Cate Stillman - Master of You: A Five-Point System to Synchronize Your Body, Your Home, and Your Time with Your Ambition

Contents

To our collective human ancestors, who developed and refined the language of the elements so we can all unlock the powers within to live our best lives possible. And to the posse at Yogahealer.com, who cocreated the Master of You system with me.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

Abraham Maslow, Road Signs for Success

Ayurveda recommends integrating your being into your doing, so that your life is your practice.

Sebastian Pole, Discovering the True You with Ayurveda

You have to master yourself.

My cab driver in Atlanta on June 13, 2019

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:
WHO COULD YOU BECOME NEXT?

W hat are your deeper ambitions?

Im curious.

Im curious about what you would do with your time if you were deeply rested, resilient, focused on your next creative desires, and had time to heed the deeper callings of your life.

Im curious enough to have updated ancient human wisdom into an accessible system to help you activate and achieve your potential in the most honest and true way. Im sensible enough to know that first, before heeding your deeper calling, you might need to improve your energy, resilience, desire, and relationship with time to take back control of your life.

So, well begin from where you are right now.

Right now, we are at a beginning together.

What do you want your life and yourself to be like next?

What path are you steering yourself toward?

What target are you aiming for?

If you could develop yourself into the person you want to become next, what is that person like?

What can she do?

What if you met your present realities, challenges, and opportunities facing forward, rooted from within, activating support from all around you? What if you could keep designing for and actualizing the life beyond your current wildest dreams? Who could you become?

Master of You is an invitation to heed the beckoning of your soul. Like our ancestors did, you can empower yourself with the sheer, raw, intuitive forces of the five elements of Ayurveda. Space (also as known as ether) element is the unknown in front of you; earth element is beneath your feet and in the rhythms pulsing through your veins; fire element lights your path, showing you the way forward and sparking passion to endure; air element is the wind power to orient you to the field of time in hours to decades ahead; and water element teaches you surrender, humility, and flow. In Master of You, you will befriend the elements as you activate your heros or heroines journey through your deeper dreams and into your unique creative potential, your dharma.

This journey of your becoming is reflected in the golden spiral. Also known as the golden ratio, the golden spiral is a pattern that occurs everywhere in nature, from galaxies to plants to your body. A golden spiral is created when infinite expansion spirals from a starting point and extends into the unknown. The cyclical iterations of expansion and contraction that unveil our innate intelligence and universal power also constitute a golden spiral. The Master of You program rides the evolutionary current the golden spiral of you from right here, right now into the future, and well reflect on this expansion into your potential on the journey ahead. In traversing the spiral, youll ride the momentum of your learnings and your accomplishments thus far to fuel your next purpose. Throughout this process, Ill guide you through synchronizing your home, your body, your vision, and your time so you can experience a life of flow and integrity in fulfilling your ambition.

True ambition and self-leadership challenge us to be better, to transform. Bob Anderson and William Adams, authors of Mastering Leadership, wrote, Transformation is an acquired taste not for the faint of heart. However, significant culture shifts and performance require it. Thats the deal.

I want to recognize you for investing in your own transformation by picking up this book. Your attention is your most valuable currency, and you are your most valuable investment. We are smack-dab in a time labeled the attention economy and the experience economy. Together these terms recognize that we value, above all else, directing our attention to experiences. The highest rung on the ladder of experiences the best use of our attention is meaningful, transformational experiences. You want to do you better. We also want to do us better, to improve our relationships. We want purposeful lives, resilient bodies, inspiring homes, substantial relationships, and innovative projects. Living your life aligned to your purpose and potential is the transformation, and it is a process. Master of You provides an organized system, a sequence, that leads to self-mastery with your dharma your bigger purpose via the five elements.

HEEDING THE CALL

But first, as your guide, Ill share how heeding the call of ambition unfolded for me. During a summer in high school working on a volunteer wilderness trail crew under the tutelage of two environmental thought leaders, I picked up their worldview of looking for solutions to global problems. I saw solvable problems swirling around the health of the planet. This motivated me and a friend to form Students Concerned About Tomorrow (SCAT), an activist club focused on social diversity and ecological awareness. We quickly gave SCAT a platform and grew it into a small army for progressive initiatives.

In college, my curiosities centered on the intergenerational economics of climate change policy, which led to my working in Washington, DC, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally. Frustrated by policies that police unconscious and greedy behaviors to no avail, I turned my attention to helping humans become healthier, more vibrant, aware, awake, and ecologically connected beings.

This thread led me to the ancient wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda the paths of enlightenment and radiant longevity some of the oldest life-hacking systems iteratively tested and consistently practiced over millennia. And personally, I wanted to heal myself of increasingly chronic symptoms, including acne, allergies, excess body weight, negative self-talk, body judgment, constipation, migraines, and fibrocystic breasts.

By the turn of the centurys dotcom bust, I was an Ayurvedic practitioner and professional yoga teacher. Over time, I built my company, Yogahealer.com, into a hub of innovative global course communities revolving around Ayurveda, dharma, detox, and health-coach training. I cultivated a knack for creating innovative curricula that reveal the hidden power of these ancient wisdom traditions for modern people. Close to two decades later, Yogahealer.com is still evolving and growing, with much of the recent interest focusing on dharma, or living your life on purpose, and leadership, which brings us to Master of You.

WHY YOU WANT TO MASTER THE FIVE ELEMENTS

In this age of digital distraction, as a global culture, were struggling with our focus, creativity, anxiety, productivity, and personal purpose. Habituated to electronic devices, as a society were overscheduled, overwhelmed, overfed, and under-rested. Weve lost our sixth sense, which helped us navigate life according to our personal purpose, and sacrificed our health along with it. Yet, all-encompassing solutions to realigning our intrinsically and uniquely creative ambitions