it. And you’re aware of it, and here’s what is different if life were the chance to give you, if life were to give you the chance to do it again, you wouldn’t not because you got caught, but because you know what the consequences are and you can say it’s not worth it. Hurting someone else is not worth. You can say that’s what I learned, which also means I heard her. For the very first time, I owned my choices and I didn’t ask for forgiveness, I apologize. There’s a huge difference. The apology, the forgiveness comes for her, and she’s she’s the one who responds to that. But I opened up it’s like it was like the first time I ever saw her as a human being rather than me projecting that she was my girlfriend, when that happened, something incredible happened. All of a sudden, she started owning up to her side. It’s like both of us owning, you know, the maturity of being in our late thirties or something like that, and all of a sudden the words I wanted to hear since I was 18 years old comes out. I loved you very much, she said. And I said the same thing. Of course, we both said we wouldn’t have lasted because now we’re adults. We totally know that eventually that will happen. But we gave each other the ability to heal the relationship. Well, when Heather Ash came and asked me to participate in this project, that’s where I was coming from. You can say secret number four, which is healing. And the original title of the project was The Soul of Intimacy. When you when you don’t kill your old wounds, your intimacy is going to be closed, you’re not going to open up. But as you heal, your intimacy is going to open. Otherwise known as Joy. Your ability, the secret to joy, goes hand in hand with the ability to heal because it’s the moment where we’re no longer afraid to love and all of a sudden the channels of communication are open, which is what I share my first love, my first love. And I did we we finally talked as equals, not as the projected image that we once had of one another. And it was a good one and. It felt good, so and release. Is it occurred to me, who are you today? No, because I’m not the same person I was when I was 18 years old. In fact, with my wife, same thing when we were both twenty eight. But we’re not the same person. We were at twenty eight. She’s not the same person. She was at 30 or 35 or 40. And I’ll stop right there. We are different people, in fact, she not even the same person she was yesterday. She’s not the same person she was at the beginning of this week because life happens and when life happens and it impacts our life, it changes. You know, we change with every action and choice we make. It impacts us. So when I contributed to that book, it was meant to heal, to help other people heal. But you can’t heal what you don’t have so that you can say, sorry, you can’t give what you do not have. So in order for you to be able to heal that with other people, you can look within yourself, which is the first three secrets of commitment, freedom and awareness is the commitment to myself to heal. You know, it’s like I, I heal with my own permission. And I follow through with that that that line, that lesson of enlightenment, the key to enlightenment is effort. Freedom is to be able to say yes and no with a complete freedom of life, you know, the thing that domestication does is that it takes away our ability to make a choice. We let our beliefs and conditions say yes, enough no for us. We don’t own it. We we lost that respect for ourselves to make those decisions. And that comes with awareness becoming aware. What are my triggers, what what am I saying? Yes, to like I said before, knowing the difference between the truth and a belief, that’s what is my belief and what is the truth? Well, if you apply scrutiny to it, you can tell the difference. A truth will will exist with or without you will survive anything, I believe, as soon as you become aware of it and you realize it can change that until yes or no, it ceases to exist. And with the meaning of words, the expression of a symbol, my domesticated point of view. You do that within yourself, you heal the relationship within you once you learn to feel that relationship with a new that gives you the opportunity to heal because say, for example, if she were to give me the chance and I didn’t do any of the work and she came with that opportunity. Well, I’m just going to hurt her again, because that’s what I’m used to. Know, but if I do the work. And she gave him the chance and chances are she might have given me a chance before, but my quills were up and I didn’t even notice that horse were down. I just had mine up, you know. That probably happened several times, but when I finally did the work. My quills weren’t up and fact ever. Most of them were killed and they weren’t even there. Which means that I was willing to listen for the very first time and on. My actions, yes, I did it. And sometimes when someone feels hurt. Trust comes in and love blossoms, whether trust.

