PNTV: The Highest Goal by Michael Ray (#178)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, the Highest Goal. The highest goal. The secret that sustains you in every moment by Michael Ray, who is a professor at Stanford's Business school. Extraordinary guy. Philosopher's Note. Five of my favorite big ideas right here. Let's jump in. We'll start with what is the highest goal, then what gets in the way? So the highest goal, Michael Ray tells us, is essentially to connect to the highest within ourselves. Always moment to moment to moment to moment. Now he says that's impossible. We can't live from that place every single moment, but we can go for it. Therefore, it's this beautiful highest goal that's always present in our lives. How do we connect to truth, to the highest within, whatever you want to call it. Moment to moment to moment, that's the highest goal. When you achieve that goal, everything else takes care of itself. It's kind of like Arete living with Arete. Moment to moment to moment. You're never going to be perfect at it. But that's the guiding star. That's the compass going for that. Now. What gets in the way? What gets in the way? The primary obstacle is society's cruel grip. Society's cruel grip. We're constantly being bombarded in every single way, TV, radio, movies, etc. Newspaper, news, etc, etc, etc, with this idea of an extrinsic focus. We've been talking a lot about intrinsic versus extrinsic focus in our world. Intrinsic leads to happiness. Extrinsic, which is the fame and hotness and wealth doesn't. Yet that's basically the only thing that our media and our society tells us is important. Let's go out and create a life that impresses other people. That's society's cruel grip. Michael Beckwith describes it as the tyranny of the trends. Tyranny of the trends. We don't want to fall to the lowest common denominator. We need to get out of that cruel grip and go for the highest goal. That's the first big idea. Second big idea. Well, how do we do that? Well, we do that every moment. We strive, as we talk about again and again in these sessions, to make every moment an opportunity to live from the highest within ourselves, to execute that highest goal. We've talked about again, Arete, moment to moment to moment. Can you express the highest version of yourself? We've also talked about this game that I created from Abraham Maslow's idea. Abraham Maslow and Michael Ray echoes it almost perfectly, says that in any given moment, you have a choice. You can step forward into growth or you can step back into safety. I like to say that it's kind of like playing a game where, where you get a plus one or a minus one. If you go forward, you get a plus one. If you go backwards, you get a minus one. So any given moment, you have a choice. You can go forward or you can go back. Next moment, you can go forward or you can go back. Next moment, you can go forward or you can go back. Now, what's interesting to notice here is in that first choice and in any choice, if you choose to go back rather than forward, you actually lost two places. And as Maslow said in the Psychology of Being, that makes an imprint in your consciousness. Now, if during a day you make a step back and you constantly do what you know you shouldn't be doing, you don't live at your highest goal. How does that feel at the end of the day? Those are the days when you want to crack open a case of beer or a bottle of wine and veg out in front of the tv. You, you want to numb yourself from the pain of not actualizing your potential. Now, how do you feel on the days when you just crush it and it's all positive? Those are the days you come home, you pick up your kids. If you have them, you swing them around, and life is good. Well, this is exciting because it all comes down to this moment. What are you choosing? Stepping forward into growth, into your highest goal, the highest expression of yourself, or back into safety? That's the second big idea. We will continue to talk about that a lot, and we obviously can talk about it a lot more. Next big idea. Bounty byproducts. All the great teachers tell us this. Focus on your highest goal. Yesterday we talked about Scott Adams systems. Focus on the systems. This is a system. Michael Ray calls them live withs. Your system is a live with a heuristic that you can use like this. Stepping forward into growth or back into safety. That's what we want to focus on. Let the bounty, the material bounty, be a byproduct of your spiritual bounty. By focusing on getting your consciousness right and your thoughts and behaviors optimized, you put yourself in the best position to get all the other material things you want. But it goes in that order. Focus on being a better person to let the results take care of themselves. That's our third big idea. Fourth big idea is another way to get at the highest goal. And another obstacle is worrying. Worrying is a great way to Unplug from the highest within yourself. Fantastic way. Imagine that. Imagine you're this state of the art whatever that requires energy. Unplug it, you get nothing. Unplug from the highest within yourself. You're not going to get that beauty that can come out. Well, one great way to unplug his worry, he says, look, don't go through your day worrying about everything. If you need to set up a time, a worry time, a half an hour on a given day, when you allow yourself to go nuts, worry as much as you want. And then when little worries come up during the day, say, hey, hey, we got it covered. We're going to do that at this time during the day, spend a half an hour on it. So I'm going to note this worry and I'm going to get back to work. Now, obviously that requires a high level of mental discipline and fortitude, but we want to create that space, compartmentalize it. Don't let the toxicity of worry dominate your days. As Sonia Lybomirsky says, ruminating, not being able to take your mind off of things that you're worried about is a fantastic way to make yourself miserable unplugged. So create worry time and then get back to work. As Dale Carnegie says, spit on your hands and get busy. That's the best way to deal with worry. Be so busy you can't remember what you are worried about. It's a good idea. Lots more we can talk about there, but we'll go to big idea number five here. The ultimate challenge. So we want to get out of society's cruel grip. We want to rock at every moment. We want to realize bounty, material bounty and success as a byproduct of our spiritual success. We want to compartmentalize our worry time. But for what? Just so we can feel good? That's nice. But Michael Ray says the ultimate challenge is to figure out how we give our gifts in greatest service to the world. Joseph Campbell described it in his work on mythology and the hero's journey. The hero leaves the community that he knows so well, goes into the forest at the darkest point, battles his dragons and demons, wins. He gets his treasure or whatever it is that he pursued. Right? The bounty, the boon is what Joseph Campbell calls it. And then he brings it back to the world. And Campbell tells us that's actually often the hardest part. You can go through all the despair of leaving your community and the challenge of being in the forest of the unknown. Battle your dragons and you win. Oh, exhale. But that's not the end of the story it often gets harder from there to figure out with these new insights that you have what you figured out how do you reintegrate into your old community and bring the boon back Give your gifts back to the world that's its own creative challenge and that's what Michael Ray says is our ultimate challenge is to figure out how we give our gifts in greatest service to the world. Ultimately that's what this is all about it's not about narcissistic check me out I got a six pack and I'm happy That's nothing wrong with a six pack nothing wrong obviously we need to be happy Our happiness is what is the engine for our own giving but let's remember that it's about giving back and there's an opportunity moment to moment to moment to give back and that's our ultimate challenge. So there you go quick look at the highest goal Fantastic book hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day See you.