Jorge: 0:00

You could unpack that hierarchy to get to the point where you figure out what it is that truly and deeply moves you and what it is that makes you come alive.

Narrator: 0:16

You're listening to Traction Heroes. Digging In to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge: 0:27

Hey, Harry,

Harry: 0:28

Hey, it's good to see you.

Jorge: 0:30

It's good to see you. We were just talking before we started recording about plans for the end of the year, how things are going. You mentioned that you just wrapped up a big project, and sounds like things are going great.

Harry: 0:47

Yeah, I'm just feeling incredibly grateful to have the kind of work that allows me to be of service in the world. And it seems to often come back to book recommendations, right? Somebody will call me and say, "Hey man, do you have a book recommendation? You've always got a good one." And that'll begin a conversation that'll turn into a thing and we'll end up discussing the challenges and opportunities that we're all experiencing. And sometimes that leads to the kind of engagement that I'm just wrapping up now, after about a year. I'm pretty excited about the nature of the work that I've been doing.

Jorge: 1:31

I'm very excited that you used the phrase "be of service in the world," because I've brought a reading today that kind of touches on that and I'd like to cue that up for you.

Harry: 1:49

Cool. I'm looking forward to it. I'm ready.

Jorge: 1:52

All right, here we go. "Society's fundamental assumptions too often lead to negative outcomes. We see the evidence and the growing gap between the haves and have nots; increasing violence; endemic poverty and starvation; environmental degradation; the breakdown of values, integrity, communication and community; a sense of unhappiness and fear; and poor health among people in even the richest nations. Many of us feel an urgent need to change the status quo and contribute to a new positive direction. The world needs us all to contribute our best. But how can any individual affect what seems to be a massive concatenation of forces and at the same time face the challenges of his or her life? This book answers that question. In this time of global transformation, we must act creatively and courageously from our deepest knowing and compassion. Only if we are living in service of the highest goal, in whatever way we experience it, can we meet the challenges of our times and fashion lives that work. And only if we discover ways of translating this highest goal into a new way of living, can it be practical and expansive for all."

Harry: 3:24

Wow. I thought it was gonna go down a really heavy path, and then it got some lift and, and started heading in a direction that prompted some much more positive emotions than I, expected. I just finished a course recently, Echelon Front course, the. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin company that they wrote the book, Extreme Ownership, and The Dichotomy of Leadership. And I completed a course, I can't remember the title of the course. I was just trying to look it up. But it was basically on controlling my emotions. Controlling your emotions, right? It's how the Navy seals do that. How they detach from situations that are triggering and challenging and overwhelming, and put them in stronger position to show up in, have clarity of mind and presence, and be more effective in the world. And that's the path that it sent me down, really. We have an opportunity to work on ourselves, to be these catalysts of change in the world and to show up first there and then for our families and friends, and then for our communities, and then the broader world. It seems like often we think about the world first and then we think about our community. We think about it backwards and we can't control so much of what's going on, but we can largely control ourselves.

Jorge: 4:53

I wanted to bring this reading. This is a book that was, has been, influential to me in my life. And I wanted to bring it now, I've saved it to bring now to our conversations because it is especially useful for the kind of introspective questioning that tends to happen toward the end of the year. I think a lot of folks... some folks take time off, right? But people start thinking about things like resolutions for the new year and it's just a period where a lot of people take stock of where they are and where they want to be. I certainly do. And this is a book that has helped me do that in particular stages of my life, which we can get into. As you might have, sussed out, the little section that I read comes from the introduction because it talks about what the book is meant to do. So this is a book called, The Highest Goal by Michael Ray and. I don't know if Michael Ray, but he teaches in the Stanford Graduate Business School. I don't know him personally,

Harry: 6:25

Yeah, I don't know him personally either.

Jorge: 6:28

but, this book is based on a course that he taught there. And the purpose of the book is to help you get in touch with your highest goal. When I was reading that piece from the intro, it almost surprised me 'cause I've read this book several times, but it surprised me on rereading it, how much he's talking about our impact in the world, right? And he's talking about these very big problems and it's what can I do? What can I do about solving all these big problems? I think that part of the point of this book is that You are going to be most effective if you are clear on what it is that you are ultimately in service to, particularly if that thing that you are ultimately in service to is something that you believe in deeply.

Harry: 7:31

I think that's spot on. And so pertinent right now, too, I probably wrote, actually wrote down in ink and attached to my phone, like the first goal that I've written down and captured in a long time recently. I was watching a video. I'm taking a course by Steve Siebold, he's a world renowned, like paid corporate speaker. And he teaches speaking, something I'm trying to get better at. And he and his wife Dawn, were interviewing, Bob Proctor, who. you probably might not know by name, certainly by character, you would have seen him in the movie, The Secret, for example. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but Bob Proctor was one of the characters there. He's also a world renowned speaker. And he's following some of the teachings of, of Napoleon Hill, the, Think and Grow Rich guy. And, so I thought, "Man, I haven't written my goals down in a long time!" And I wasn't thinking about it. It's funny, I wasn't thinking about it in terms of New Year's resolutions or being the end of the year, but literally just yesterday I wrote down my primary goal, and only one. So I've been ruminating on what is the one thing I'm really trying to accomplish right now to show up and be of service in the world? And I wrote that down, I stuck it on my phone. And it reminds me of your comment about being focused on the keystone goal reminds me of the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller. I think we talked about that. So you must have read it.