Brilliant Miller [01:02:17] Now, that’s beautiful. Well, I feel I feel fortunate for you that you had that healing experience where I know many people don’t, whether it’s through your relationships that. Continue to be acrimonious or whether they’re ended prematurely by death or whatever reason, we we don’t ever find that healing that I think we’re all looking for. We continue to love these patterns of conditional love when I think what we’re yearning for is that unconditional experience, both to give in, to receive. Yeah, but we don’t necessarily know how. I think it’s wonderful that that you had that, but also that you’re teaching teaching this to others. As I said, I took away a lot from the book. I think one thing that I’m curious to ask you about before we transition to that, to the next part of our conversation that I hope will be a contribution to to those listening. And I know it will be to me, it is about forgiveness. In just a moment ago, you you talked about the difference between apology and forgiveness. And and in the book, you talk about forgiveness and how to do it, what it even is, that kind of thing. But this is like you books, entire books have been written on this. Right. And I think every spiritual teacher has talked about this and some of the greatest leaders in history. How do you think about forgiveness and how can we achieve it? Like especially if it’s not just an old wound, but it’s ongoing.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:03:45] Sure, well, I want to use a lesson that I learned actually in two thousand seventeen teacher in Sacramento is giving a class a series of classes there, and there was a teacher there that we were talking about it. He said it. So I don’t remember his name, but it’s not originally from me. That’s why I’m sad to say. But it’s a lesson that resonates. And I’m going to quote him because like this. Forgiveness is the moment you no longer wish the past was any different. It is the moment to accept it and you let it go. That was it. And it resonates with me. One, the past no longer exist. I can’t go back there and change a yes or no one or two yes, there’s no life in the past. They don’t exist in my mind as a memory. And it probably didn’t happen the way I think it happened. Just like the future doesn’t exist yet. It only exists in my imagination and I don’t know what’s going to happen. The only place where life is real, when the truth exists is in this present moment, this moment right now. This is my truth. So the moment where we accept it that it happened is the one where we are no longer focusing on I should have been this should have been that you can’t go back there. You can’t change that yes or no or no. So, yes, I will no longer exist there. Yeah. You accept it. And you let it go. Once again, that image of that scorpion comes back in mind, that image is beautiful, less of a scorpion stings itself over and over again with its own tail. Sometimes when we think about the bus, we’re using the pass to go against us. So to let it go simply means to no longer use that stinger against me. I’m no longer going to use the past to hurt myself over and over again, especially when it’s not happening right now, because right now life is good. And that’s the thing about life. For example, the mine is so powerful and it does incredible things. For example, I am my son, my firstborn was born, my son. I’m holding him in my arms and I’m feeling that beautiful communion, that blessing. I am such a happy man and I’m holding my boy and smelling. I can hear him. I can feel him. And my mind was fertile ground for fear in the form of a Thoght. Actually, a concept or not even a concept, something that really happens, SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I read about it. I heard about it. Idea, the thought just popped in my head in that moment when I’m holding and all of a sudden I experienced a fear like I’ve never experienced before, it was crippling the fear. Nothing changed. Nothing changed in the room. My son is still alive. It was just a thought that all of a sudden I could loosen and lot that fear stayed with me. Intense for several months until my photos saw me, that I was just a bridge of tears and it says, Go, go fix yourself. Face it, the way I faced it is like I turn on the news. There was unfortunate news about children being hurt all the time. And just imagine that was my boy and I just cried like crazy, but I let it out. And since then it has gotten better and better and better. I know that fear will always be there. I’m a father like I have a daughter and a son. It’s I don’t have any anxieties about myself or life. It’s just my kids. But back then, those first few weeks or months, it was intense. The power of thoughts. That blossoms at the right time. Can impact your life in such a way. In this example, you become aware that that is. Something, I am so. Aware of how to forgive myself. It happened. I had that fear. I was in the right place at the right time for that fear to blossom in my life and wreak havoc the way it did. And. I accepted and I. Let it go. My children can die at any minute. And that’s the truth and that’s the truth about me. I could die at any minute. Like you said before, every relationship ends, relationships end by choice, by life or by death, in my life experience, the end of a relationship by life, which is my girlfriend and I in college. And when we graduated, she moved back to Berlin. I stayed in California. It was the days before Facebook and MySpace and all kind of stuff. So it ended. That’s here. That’s it happened. The by choice is what we know as a breakup, and I’ve learned about that many times. But that one day my wife or I will see the other, close our eyes and give our last breath. All relationships end in the same way that my life and everyone’s going to die. Once I accept my mortality. Then why am I wasting my time for that moment that’s going to come? It’s like a Game of Thrones. What do you tell the Angel of death? Not today. Well, not today. I’m alive right now. Like to sing. Yes. To me, my wife is saying yes to me. This little ring that I have only has power because we both said I do. But my wife has every right to change her mind to from a yes to a no, especially if I do anything stupid. She has all the right to change her mind, which means that symbol of my wedding ring only means something for as long as we both say yes. It is the thing that helps us not to take for granted those people we love and the people who are in our life, we accept that everything will end. Once you accept that, it is. You appreciate that it’s not today. You enjoy it, you have to. Be with it and that moment, forgiveness is a little easier because. Why waste our time with something that’s going to prevent us from having this relationship? Especially within myself, because in that self, administering of that emotional poison. I’m the only one who really feels it. So when I’m feeling forgive someone. And basically, it’s the moment where I’m no longer going to use them and their actions to go against me. So for me, that’s what the act of forgiveness is. Now we forgive when we’re ready, if we’re not ready to forgive. That’s perfectly fine. It’s all about breaking the mastication. Remember, if we say we have to be enlightened, so I have to forgive. But if you’re not ready to forgive, that’s your truth. And that’s that’s the truth of who you are. That’s OK.

