In his book, The Highest Goal (Berrett-Koehler), Michael Ray offers a number of steps and exercises to guide people to finding and developing their highest self. I’ve had these 8 steps on my desk for years and they are a practical and powerful daily reminder:
1. Go beyond passion and success. Most of us “sub-optimize,” that is we go for the short-term and transitory. Go beyond these lesser goals to use the gifts of life you have been given.
2. Travel your own path. You can create your own path by simply paying attention to your own best performance – the critical incidents in your life – when you feel most your Self, in flow and in tune with the highest goal.
3. Live with the highest goal. Because everything in the world is a connected system, you can’t beat it, you can only join it.
4. Find true prosperity. The more you express and experience your highest qualities, the more you are filled with a rich feeling of self-worth, and the wealthier you will become in the truest sense.
5. Turn fears into breakthroughs. (I personally love this one!) When you have the grounding of the highest goal, you can see your fears for what they are.
6. Relate from your heart. I define “compassion” as seeing the highest in your Self first and then seeing the highest in others.
7. Experience synergy in every moment. You can achieve synergy – a much more dynamic state than balance – among the parts of your life by developing organizing structures based on your highest goal and by getting into the flow of intuitive decision-making.
8. Become a generative leader. Generative leaders pass along their experience of the highest goal and ignite creativity in others.
The Highest Goal: The Secret That Sustains You in Every Moment