Jorge: 9:25

I think we talked about that book. Yeah.

Harry: 9:28

and, he makes such a brilliant case for really pinpointing the one that is going to cascade. and he's framing it mostly in the context of productivity. And I guess goals can fall into that particular deep well, if you will. But getting clear about what you wanna see in the world and how you wanna show up to be a part of that, and how you wanna be a service in that, is, if you can keep that front and center in your mind, all the mental apparatus that we bring to our interactions with people, tools, the environment, our community, it starts to get filtered through this thing that we're trying to manifest. And it's less about magical thinking and more about what are you sorting for?

Jorge: 10:29

I'm glad you used the phrase magical thinking, because when I hear The Secret and, Napoleon Hill... the phrase, I think it's the law of attraction is what they call it, this idea that if you... I don't know that I'm gonna be able to articulate this fairly, but I think of it as the idea that if you place a goal firmly enough in your mind and you believe in it strongly enough, the conditions will manifest for it to come through or whatever. It's almost if you wish upon a star and it.... just like adding pseudoscience on top of it. Another one that comes to mind is Earl Nightingale, right? Like the, he wrote... I think it's called The Strangest Secret in the World, something like that. Which is the same idea, right? And to be fair, the Michael Ray book, there are points where it does kinda like verge into spirituality. But not in this sense, not in the sense of like magical thinking, more in the sense of... part of this book is doing, and one of the reasons I've used it, throughout my life at various stages, is that it has practical exercises for taking stock of your life from this perspective, but not with the intent of trying to do the law of attraction thing, but rather with the intent of trying to see what it is that you truly and deeply connect with. And for some people, spirituality might be something that really lights up their life. And part of the point here is that there's a hierarchy of goals. Your goal this month might be to make a certain amount of money or ship a product or I don't know, whatever. But those goals are likely in service to something higher, right? that something higher might be feeding your family, putting a roof over your head. It might be gaining the respect of your peers, a sense of accomplishment. I don't know, there's all these things that motivate human beings, right? And you could unpack that hierarchy to get to the point where you figure out what it is that truly and deeply moves you and what it is that makes you come alive. I think that at one point in the book he talks about the Csikszentmihalyi I how to pronounce it the flow thing, where there are moments that you find yourself in flow and knowing that you are working in service of something that is serving your highest goal is a contributor to slipping into those states. So there are practical exercises that one can do to both suss that out because I think a lot of us don't spend time thinking about what that might be and also keeping the highest goal kind of front and center as we are going about our daily lives, making decisions.

Harry: 14:15

Yeah. And I'm excited to get a copy of the book and read it. I don't think I've read it. And, as a guy who's interested in prioritization, figuring out what the various levels are and how to really pursue getting to clarity about a relevance ranked list so that you can really focus on the things at the top of the list, is really interesting to me. I think one of my first introductions to this kind of thinking, the highest goal, really sorting based on values and so on and so forth, was the book Values Clarification, which I believe it or not, I actually have a copy of on my shelf. It's pretty dense. I'm not gonna recommend it to folks, but it's a really impressive work that's withstood the test of time. To really get clear about what your hierarchy of values are and to understand what informs them and, of course, your values inform those goals, and then making this more, real. Like this week, literally this week, we, my business partner and I, have been struggling with one aspect of our business. We have something that's way out of balance and it's causing us to have to work really hard and not make anywhere as much money as we'd like to. And I'm doing the vast majority of the delivery work. And so we spent some time this week working on getting to a hierarchy of questions. So I have a model called the open questions model or open questions matrix, I've often called it. And it's really about pinpointing what the controlling question is that needs to be unpacked. And it's very similar in regard, which is to say, it's one thing to get clear about your goal, it's another thing to get clear about your values, which are driving your goals. And it's another thing altogether to get clear about what questions you have because you're not clear about any of the other stuff. And so we, he and I, have been really wrestling with how difficult it can be to get to the point of clarity that you can put your finger on that goal and then not have it slip out like a tomato seed on a counter that you just can't quite stop until some point at which it dries out enough. it's, hard work, right? It's hard work to get clear about your goals and, really understand potentially the logical levels. and I know we've talked about Robert Dilts And his logical levels model that puts kind of spirit and connection with living things at the top and puts your environment at the bottom. Super valuable tool that I've used for years and years, which came out of the neurolinguistic programming NLP community. And then also Maslow, right? The Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right? You go from your Base level needs of, security up to your highest level needs in terms of self-actualization. And in theory, the highest goal is really about the top level of the Dilts model, which is about your spirit and connection to living things. And the Maslow model, which is about, actualizing yourself and figuring out how you're gonna show up in the world. So this is like a super fertile and really important. I think topic and area to focus on. I can't help but wonder what brought you to this book.