Brilliant Miller [01:11:11] I think that’s where I know for myself. And I think many people get what I would say, hung up on or caught up on forgiveness with that very thing. Like it’s something we should do. But if we’re honest, when we look inside, if we’re unwilling to try to do so and then make ourselves wrong for not doing it when we really don’t want to.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:11:30] Yeah, and that’s the thing. That’s what the mastication is at that moment is forcing a has. But the thing is, the emotional body is not ready. The wound is too painful to touch. Yeah. To honor ourselves is to say this is how I’m feeling, but I’m choosing not to let that person affect my choices or the way I treat you and redirect in a different direction. You know, we can create the most beautiful work of art and most beautiful ballads in other people out there who have made a living out of writing those songs of heartbreak and and betrayal and things like that. Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing when we were able to redirect it and give ourselves that time to heal and when we are ready. And use that time usually comes when we are tired of seeing that pain. Is when we give ourselves that permission to heal and the last step of healing is forgiveness, which is once again to let it go and accept that it happened and taken a step forward is leaving it behind. I have to make sure that’s not myself. Happy. Oh, well, sorry about that. It’s all good because I want a dog won’t stop barking until I open. Thank you. Is it OK now is the real reason was as soon as I open it, he stops working. Like you trained. Oh, yeah, he’s got me domesticated into it. Oh, awesome.

Brilliant Miller [01:13:18] All right, well, that that was perfect. I think I think for me that that was wonderful. That was a wonderful back and forth about that topic. So unless there’s anything more you want to say before we we keep going.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:13:32] We’ll keep going.

Brilliant Miller [01:13:33] OK, awesome. All right. So we’ll go ahead and transition now to the Enlightening Lightning Round. Again, this is a variety of questions, relatively short questions on a variety of topics. My aim is to ask the question and let you answer as long as you want. And I’ll work to keep us moving through this. It’s about nine questions. OK, question number one, please complete the following sentence with something other than a box of chocolates. Life is like a…

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:14:06] Joy Ride.

Brilliant Miller [01:14:08] OK, number two here, I’m borrowing Peter Tiels question, what important truth do very few people agree with you on?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:14:21] Effort.

Brilliant Miller [01:14:26] Will you say a little more about that?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:14:30] Well. Like I said before, an effort has the energy to take a step forward using the energy that animates his body, that animates his mind to make something I enjoy creating, and people go at their own with something I have to learn to take a step back. Like, it took me a while to learn that people heal on their own schedule and not on like know something that I had let go. Just like I’ve been able to heal a lot of relationships with a lot of people in my past and those people who don’t. And unfortunately, one of the things that I didn’t learn, I learned the hard way is people heal in their own time, not mine. To translate that with effort, we all apply it differently. You know, some people like an example, would be a physical challenge, like my friend has six week challenge of working out this much time. And she set up this Facebook group where we all and I’m like, they’re going, OK, let’s do it. And maybe the and imposing and realizing my point, I’m like, hey, am I the only one doing this? And everyone’s in different stages. You know, some people are they put in what that is like. I have a friend who if I ever if I don’t work out in the morning, then I’m not going to work out. Or they do this and they have all reasons and they’re not excuses that it’s just the way they are. So how we use effort is different. You know, it’s like as a father trying to motivate my kids to do something. For example, my daughter is incredible with her motivation when it comes to the things she loves to do in regards to physical activity. It’s hard to get her to do anything. Luckily for me, she she’s motivated by her homework and her school work. That’s her effort with all different things.

Brilliant Miller [01:16:29] So you are lucky in that regard that she’s motivated?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:16:34] Yeah, she’s motivated by her homework. She’s I’m riding that wave of her need to compete. And she decided not to compete physically, but academically. Some experienced. But my my, my my wife’s different. My friends are different. So we all have different stages of how to use our effort. Whereas I’m one of those people who is like, go, go, go, go. You know, it’s like, for example, with knowing I was going to be in an interview with you, I postponed my workout this morning because I’ve learned that if I have a hard workout, my interview is not so clear. So I said, OK, I’m going to save my energy, so let it all out with you. You know, I let it all out during the workout. It goes away. So that’s where the disagreement something everyone sees it differently. Some people are much more hardcore than me. A lot of people are in a different place. I like the bare minimum, you know, so that’s where I say we don’t see eye to eye. We all have a different gauge of how to apply that effort.

Brilliant Miller [01:17:39] I got it. OK, thank you and thank you for saving your energy. The best part is for going to work out for them for this interview.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:17:46] Well, yeah, well, I’ve learned that. I’ve learned that lesson is like, you know, it’s a you can work out and do those kind of things. But, you know, if it’s, for example, that I’m doing a lecture at night or at 4:00 or 5:00, I know my body. I can do a workout maybe around 8:00 or 9:00 at the very most 11:00 and then rest. I just got to rest. So I let it all out. It’s kind of like with coffee. If I drink a cup of coffee past noon, I’m not sleeping that night. It’s just it’s just we have to know your body, this willingness to know your body. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [01:18:20] Now, part part of the journey ourselves. Question number three, if you were required to wear a T-shirt with a slogan on it or a phrase or a saying or a quote or a quip, what would the shirts say? If you were required to wear it every day for the rest of your life, what would you wear every day?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:18:47] Not today. I love it. OK, I came it came close. The first one I was going to say is the force run strong with my family. So I have that.

Brilliant Miller [01:19:04] OK, question number four, what book other than one of your own, have you gifted or recommended most often?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:19:13] That’s a good one. For different reasons, while I have a lot work, so I just want go what’s top of my head, How to Raise an Adult by Julie Haimes this is one out of this quite a bit and of course, the other one is the autistic brain, quite simple. Those are two books I’ve given up the most one on my wife’s not here, so she left.

