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The Highest Goal: The Secret That Sustains You in Every Moment

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This might be the most important book you ever read. Michael Ray's "Creativity in Business" class was the most influential course I took as an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (or anywhere else for that matter). The life-changing insight I drew from his class was that my own inner Voice of Judgment (VOJ) is the only obstacle to my becoming the person I am meant to be by doing the work I am meant to do.

That, of course, should be a pretty self-evident notion. What made Michael's course so helpful was that he gave us heuristics in the form of systematic exercises that he calls "live-withs." These help transform mere intellectual insight into real experience of life. When you "live with" behavioral guides such as "Pay Attention," "Walk Into Fear," or "Be Loyal to Your Own Values," you start seeing unexplored potential in yourself and endless possibilities in the world around.

The Highest Goal shows how these simple yet sophisticated live-withs can help you find and pursue the highest goal that gives your life an overarching sense of purpose and meaning. Some of what he has to say will surprise you - such as the advice to move beyond passion and success. Some of it will challenge you - such as the counterintuitive notion that the path to True Prosperity can start by living with "Do Only What You Love, Love Everything You Do."

Michael says that finding your highest goal is like the experience of falling in love: nothing around you has changed but everything is different, because you have changed. The experience is energizing, it is catalyzing, and it is endlessly generative. It's not always easy, as some of the stories in his book make clear, but it is always worth the effort.

As Jim Collins (author of Good to Great and coauthor of Built to Last) says in his foreword, Michael's book "is a deeply subversive work; if you follow its teachings to their logical conclusion, you will almost certainly make significant changes in how you orient your life." I am living proof of that statement. Had I not taken Michael's class in 1985, I don't know where I'd be today, but I do know it would be a place created in response to the goals of others instead of a place from which I can pursue my own highest goal.

In the Foreword, Jim Collins recalls his first encounter in 1982 with Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers, two Stanford professors who together taught a course for MBA students called Creativity in Business. (They later co-authored a book of that title based on the same course in which Collins had enrolled.) Myers quietly informed Collins and his classmates, "You are about to embark on a ten-week journey to discover your deepest inner essence." Immediately Collins began to search for a replacement in the catalogue. Later, at his wife Joanne's urging, Collins remained in the class and accepted "a fundamental challenge issued to all of us: [begin italics] Make your life itself a creative work of art. [end italics]" More than two decades later, Ray offers in this volume a core process based on the meta-concept of "live-with heuristics" whose objective is to help a person achieve her or his "highest goal."

Time out. Those who have read this commentary to this point may be tempted to move on, just as Collins once was. Please don't. Hang in there just as Collins once did.

As Collins explains, there are certain "mantras of living" that one implements for a period of time (usually a week or more) and then reflects upon what has been experienced as a result. For example:

If at First You Don't Succeed, Surrender
Pay Attention!
Ask Dumb Questions
Destroy Judgment, Create Curiosity
Don't Think About It
Be Ordinary
Do Only What Is Easy, Effortless, and Enjoyable

At Ray's urging, I came up with a few of my own:

Don't Resist...Absorb
When Encountering Abstract Art, Don't Look at It...Listen
Remember What Really Bothered Me Last Week [Note: I never can]
Each New Day Is a Mulligan [Note: I am an avid golfer]
When Hearing Music, Don't Listen...See It

As Ray explains, he realized over time that the impact of his course, Personal Creativity in Business, went beyond its structure, procedures, and exercises. "It touched something very deep in people. They made discoveries about themselves that informed their actions and transformed their lives. Even though we never mention it in our teaching, they discovered their highest goal -- the secret that would sustain them, come what may. As one participant put it years after taking the course, `This is transformation that works and lasts.'...[Students] learned -- most early in life but many much later -- through a crisis or through experiencing love and a connection to something higher that if they live for this connection, they keep growing closer to what is right for them. They are open to life and view it as an adventure." Only by tapping their inner resources can they make their lives a creative work of art, fulfilling themselves in service to others.

On several occasions as I read Ray's book, I was reminded of this passage from Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching:

Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.

For me, this passage is directly relevant to the core process of "live-with heuristics" which can guide and inform those who aspire to lead others.

