Don Maruska, author of How Great Decisions Get Made
"With his revolutionary and refreshing insights, Ray helps you discover and pursue your highest goal."


Heidi Roizen, Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital
"The Highest Goal shows all of us how we can achieve a meaningful and fulfilled life from our highest aspects."


From the foreword by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
"The Highest Goal is the distillation of years of accumulated wisdom from a great teacher."


John Renesch, author of Getting to the Better Future
"This incredible book examines the life-force that gives us a reason for living!"


Book Description
The Highest Goal reveals the secret discovered by thousands of people who have taken the author's Stanford Business School creativity course: that living from the highest goal produces power, inspiration, and guidance that helps one persist even through the worst of times, and ultimately leads to success. The book combines practical business advice with spiritual motivation and creative insights. In addition, it discusses proven steps that people can use on a daily basis to take a personal stand and turn the chaos of difficult times into a complete and fulfilling life.


From the Publisher
Dubbed "the most creative man in Silicon Valley" by Fast Company magazine, Michael Ray created and taught Stanford University's celebrated Personal Creativity in Business course for 25 years. From the beginning, Ray's course had a more profound impact on graduates than he'd ever intended. They seemed to blossom, to have access to some secret source of energy and inspiration. They found new ways to contribute to their organizations, thrived on diversity, fought gracefully, treated others with compassion, acceptance, appreciation, and respect. As one graduate put it, "This is transformation that works and lasts." Ray came to realize that his creativity course was helping people discover what he calls their "highest goal"-the one force that gives real meaning to your life, that speaks to the very core of your being. It's what makes you feel connected, motivated and sustained. It has nothing to do with worldly success or achievement, but Ray found that all of the successful people who had been through his course had a sustained connection to it. In fact, it was what they ultimately attributed their success to. Here, through practical exercises, stories and reflections, Ray helps you discover your own highest goal. By getting in touch with this inner resource, following a path in tune with it, and letting it inform your every decision, you'll vastly improve not only your own life, but also the lives of everyone around you. Ray shows you how to open this inner font of creativity, compassion, and courage.


About the Author
Michael Ray is the first John G. McCoy-Banc One Corporation Professor of Creativity and Innovation and of Marketing (Emeritus) at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. He is a social psychologist and the author of numerous books, including Creativity in Business (with Rochelle Myers), The Path of the Everyday Hero (with Lorna Catford), and The Creative Spirit (with Daniel Goleman and Paul Kaufman), the companion book to the PBS series inspired by his course. He lives his highest goal not only in his work life but also as a husband, father, grandfather, spiritual student, and meditation teacher. He has consulted and lectured widely and has served as a director of a major retailer, a food company, a catalog company, a start-up airline, and three companies in the communication industry. He works with an active group of teachers to bring the principles of this book to organizations and individuals worldwide.

FROM THE PUBLISHER