Brilliant Miller [01:20:04] OK. All right. OK, question number five, so you’ve traveled a lot in your life. What’s one travel hack, meaning something you do or something you take with you when you travel to make your travel less painful or more enjoyable?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:20:21] I travel about. It’s going to have to be my phone because it has all my music in it. So headphones and my music. Which is in my cell phone. Nowadays, if which is better than walking around with a big album of CDs I used to carry around with me.

Brilliant Miller [01:20:46] Music is life, isn’t it?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:20:47] Yeah, so it’s definitely my headphones and music. All right.

Brilliant Miller [01:20:51] Question number six. What’s one thing you started or stopped doing in order to live or age well?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:20:59] Drinking. Alcohol. I started I stopped drinking alcohol for almost five years ago because I have sleep apnea and I was waking up with heart palpitations every time I had a drink and I was able to tell because luckily I didn’t drink that often. But when I did, it showed up. So it in the process of. What’s the expression I’m trying to remember? Eliminating little by little. Let me find out that alcohol and sleep apnea are not good for my body, because when you drink alcohol, it relaxes the muscles. And when we have sleep apnea, then that intensifies your sleep apnea, which means I’m not getting oxygen into my body. So the reason why I was having heart palpitations is that the heart was doing its very best to send blood up to my brain to get oxygen to it. Otherwise, I was going to be losing more brain cells than I have. So the moment I became aware of that and there was a truth, a moment of clarity, I can say I stopped drinking because I wanted to live, you know, because if I continued unchecked with that, then one night I would have had either a heart attack or a stroke. Now, mind you, a heart attack is one thing whether you survive or you don’t. A stroke. You know, if it’s it’s a it’s a lose lose situation, you know, and it’s a horrible Russian roulette. Yeah. So because of that and I was 40 years old when this happened, I realized, you know what? That’s it. And, you know, unlike when I was in my 20s, like, I’m not going to drink anymore or whatever. Now this time I’m like, I’m in the zone. I’m 40 years old. That my heart attacks and strokes are the real thing I can say is the moment that I accepted my mortality and I chose no, I want to live. I want to see my kids grow up. So wanting to help. It was no longer drinking alcohol at that point. I was already running. I was already I had already changed my lifestyle in that way. But they’re not drinking alcohol is one that I’m not even tempted by it. I’m not even tempted at all because I know that I haven’t healed by my sleep apnea device. I haven’t healed it. And it’s the consequence is not worth the effort. Like my friend would say, the juice is not worth the squeeze now.

Brilliant Miller [01:23:34] Well, I’m glad you discovered that and cut that out of your life before it had serious consequences. So good for you. I’m going to insert a question six, a six eight. What has been your favorite marathon or what’s been one that you’ve just enjoyed? A lot of the six you’ve run, say, six, 18 1/2 marathons.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:23:55] I’ve run five California International Marathons, which is from Folsom to Sacramento, and I’ve run one San Diego Marathon, which is around San Diego. The rest of them are half marathons all over the place. So it’ll be my very favorite. Marathon has to be my second one. And the reason why is that I finished it, I finished all of them, but that one I had around mile 18, I started having some issues with my hip flexor and a mile 20, I felt like an electric shock going up and down from my pelvis, down to my foot, up to my brain, going, wow, what? And then I run. I lost my ability to run, run my running straight. And I have six more miles left. So at that moment, I thought it was OK, you know, if I wanted to stop, I could stop, but I could walk and I could walk without pain at that moment. So I decided to walk. And as I’m walking, so that moment, I just I, I accepted the truth. I’m not going to finish at a time. I was going to finish whatever image I had. I let go of it. I completely surrendered the truth of my situation, but I still wanted to finish. So I adapted to my truth and I kept walking. The bus to the truck would drive by, open the door, inviting me to get in. And I’m like, No, thank you, I appreciate it. But also, by the end of it, I was it was painful. But I finished it and I crossed another threshold, my my subtitle class. I didn’t hurt myself in the sense that I wasn’t really, really enjoying myself more in a sense, because I wasn’t using that muscle anymore. When I wasn’t using that, I was using the hip flexor, but I was using different muscles to compensate that. When I crossed the line, I had the biggest smile. It was just. Such a rewarding feeling. That. It’s my favorite since then, I’ve ran my other marathons and some of them I finish running, some of them I had a hard time, but I still finished that one, though, is the one that I knew I had. I have faith in myself. To be able to do it and I did it, you know, it’s like knowing what it feels like to dig deep down to get something done. And know I like what it’s like. So for me, that was a big lesson that here’s the thing. I applied with everything, that lesson from that day. I carry it from writing books to giving lectures to being on tour, to being a parent of an autistic boy, of a teenage girl, of going through this whole thing. It’s it’s the thing that I, I translate things as if that lesson I can apply it in my running. I can physically apply everything everywhere else. You know, I run half marathons, a spectacular lot of fun, a lot of great moments in life. That one is the one that feels all those runs, that’s all. So, you know, you have that one moment. I just gives power to all of knowing I can do this. And I have also I have one that I run that one race where I stop because I’m hurting my ankle and I keep pushing it. What what do I want? I want to run again. OK, I’ll stop running right now. Except that person. All right. You know, I’ve done that. But that day, that day, I got to know what they did. Sorry, my accent got in the way. Digging deep means then it’s not a concept. It’s something I can tap into.