Each life is a journey from one moment to the next, from one experience to the next. What we learn is revealed within a sequence of discoveries. (The word "heuristics" is derived from the Greek infinitive "heuriskein," to find.) If reading this book is viewed as a journey, there is indeed much of value to discover from what it shares. With all due respect to Ray and his book, however, the discoveries of greatest value to me were re-discoveries of what I already knew (or thought I did). In Appendix A, Continue the Journey, Ray acknowledges that there will be obstacles to overcome, albeit ones "that can be enriching." He suggests several ways by which to face those obstacles and convert them into learning experiences. Of special relevance to me is this passage: "Many of us pack too much when we travel, and one thing you don't want to take with you on your journey to the highest goal is the VOJ, the Voice of Judgment. So write or draw the aspects of the VOJ or secret fears that you really don't want to take with you. Make them intense, because these are the remaining aspects of the VOJ that continue to trouble you." They do indeed.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the aforementioned Tao Te Ching as well as James O'Toole's Creating the Good Life: Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness, Alan Watts's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, and David Whyte's The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.

This book is based on the author's acclaimed Personal Creativity in Business class, which he taught at Stanford University for 25 years to the likes eBay entrepreneur Jeff Skoll and Good to Great bestselling author Jim Collins. But it's not another business management book, or even a book on how to tap your creativity.

Instead, Ray reveals the secret that all the successful people he taught ultimately attributed their success to - living their life connected and committed to their "highest goal." Essentially, your highest goal is the aspiration that gives meaning to your life, motivates and sustains you. Aligning your efforts with it will help you accomplish your dreams and find fulfillment. Ray suggests exercises to to identify it, then helps you better integrate it into your life based on your key challenges. His "live-withs" are simple but powerful tools for shifting your thinking and actions so you can benefit from living with your highest goal every day.

What you should know....to some, the title and cover photo may imply a very "new age-y" type book. While there is a little of that, the book overall takes a very practical approach to the subject.

Favorite quote:

"Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service that is rendered in the spirit of joy."

-Mahatma Gandhi

This is quite simply the best book I have ever read on the 'how to' of living a meaningful life.

While I had never heard of Professor Michael Ray, he is far from a newcomer to the field, having created and taught the 'Personal Creativity in Business' course at Stanford for the past 25 years. This grounding in real-world business skills lifts Ray's spiritual approach to life and work above its new-age touchy-feely roots, and lends a sharp, practical edge to the world of spiritual practice.

At the core of the book are a series of heuristics - what Ray calls 'Live-withs'.

As he explains it:

"Live-withs are not affirmations. They are not prescriptions that tell you exactly what to do. Rather they call you to new ways of behaving that bring out your best."

Among my favorite live-withs (drawn mostly from his live courses):

*If at first you don't succeed, surrender
*Destroy judgement, create curiosity
*Ask dumb questions
*Do only what is easy, effortless, and enjoyable
*Everything in life is either a yes or a no

and of course,

*Amplify positive deviance... :-)

An extraordinary (and extraordinary useful) read.

I recently read on Google that a thousand books are published every day in the United States. However, in my opinion, there are only a very few that are personally transformational or life changing. My short list of books that changed my thinking or made me sit up and take notice includes:

"The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
"The Art of Selfishness" by David Seabury
"Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl
"Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard M. Weaver
"Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom
"Witness" by Whittaker Chambers
"Guide for the Perplexed" by E.F. Schumacher
"The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman
"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius
"The Lessons of History" by Will Durant
"Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill
"The Richest Man in Babylon" by George S. Clason
+ any books by Mortimer Adler and Eric Hoffer.

Now, I can add one more title to my list:--"The Highest Goal" by Michael Ray.

As a book junkie and an avid reader, I have skimmed and read many books, sometimes three or four times. Many of them have provided some wonderful insights and some new wisdom, but seldom does a book capture on every page profound thoughts and ideas of value. "The Highest Goal", in my opinion, does just that. When I read it, I took the time to underline key phrases and words, and wrote my own thoughts and ideas in the margins as well. After I was done, I was amazed at the number of entries I had made. For me, that is one important way to judge the value of a book. Moreover, the book is very well written in a clear and lucid style, and very well organized as well. Simple but quite profound, which is my highest accolade for a book.

I also call "The Highest Goal" a capstone book, which means for me, a book that brings together a lot of ideas under one framework. Michael Ray introduces eight simple life steps in his book and reinforces these life steps with a powerful mechanism he refers to as heuristics or "rules of thumb for insight and learning." What is truly powerful about these heuristics is that they are quite simple to understand and, of even greater importance, they are easy to put into practice on Monday morning--in business or in our personal lives. I believe this book can easily change the life of anyone who puts these eight life steps and heuristic "live-withs" into practice.

