We’ve all experienced it—something unexpected happens and changes everything. Sometimes, that something turns a peaceful morning or productive work day into a stomach-churning ordeal. Other times, it fills us with excitement and lifts us out of our rut. Despite our best laid plans and intentions, we can’t predict or control what might happen at any given moment. “Go with the flow,” we’re often told, and it feels good thinking or saying it. How do you actually do it?

That’s what bestselling author Daniel A. Miller set out to learn after terrible somethings—a five-year legal battle with an unscrupulous business partner, the threat of bankruptcy, a deranged neighbor setting fire to his home, a shootout robbery at one of his properties, and four major facial surgeries—kept happening and brought him to his knees.

In THE WAY OF THE WAVE: Nature’s Model for Navigating Life’s Currents (Ebb and Flow Press; March 2025), Miller shares insights and practices from his nearly forty-year journey—marked with both success and failure—of trying to “Go with the Wave” in all aspects of life. The Wave represents the mysterious rhythm or energy force that surrounds and affects us all—and cannot be controlled or manipulated. It also draws inspiration from the countless hours Miller has spent on the beach in California, observing the ocean waves and engaging in a popular pastime: body-surfing.

“Body-surfing waves serves as a good analogy for the factors involved in navigating our life currents,” Miller states. “Notably, the practices and mindsets that enhance body-surfing also enhance navigating our life currents: acceptance, trust, intuition, humility, self-care, and surrender among them.  And the ones that obstruct it–particularly control—also obstruct our life currents.”

Along with sharing his own struggles and breakthroughs in riding the undulating waves of love and romance, parenting, work, interacting with friends and foes, aging, and creative and athletic endeavors, in THE WAY OF THE WAVE, Miller offers inquiries, reflections, and exercises to help guide others in their rides. With honesty, wisdom, compassion, and humor, he explains:

• • How Wave Obstructors—patterns of behavior that hinder both our ability to navigate life’s challenges and the open flow of ideas and choices—deprive us of opportunities that can vastly improve our lives—with a priority on the greatest obstructor of them all: control. From decades of experience as a major controller, Miller knows how tough it is to change this ingrained habit and shares some of the tools he’s learned to decontrol his life.

• • The powerful deterrents to going with the flow: high expectations, limited thinking, failure to set boundaries, avoidance, and “Judging harms mainly ourselves,” Miller attests. “When we are focused on how others navigate their life currents, it’s difficult to navigate our own.  Judging is a diversionary tactic that distracts people from taking stock of themselves and improving their own shortcomings.”

• • Why practicing acceptance is vital to aligning with our life currents. “The simple truth is to go with the flow, you have to accept the flow—whether you view it as good, bad, or somewhere in between,” Miller stresses.  “That allows us to make reality-based decisions that serve us best.”

• The Wave Enhancers, mindsets that facilitate navigating life’s currents, starting with trust. Miller stresses the strong link between trust and fear. “Simple mathematics suggests we are better served by trusting the flow when encountering unknown waters,” he asserts. “Most outcomes are just as likely to be positive as negative, so why not put our mental energy into trusting everything will be okay until the outcome is known instead of expending it on worrisome speculations?”

• The power of navigating life’s currents with humility, truthfulness, faith in our own intuition, and a priority on self-care. “A life without self-care is a life out of balance,” Miller observes. “A life out of balance often leads to emotional, physical, and spiritual ill health.”

Miller also offers guidance for navigating the troubled waves, including addiction (our own or a loved one’s), combativeness, and the Tidal Wave of our times: the Great Divide. To begin to lessen the gulf between people of opposing social, cultural, and political views, he advocates engaging in “acceptance conversations.” Whether structured or informal, such conversations can help us discover common ground and interests, foster clearer understanding, and create paths for healing.

Deeply insightful and practical, THE WAY OF THE WAVE offers hope for not only individuals but our turbulent nation.