Brilliant Miller [01:28:03] Yeah. In that that to me is such a beautiful example of what we were talking about a few minutes ago, about goals, about us. Then what you become, what you learn and experience in the process. And now you apply that to just someone.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:28:17] And I had to let go of the goal. I had to let go. And I was like, it wasn’t the motivator and I wasn’t gonna call myself a quitter or whatever. It’s like I had to accept my truth at the moment and adapt and ask myself, what do I want? I want to cross that line. OK, what do I do? Do that. And I accepted the truth and I adapted and. Is called being flexible. If you want, my grandma used to say, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans. Well, you adapt is by being flexible. You know, this this this situation. We’re all living all across the world. You know, a year ago, we adapt. The first it was difficult, but eventually we found that rhythm. And once we found that rhythm following it, it was like to do social distance. Learning with an autistic son is difficult, you know, to help my daughter to the emotional turmoil of not being around her friends. It’s also been difficult. So we had different things. They had to adapt and you let go of it and I’m not working anymore. So that’s why I stopped touring, because I was I can’t really go anywhere. But my it was perfect because my priority was with my family. Now, would that you become flexible and you ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish in this situation? And that is the thing. And the number one rule I had to pull that thing, especially those first six months, is every time I woke up, get dressed, don’t stay in your pajamas, get dressed. Was an action setting the intent? It’s not a vacation. We’re going to work through this now and then it came from that moment, you know, that moment in that that race.

Brilliant Miller [01:30:01] That’s great. OK, last few questions in the lightning round, question number seven, what’s one thing you wish every American knew?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:30:13] Compassion.

Brilliant Miller [01:30:17] Now to question number eight, what is the most important or useful thing you’ve ever learned about making relationships work?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:30:36] In my lessons, I teach about, I only control to the tips of my fingers, I don’t control beyond that. And every relationship exists because we say yes to one another. So you can say is the free will of two individuals who say yes to one another and they’re completely free to change their mind at any given moment. So. Our relationship. That’s it. My stepmom asked my wife, a stepmom, and she may she rest in peace, ask my wife, how did you survive the culture clash between you, each other? You know, my wife, like I said before, she grew up in Herriman, Utah, and I grew up in San Diego, California. And my wife answered a very beautiful way, she said, because we love each other. When couples come and ask me for advice, I always ask the same question do you guys want to stay together? And they both say, yes, the rest is easy because that mutual yes is the motivator that allows you to get through all these hurdles. If they both say no, that’s also easy because they’re both saying the truth, it’s complicated when one says yes and no one says no, that I’m only trying to change someone else’s mind. And that’s gets always gets complicated. Now, what is that neutral? Yes. For one another, that mutual respect for one another that allows us to enjoy the relationship. The. So respect a long way to get to that answer.

Brilliant Miller [01:32:12] That’s great. Well, I know more about we’re at the time that we had agreed we would talk. I have just I think three more questions.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:32:21] I think I can stick around, OK.

Brilliant Miller [01:32:24] All right. So the last one here in the Enlightening Lightning Round is about money. And it’s this aside from compound interest, what’s the most important or useful thing you’ve ever learned about money or what something you’re always sure to do with it or you never do with it?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:32:39] Oh, the biggest thing I’ve ever learned about money is that knowing the difference between an asset and a liability. A liability takes money out of your pocket, and that’s it brings money into put it into it. Even if you know the difference between the two, everything is easy.