Here's my challenge to each of you. Buy the book, read it carefully, underline those ideas or thoughts that resonate with you, and in the margins write ideas or thoughts that are prompted by your reading. When you complete the book, I think you will be amazed at what has occurred. Michael Ray is a voice of value and his book is one to be shared with family, friends, and business colleagues. I would love to hear back from anyone who reads it. [...]

I had a personal encounter with Michael, until then a stranger to me, in which he turned my criticism of something he had done into positive feedback for himself and as an expression of gratitude, he sent me this book!
A week or so ago I read the introduction and I am still digesting the powerful insight derived from conducting a simple exercise to "Find the Most Meaningful Thing." It is amazing and wonderful that a couple of pages which arrive so unexpectedly and are read at the appropriate moment can create such an affirming experience.

I liked the concept of this book but I liked the exercises and experiments more. He has something he calls "Live withs" which are things like not judging or Do what you love, love everything you do, which he suggests doing for a week or more and seeing what your experience is and writing down what you notice, if you want to. They are powerful and help us learn some more about ourselves.

If you experience a lack of connection between what you love doing - what you are genetically and physically programmed to do - and your work, the misalignment can make you miserable. Author Michael Ray contends that life doesn't have to be that way. He guides you through some soul-searching steps to put you in touch with that one thing that really brings you joy. He calls this your "highest goal" - the quest that drives you to fulfill your purpose. He explains that you can think creatively, discover your highest goal, and steadily follow a path that leads to satisfaction, joy and meaning. We recommend this book to readers who are interested in self-help literature; Ray does a good job of explaining how to define your highest goal and get started on the path to achieving it.

Plain excellent! I bought the book in 2006 but actually ended up reading it in 2011. I immediately regretted I haven't read this book so much earlier.

What makes this book so strong?

First, it gives a proven framework (time proven over 25 years). In the foreword, Jim Collins (Author Good to Great, Built to Last, Beyond Entrepreneurship) writes "I would not be where I am today, with the wonderful life I`ve been given, without that course" (the course he talks about is the Stanford Business School creativity course given by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers). Jim Collins is one of the many giving similar positive credit to this framework presented in this book.

Second, it covers the 5 major life challenges with dedicated chapter for each. These are (middle range) problems that pop up regarding fundamentals of finding purpose and meaning in life: finding prosperity, dealing with time and stress, developing relationships that work, achieving balance and bring creativity into the world.

Third, as it covers the path of life and our own adventure of going through this path, it provides a great tool called "live-withs" to help with this journey (covering topics like: to develop faith in your own inner resources, to diminish your inner voice of judgment, to move into precise observation, to increase your use of penetrating questions, purpose/prosperity challenge, time and stress challenge, relationship challenge, balance challenge, challenge of sharing your creativity and more..).

"Live-withs" are statements of living that you implement for a period of time (usually a week or more), and on which you can reflect of this experience. Such live-withs can be like "be bold", "everything in life is either a yes or a no" or "have no expectations" (explanations are in the book). Interesting that this approach actually works to open you up to new possibilities. Some of these live-withs work perfectly, some will work a little and some don't work at all. Still it gives each time more clues and gives insight on what makes you the person you always wanted to be, the person fully aligned with your inner highest goal, the person in flow. It does require actual work and effort of trying out these live-withs.

The cover of this book is actually misleading as it makes you think first about innovation and creativity. This book is actually about your life as flow, a deeper meaning, a direction, a goal, a better alignment, therefore the title `The Highest Goal'. By doing so, creativity will come.

Great value!

Some reviewers of this book at amazon.com talk as if this is sect based just because it has some eastern influences. These eastern influences are actually minor here. The author does talk very briefly about meditation and that is it. Sadly these minor negative reviews are a strong way of labeling (and even mislabeling) a time-proven concept.

Contents:
Foreword by Jim Collins
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Go beyond passion and success
Chapter 2 - Travel your own path
Chapter 3 - Live with the highest goal
Chapter 4 - Find true prosperity
Chapter 5 - Turn your fears into breakthroughs
Chapter 6 - Relate from your heart
Chapter 7 - Experience synergy in every moment
Chapter 8 - Become a generative leader
Appendix A: Continue the Journey
Appendix B: Live-withs
Notes
Selected biobliography
Index
About the author

Michael Ray has nailed it! The highest goal as he describes it is what some might call their unique calling or the deep yearning that lies at the very core of their being. Like his Path of the Everyday Hero book, this one addresses what many have called true happiness. - John Renesch, author, Getting to the Better Future