The Secret

What was going on here? Why was this course having this effect? Could I capture its essence so that it could be transmitted to more people? To answer these questions, I drew on my own and my colleagues’ decades of experience teaching the course at Stanford and other schools, as well as the results from businesses and other organizations.

I found that the impact of the course 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.”

I recognized this same essential resource at work in other people who live creatively: They have a secret that centers them and makes their lives accomplished and fulfilling.

Many of the hundreds of guests we have welcomed to the creativity course are people who have discovered their highest goal. They are architects, artists, activists, war heroes, academics, singers, composers, dancers, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, financiers, psychologists, politicians, and monks. They have achieved enormous success by most standards, often amassing huge fortunes. Many have started new industries and changed the face of American and world culture. Still others have revolutionized the way we work and relate to others on an everyday basis.

When they visit the Personal Creativity in Business class, they talk about what got them where they are, and they describe their creative process and interior life. They share who they are at core and what they see as the purpose of their existence.

As I’ve listened to these people, and worked closely with thousands of students and participants, I’ve come to recognize the transforming power of the highest goal. When facing life’s most trying tests, people rely on this secret to sustain them. When the world seems to be going crazy around them, these people are able to tap their inner resources, creatively serve others and bring their best to the world.

They learned—most early in their lives 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. They don’t get caught up in the exhortations of the media, the news of impending doom, the “shoulds” of their family and friends, or their own—often negative—mental meanderings.

Instead they see each situation and their potential role in it from a higher perspective. They take their time. They focus with intention. New possibilities open for them. They depend on a sort of grace that comes to them. They act creatively from this source.

This book focuses on this secret: your highest goal, something that is always there for you beyond the ordinary definitions of success.