Brilliant Miller [01:33:00] What were the specific assets or asset and liability that taught you this lesson?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:33:07] Well, obviously I’m referring to a book that poured out that Robert Kazuki that I read when I was very young, when it came out. But that main idea that an asset brings money to you and a liability takes money out of you, it’s like you realize that it’s a liability is something that you that takes energy out of you and assets, something that brings energy to you if you look at money and that in that regards and it’s been said before and it’s a cliche, I know my money is energy, and that’s because it’s a symbol that represents a shared value. Before money trade was you wouldn’t know if it was of the same value it gives you allows allows you to understand that this is worth the same time. You know, is that in that regard, what is fair trade? So money represents a symbol that represents something and an agreement between these two people or society. This is how much it’s worth. And of course, with inflation at every change, everything changes. But something that is true with whether money is money or whatever, is something that brings things to you and things that take things out of you. In regards to money, what do you create that brings money to you in the form of work, investment or passive income or those things, and what is it that takes money out of you in the sense that you have to work really hard in order to pay for that? And hopefully you’re not overspending and going beyond your means. When I learn that lesson, it’s all about learning how that balance is, because my father talks about finding all the energy leaks in you. What if you learn if you’re able to let go of the leaks in your life, you have more energy for yourself. And that’s a spiritual concept. There is like look for the leaks if you translate that to money and look at all the things that take money out of you. And basically that’s all the effort that is taken out of you, that you have to really work in order to get that back. Where is an asset, something that reduces your effort but is still able to bring you money? All right. In the sense of what we know in this capitalist society, a liability or an asset is something like a rent, something that gives you royalties, something that gives you investment capital. What’s the word? I’m looking for reduction in income and income. Yeah. And some liability is something that takes your income away. A simple today you get we get paid and all of a sudden the money goes away, because as soon as you got it, you have to pay for everything that you have. And also then just like and where it came in very late. All right. That’s that’s how that energy flowed. All right. How can I balance that? How can I balance what I give energy to and what. Bring her energy to me, and if we can find that and finances, we can also find that in our personal life with drama, with gossip, with love and compassion, compassion and love brings energy to you, gossip and all that stuff as it drains you. Whenever you sit down with someone who’s gossiping all the time and just dumping all this stuff on you at the end of that conversation, you’re drained of energy. It’s it’s it’s a lot. Yeah. But then if you’re talking to someone who is inspiring, you also like you might be the same amount of time, but instead of being drained, you feel energized because this person just gave you all this inspiration. There it is, you know. Yeah. So it’s the same thing with finances. With money. Yeah. No, on a negative relationship relationship with money. We’re projecting onto it the behavior of individuals and it has nothing to do with money. But it’s a prediction we have. You know, greed and selfishness is one of the characteristics of that where abundance and generosity, you know. So it reminds me of what my father says. Love is the perfect balance between gratitude and generosity.

Brilliant Miller [01:37:46] I like that. I’ve heard a lot of definitions of love, but never that one. I like that.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:37:51] Yeah, that’s my dad. That’s my dad. That’s the one he uses. OK, generosity and gratitude.

Brilliant Miller [01:37:59] So the last part of the interview here is is about writing and the creative process. And I know we could we could do an hour and a half on this alone that we want. Yeah, but I just want to I want to ask you this question about. I definitely want to ask you about your advice and encouragement for those who are working to get their own books done. So love, if you just give a few words to those listening who find themselves in that situation. But I also wonder if you’d be willing to share a little insight into how how you get your books done. I know there’s not a secret. I know it’s a lot of hard work.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:38:41] It’s a marathon.

Brilliant Miller [01:38:43] So so I guess I would just say, what’s the thumbnail like? How do you do it? Having done it five times, you’re in the midst of writing your six now. How do you do it? And then what advice and encouragement do you leave those listening with?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:38:56] OK, I’ll start with a quote from a movie, Finding Forrester. You’re right with your heart to edit with the mind. I love that line and that phrase, that quote, because it’s the truth, the first draft that you write is a purge. It’s not pretty. It’s not grammatically correct. It’s purging all these ideas. And the reason why you’re able to purge is because the audience is you. It’s me. So you write with the heart and you let it. It’s like throwing up. And the thing about it is that we have to learn not to edit as we are purging, being able to trust in ourselves, to let it all out, let it all out.

Brilliant Miller [01:39:40] Which, by the way, was much easier for us because we read your books and we broke up with our inner critic and our inner judge.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:39:47] Thank you. Here you go. Thank you so much for that, is because when I first started writing, it would take me two or three hours to write a paragraph. And the reason why is because it needs to be pristine. It needs to be perfect. Darren knew Jack Kerouac for writing a manuscript without any editing on the road, on the road and in the way.

