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

Rating:
Summary: A Surprising Book!
Review: Business & Economics, Business / Economics / Finance, Business/Economics, Development - Business Development, Goal (Psychology), Personal Growth - General, Self-actualization (Psychology, Self-actualization (Psychology)

The Highest Goal is the distillation of years of accumulated wisdom from a great teacher who has the humility to view his thousands of students as his teachers.," from the forward.

For over 25 years, Michael Ray has taught the Personal Creativity in Business course at Stanford. And over the years graduates of the course seemed to go further, higher, faster than. Not always in monetary terms, but in achieving whatever their own goals might have been.

The chapter headings seem to present as good a summary as I could write about the goals of the book:

Go Beyond Passion and Success
Travel Your Own Path
Live with the Highest Goal
Find True Prosperity
Turn Fears into Breakthroughs
Relate from Your Heart
Experience Synergy in Every Moment
Become a Generative Leader.

Rating:
Summary: Gems of Wisdom and Tools for Practice
Review: Having had the privilege of writing the index for Michael Ray's book, The Highest Goal, I was greatly touched and inspired. I've spent many years studying both Eastern and Western philosophical thought and religion, and this book clearly and simply communicates what I believe are fundamental truths about the Self and a life of spiritual practice. Along with that understanding, Michael gives the reader tools for practice which will no doubt open the door to great growth and insight.

The inspiration for this book may have been the Stanford University Creativity in Business course, but it is most definitely a book about spiritual practice. The Highest Goal has the potential to transform lives-read it and open to a higher level of conscious living.


Rating:
Summary: From Finish to Start, Right from the Heart
Review: Michael Ray's book, THE HIGHEST GOAL, will speak not only to accopmlished businesspeople who want to know "Is there more?", but also to philosophers and writers and artists who want to know how they can do better with their life. When I look at a book like this, I very carefully assess the "tonal" of the author, and in this case, it is clear to me that Michael Ray not only knows what he is talking about, but that he has lived both ends of the spectrum he is bringing together: the spiritual and the world of work, money, and business genearlly.

But this is not merely a theoretical book. There are many concrete suggestions, including what Michael Ray calls "live withs," that is, principles that you can easily use in your day-to-day life to address what ever it is that is most bothersome or challenging to you.

I found this book well-written, inspiring, and more than a bit personally challenging. I have been on the path of the Highest Goal for many years, and if you read this book, it is likely that you will discover that you are on this same path as well.

-- Jordan Gruber, CEO, Enlightenment.Com

Rating:
Summary: Are You Ready to "Live With" Your Highest Goal?
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Treasure of a Book
Review: This book is one of the most important books of our time. A true treasure, Michael Ray's book will change your life if you allow it to. Within these pages are simple, yet profound, ways of to experience yourself in the world, something Michael refers to as "live-withs". The simplicity lies in both the basic truth that underlies each live-with message as well as the ease with which you can incorporate their use in your day-to-day life. Yet, the effect on your life, if you allow yourself to be open to what you learn, will be stunningly profound. As you open yourself to your own highest goal, you will indeed meet the real you along the way.

Rating:
Summary: Might be the most important book you ever read
Review: 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.