Jorge: 17:49

What brought me to this book was a juncture in my life where I was going through a lot of changes and I was lost. I needed to rethink what I was doing. it might have been 2004, 2005, something like that. So that's about 20 years ago. And, I, was going through a period of questioning. I was going through a period where I had just gone through a bunch of major life changes and I was out at sea and I didn't know yet.... I was going through the motions in a lot of ways. I was unclear on why I was doing what I was doing and what it was all for and that kind of thing. And the title spoke to me, The Highest Goal, this idea that it's ultimately in service to something. And I read it and I did the exercises and it genuinely helped me. And I remember one of the exercises is explicitly figuring out your hierarchy of values. What is it that both attracts you and repels you? So there's a negative and a positive version of that. And coming out the other end of this, I felt like I was clearer on... Maybe I wasn't clear on where I was going with this, but I was clear on who I am and what I care about, and it also allowed me it gave me the space to be more intentional about those things. So maybe I discovered that there is a value that I was surprised that I didn't kinda rank higher. So is that something that I like about myself? Maybe I need to work on that. So there's agency there. But and this is something I don't think I've ever shared publicly. Coming out of that, first experience of going through that exercise, I wrote a phrase that I've kept in the back of my mind all this time as I've been doing my work in whatever field it is, which if not my ultimate goal, it's like my ultimate role.

Harry: 20:19

I love that.

Jorge: 20:19

It's, what is it that I do, ultimately? And and it's the phrase coherence generator. I think that if I'm about anything, it's about generating coherence. And that book helped me write that phrase. It helped me arrive at that point where I could have enough clarity to say, this is what I'm about Ultimately.

Harry: 20:43

Wow, do you know John Cutler By chance

Jorge: 20:46

Yes, and I've spoken with John. We haven't met in person, but, yeah, he's an inspiration.

Harry: 20:52

you should find a way to meet him in person and have lunch and sit down and talk about coherence, 'cause I think he, and you share that as, a pursuit at the deep identity level. I think he's just an amazing human being and follow his work closely, and I've been fortunate enough to sit down with him in person and have some wonderful conversations. A couple things. I had a call earlier with a client who was sharing with me that his daughter, just applied to a Ph.D program, and as part of that program, she had to write her purpose statement. And I thought, man, that has got to be a valuable exercise, and I want to go take a look at how that prompt is written to and what instructions are given to write a purpose statement, 'cause I think that kind of cuts to the heart of some of what you're talking about. And it, it reminds me of two other things. One was that back in 2003 when I shut down Public Mind, my very own personal first startup, like the one that I founded, not just one that I was part of, but one that I, started from day one. And when I finally closed it down, I called a mentor of mine and we were having a conversation about what might come next. And Dr. Ward Ashman, he runs a firm called Trimergence in Silicon Valley. It's a culture consulting company. And so he managed to extract from me what he was calling at the time a mission statement, but I know it like that classic corporate mission statement kind of thing. He was really trying to get to the heart of what makes me tick and what motivates me in that way that, on the positive side you were just describing. And I found myself saying, "I want to create the kind of world that I wanna live in through constant invitation and choice." And it just rolled off my tongue, right? I want to create the kind of world I want to live in through constant invitation and choice. And it stuck with me ever since as a guiding principle for how I interact in the world now. And it's very easy to see when I'm not in alignment with that and when I am in alignment with that. And then finally that thing that you said about the values, on the positive and negative side, and bringing it back to NLP for a moment, one of my instructors said to me, if you wanna know where you're truly an artist, look at what disgusts you, 'cause that's where you make your finest distinctions. And I thought, man, that is pure genius.

Jorge: 23:29

Yeah, you want a deep, emotional, gut level reaction, whether positive or negative. Those are signs that there's something there that gets the juices flowing. But I just wanted to share that with you, Harry, because I think it's appropriate for this time of year. I'm certainly gonna be doing a little bit of introspection, as I often do, and I hope that folks listening in, if they are, they do something like this. Because it's helpful to get a read on what it is that lights you up, when you're doing this kind of thinking about your goals.

Harry: 24:07

Big time. and it also reminds me, maybe from a how do you get traction point of view, like putting the chains on it, one of the things I've learned, both for myself personally and also much of the work that I've done with clients is that over time it's really about the people and not about the things, right? It's not about the projects, it's about the people that you work on those projects with. And figuring out where to place your attention, and show up and be of service and sorting that based on who rather than what is a nice way to begin that process.

Jorge: 24:47

That's a great reminder, especially at this time of year. I hope that you have a great end of the year and surrounded by great who's.

Harry: 24:59

Thank you so much. Delightful conversation, as usual. I'm walking away with things to do and curiosity and excitement.

Jorge: 25:09

Same here. Thank you, Harry.

Narrator: 25:13

Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango. Check out the show notes at tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app. Thanks.