Brilliant Miller [01:40:12] I was going to jump in for a minute and just put a point on what you said about literally three hours for one paragraph. That’s not that’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. So for people who are listening, who are serious about this, realizing those who do it, who’ve written five, six books, have gone through this journey and maybe sometimes still do with their hours on one block of text on three hundred words.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:40:35] Yeah. And really, we want it to be perfect from the get go. And it takes a long time to be able to develop the trust of. Being terrible and let it all out, let it all out, because you’re trying to create a play, you’re trying to create the play by which we’re molding, so get yourself out of the way. Don’t edit as you write. Let it all out. Let it all out. Let it all out. It’s like I said before, it’s like purging is like throwing up. And once you have all that done, you can write several, several pages without a paragraph, without a period, without a comma, without anything. Just learn to let it all out. Hit, say, walk away. Come back later or in a day or two or a week or however long. Select all copy, open up a new file paste. It save. Put away the other one and never touch it again. It’s your master. In this one, you start putting in grammatical rules. Periods, commas and all that stuff. Hit, save, walk away. Come back now, this is where editing with the mind comes in. The reason why you edit with the mind is because all of a sudden you’re the reader has changed and the first manuscript, you are the reader. When you’re the reader, you can have gaping holes and all things because you’re the one filling in the holes. When you start editing, the reader changes, it’s going to be your reader people out there. You’re basically editing in a form of you’re translating it into language someone else can understand. And the book has to stand on its own and doesn’t like the author, doesn’t have the reader, doesn’t have you to ask the question, what do you mean? What do you mean there? What do you mean? Unless you have an interview. But the book has to stand on its own. So you begin to edit my first book of five Letters of Attachment. I wrote five manuscripts and I use two different editors to help me with that one. There was three editors that branded my publisher. He’s the main editor of all my books. He’s the final say. It’s like it’s a Janet Mills system. My father, Randy, dialyzed mine. Christy Makris is my editor. That helps me put in the rules of grammar to that claim that that purge and we work begin to work out which each know we put it into thing. She and I finish. We go with Randy and he starts putting in the edit. So Kristi knows me and Randy knows the audience. All right. But if you don’t have the luxury of having an editor, you still have to translate transcriber translated into a language that someone else understands. So that’s what I mean by you. Write with your heart. You edit with the mind. When you write with a heart, let it all out. Learn to just let it all out. And you want as much as you want, for example, and the. In the mess and the message itself I wrote about, actually, I’m going to go with the current book, I just I’m writing right now, I turned in eighty thousand words in the first manuscript. The first the first purge. And I cut it down to about 60, then down to forty five, and once you I’m forty five now and editing mode of like, all right, now we’re not now we’re somewhere, you know, if you get up 30, you’re really, really good. Then you begin to then what you add is you filling in the holes and then it grows. Patience is important, there is that phrase and someone saying, if you write five hundred words a day by the end of the year, you have a novel. That’s very true and that’s very important. But editing is something is a gift, so you have to learn how to keep the line you have like this line that keeps it all together. Now, the most important part of a book. An idea. Mind you, the reader starts from beginning to end. The author does not. The author is free to start wherever the author wants to start, he or she can start wherever there’s a plot. And the image I have is, well, there’s two. Oh, man, I just forgot her name. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series, now this is I’m going off memory here from what I read from an interview. So I might I might add my memory might be off, but I’ll say it this way. Of her very first thoughts, the very first image on the Harry Potter series was that of a giant walking out of a forest with a body of a boy in his arms. That’s the very first image she had. If you read the series, you know, that’s the last book that’s lost at the end of a seven big, big books.

Brilliant Miller [01:46:19] It’s a more than a million words, by the way, to my daughters during the pandemic, I think it’s a million seventy four thousand or more.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:46:26] And that’s awesome because how is your voices is heard. It’s good. It’s all good. It was fun. So so you know, exactly how far in is that image of a giant walking out of a forest with a boy? Yeah. Which means the whole world was answering questions. Which who is this giant? Who’s this boy? What are they doing? Why they’re coming up. Why this this has that image. And she began to ask the question, who is this? What is this? What and all that. That’s all it is, is like answering who. So she creates this whole backstory to how these two people got there from that series of questions arise a very rich, very beautifully detailed world. And then the resolution comes not long after that, you know, like it’s it’s it’s it comes really quickly after that is that’s not that far after the Battle of Hogwarts, part two, whatever. But it’s really that you have a moment now in Mamma Mia! My, my my family loves Mamma Mia. The movie. The Musical. The author of that plan, because that’s what it was originally, a musical on Broadway, whatever the image this author had was of the mother. Singing The winner takes it all to the gentlemen, and the movie is Meryl Streep singing The Winner Takes It All to James Bond. That’s the very first image, and once again, it’s an image, a scene that’s at the very end. Who is this? What is this? It’s all backstory, so character development, asking the question, how did you get here? Why, who, where? When you’re basically reporter, you’re you’re filling in the gaps with questions. Why is this? Why is that? And also, it turns out that all this writing really is those moments, this epiphanies, questions that you answer that takes you outside of this comfort zone of what you know and what is anxiety is answering the what ifs with the worst case scenario emotionally. Same thing with a lot of things, you know, you can also put in the best case scenario and make you happy, you know, and an opposite direction as well. Who is this? Why is that? Who is this giant is name is Hagrid. Who is this boy’s name is Harry Potter. Why would a giant walk out with a boy? Well, he’s a wizard. And and this. And this and that. And you can see the whole thing. And there’s a reason why he like the. Alan Rickman, I think, has his name, who played Snape. He didn’t want to first. He was like, I’m not sure I want to do this. I don’t know, I’m going to do this part. And then Jake can roll, then says, come here, let me let me. So they go into the room there. She tells the arc of Snakes and the lion. Even still, and he says always, Rickman says, that’s it, that that part always got him, which means as an author, she already knew the arc, she knew the whole thing. And when that happened, that book wasn’t even published yet. When the first movie for the first Sorcerer’s Stone or the. Yeah, yeah, the Sorcerer’s Stone, that’s the first one, I think what the English version of it was in England.

