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Rod Stryker, author, "The Four Desires"

COLUMN = SELF-HELP

Rod Stryker is the founder of ParaYoga and the author of The Four Desires: Creating a Life of Purpose, Happiness, Prosperity, and Freedom. He also blogs for The Huffington Post.

Rod is widely considered to be one of the preeminent yoga, tantra, and meditation teachers in the United States.

He is renowned for his depth of knowledge, practical wisdom, and unique ability to transmit the deepest aspect of the teachings and practices to modern audiences and students from all walks of life. Rod has taught for more than thirty years, training teachers and leading corporate seminars, yoga retreats, and workshops throughout the world.

Stryker began his intensive study and practice of yoga, at the age eighteen. Two years later he began a nearly two-decade-long apprenticeship with internationally renowned Yoga master Kavi Yogiraj Mani Finger and his son, Yogiraj Alan Finger.

Eventually, he would become his teachers’ only American disciple to be given the title Yogiraj, master of Yoga. Rod met his current teacher, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait Ph.D., spiritual head of the Himalayan Institute, in 1999.

Acclaimed as a leading voice for the ancient traditions, accomplished Yogi, teacher, lecturer, and writer, Rod has a down-to-earth approach informed as much by his mastery of the sublime teachings, as it is by his love of life and devotion to his wife and four children. Rod lives with his family in Colorado.

For more information, visit www.rodstryker.com.

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. 
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.”

– Mary Jean Irion

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

– Anthony Trollope

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

Part of your destiny is to live in the zone of maximum satisfaction.”

– Martha Beck

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.”

– Langston Hughes

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

You don’t go into a field that requires cracking people’s heads open or operating on something as delicate as the spinal cord unless you are comfortable with taking risks.”

– Dr. Ben Carson

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leon Joseph Suenens

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

– Groucho Marx

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

Don’t wait for someone else to lead you to your right life; that privilege—and responsibility—is yours alone.”

– Martha Beck

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

– Seneca

A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

– Carlos Castaneda

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.”

– Aristotle

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

    Articles by Rod Stryker