Brilliant Miller [01:50:01] And it was The Philosopher’s Stone, The

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:50:03] Philosopher’s Stone, now the Philosopher’s Stone, the Sorcerer’s Stone. When that movie came out, we were still in book three or four where the Goblet of Fire or or the Prisoner of Azkaban had just come out like like the Deathly Hallows were years away from that. So it’s you do start writing at your first. Question the first mark, the first image in my case with the five levels of attachment, it was the moment it was. The image of Don Quixote looking at windmills in Central Plaza saying Don Quixote, Don Quixote, are you OK? What’s the matter with you? Those are giants. They’re windmills. And look what they’re saying to him. Essential how naive you are. It was my arch nemesis, the magician, who turned these days into windmills just to make me look bad. That image is what allowed me to put into perspective the five levels of attachment. And I began to write that was the image and ask yourself, it’s basically letting go of the identity and going into preference and how we take off the mask of our identity, that slippery slope by which we domesticate ourselves or honor our past and our preferences. This identity is a beautiful thing. That’s the image. In the seven secrets of happy, healthy relationships, secret number four. Shilling’s. Is that was the image that the story I told you about my ex or my first love? No. And this one, it is the image of a new one is the image of a Seraphin. Who? Is becomes aware of that is the voice of God. When a human see hears the voice of God, he’s actually not hearing the voice of God, because if a human were to ever hear the voice of God, the human would explode. It would get destroyed, which means God speaks through a serafin that talks at the level of humanity. That is the image I have in describing what I’m talking about is that the the mind, you know, the in the four agreements, my father calls it the parasite, the that to me, which is to me, the judge and the victim there, the act of domestic terror in our life, it is the redemption of the mind. How does the surf and how does this little demon called the parasite find redemption? To become a channel of unconditional love, which is the angel that fell that becomes the ally. Redemption songs emancipate yourself from mental slavery, no ourselves can free our mind, which is, of course, the mass of yourself as well, but it’s also here as well. You have this image and you begin to roll it out.

Brilliant Miller [01:53:20] Beautiful, and I imagine those who are listening, who have an aspiration to write and see something for themselves, hopefully they’re recognizing what that kernel is or what the genesis of this idea is and can use it to guide them and follow what you’ve said about just right from the heart. Edit with the head later.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:53:42] But and I can tell you what I told my nephews and my nieces, because I’ve got my my nephews and nieces have asked me similar questions I how to write a book. And my nieces who have who had to become an artist, I told them, you really want my help? Yeah, I want my help. Are you sure? Hey, OK, well, there’s one thing I need you to do first. Except this truth. You’re never going to get published like what? Repeat after me, I’m never going to get published, but but but repeat after me, I’m never going to get published. But but I’m on uncle to. Look at my eyes and accept this truth, I’m never going to get published. And eventually they relent and I say, fine. I’m never going to get published. Good. Now that you accepted it, why are you still doing it? Because I want to and there it is, that’s what you do it. Let go of the image that one day you’re going to get published. Let go of the image. You’re going to be a New York Times best seller or a best selling author or a musician with great accolades and multiple albums sold with sold out arenas. Let go of that once you let go. Why you’re still doing it. Because I love to. That. Is the motivator why you do it? Success is going to be unique to you. It’s going to be different for everyone. But if you’re doing it because you love to do it. You’re already succeeding, even if you play to a bar or a small club or have just a few readers. You did because you wanted to, not because you had to know.

Brilliant Miller [01:55:43] Awesome, what a wonderful way to to conclude. Thank you for that for that insight. Miguel, if people want to connect with you or they want to learn, they want to learn more from you. What would you have them do?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:55:57] Well, there’s a website. I have a www.donmigueljr.com, or my father’s. We got to restart. And that’s more like the family you’ll find. My father and my brother and myself, they’re. We’re active nowadays, but everything changes, looks like it is so I always say the website is our home base, but yeah.

Brilliant Miller [01:56:20] Awesome. That’s great, and one thing that I’ve done it as an expression of gratitude to you for making time to share so generously of your experience and your wisdom with me and everyone listening as I’ve gone online to give a dog the microlensing site. And I’ve made one hundred dollar microloan to an entrepreneur who is in El Salvador. She’s a single mother. She sells food, but she’s also a farmer. So she’s going to use this money to lease some land and buy some farming supplies where she’ll grow and sell corn. So thank you for giving me a reason to go and make that long.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr [01:56:58] Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for doing that. I really am grateful for you to help so many things that way.

Brilliant Miller [01:57:09] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of the School for Good Living podcast. Before you take off, I just want to extend an invitation to you. Despite living in an age where we have more comforts and conveniences than ever before, life still isn’t working for many people, whether it’s here in the developed world where we deal with depression, anxiety, loneliness, addiction, divorce, unfulfilling jobs or relationships that don’t work, or in the developing world where so many people still don’t have access to basic things like clean water or sanitation or health care or education. But they live in conflict zones. There are a lot of people on this planet that life isn’t working very well for. If you’re one of those people or even if your life is working, but you have the sense that it could work better. Consider signing up for the School for Good Livings Transformational Coaching Program. It’s something I’ve designed to help you navigate the transitions that we all go through, whether you’ve just graduated or you’ve gone through a divorce or you’ve gotten married, headed into retirement, starting a business, been married for a long time, whatever. No matter where you are in life, this nine month program will give you the opportunity to go deep in every area of your life to explore life’s big questions, to create answers for yourself in a community of other growth minded individuals. And it can help you get clarity and be accountable. To realize more of your unrealized potential can also help you find and maintain motivation. In short, is designed to help you live with greater health, happiness and meaning so that you can be, do, have and give more visit good living dotcom to learn more or to sign up today.