Happiness comes from the direction of your life, not the destination.

—EARL NIGHTINGALE

Congratulations on purchasing this book and taking a small step toward improving your life. The fact that you purchased it is a testament to your intent—something I will share more insights about later. This book is long overdue. I have read terrific books on motivation and self-development, like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Crucial Conversations, and many more. I have also read a lot of not-so-great books. In my work, I read constantly on finance, marketing, operations, management, leadership, psychology, economics, health care, spirituality, self-development, and other topics.

Some writing is better than others. Sometimes the authors rehash a tried-and-true concept, and on rare occasions, they combine old knowledge in novel ways or, even more rare, present something utterly unique (at least to me). In all my reading over thirty-plus years of work, however, something was missing, which I will describe shortly.

Despite leaving me wanting, these books helped shape me and my thinking. Combined with my faith, they helped me become an optimist, be resilient, and seek creative alternatives to difficult challenges. I am grateful that these individuals shared their stories and insights, glimpses, and perspectives on enduring principles. I never met any of the authors, I don’t have any signed copies of their books, and I don’t have any first editions. In this regard, I am ordinary, like the thousands or millions of other people who have read their books.

My purpose with this book is to help people like you develop the core skills necessary to create your own vision of what a great life looks like and help you move toward it. This requires balance, connection to enduring principles, and a core set of skills. Core skills are like the strong roots and trunk of a tree, essential to thriving and being fruitful in an unfair and rapidly changing world.

Most people fall into one of two camps:

• Those who don’t have any vision or goals and just go with the flow.


• Those who have too much focus on their vision and goals and thus are missing out on life and its unexpected joys.

Either of these perspectives on life is dysfunctional by itself. Each needs balance. By learning core skills and balancing your life between the present and the future, you find yourself an achieving, happy, resilient, sought-after, contributing, and connected member of society. You should have a bit more money than average, better relationships, better well-being, and life satisfaction. Not bad!

I have worked in health care, mostly serving lower-income individuals and families, since 1983. Having served in vastly different settings in five states, Europe, and Africa, the shared challenges of people everywhere became evident. My colleagues and I recognized the physical, financial, and structural barriers to people achieving their goals and becoming their best selves. It became clear, however, that the greatest barriers were those of the mind. These kept people from engaging, achieving, and moving forward— whatever their outward circumstances. Through reading books, attending graduate school, and collaborating with bright and dedicated people, I realized there was something missing, a universal foundation that I could not identify.

From 2007 through 2018, I primarily focused on creating integration between medical, dental, and behavioral health services. I was dedicated to meeting the “whole-person” needs of people and creating a system that consistently met those needs. During this time, I learned a great deal more about motivation, systems, and behavioral health. In 2018, I had the epiphany—my “Wow!” moment—that at the core of any successful effort to change is personal motivation, what psychologists refer to as “intrinsic motivation.” This kind of motivation can’t come from a rousing speech, someone else’s goals, or any other outside sources. This motivation is personal and comes from the inside of you. It is directly tied to what is important to you.

After further research, I came upon the core elements of personal motivation: self-efficacy and self-esteem. The focus on self-esteem, however, is fraught with challenges. Efforts to influence it often lead to excesses like narcissism and hubris. Tightly related to self-esteem is self-compassion, which science has shown we can influence, with even better positive effect and without the numerous negative by-products of self-worth interventions.

Researchers’ and academics’ estimates vary widely, but all agree that millions of people suffer from low self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-compassion and, as a result, struggle in ways that are common but not necessary. How tragic to suffer needlessly. I want to help reduce your suffering.

CRITICAL!

I further discovered that these concepts, although often seen as “set in stone” character, were in fact a set of skills that could be learned by anybody, no matter their history, education, age, gender, race, or culture. The concepts are foundational to any personal development, and lacking these skills, people work hard but just don’t get the results they would like. There are enough structural barriers to getting ahead; if I can help you develop a few core skills, the chance of improving your situation increases dramatically despite any structural, cultural, or other types of barriers that are largely out of your immediate control. To hope that you will be lucky enough to beat the odds by winning the lottery or becoming a rap star, actor, professional athlete, or the next Beyoncé is itself not enough to sustain hope and, as I will prove later, the wrong focus for true success. As you develop these foundational skills, you will

• get more things done;

• learn from setbacks;

• develop greater hope;

• be more organized;

• feel more connected;

• avoid depression and anxiety;

• feel more balanced; and

• sit squarely in the captain’s chair of your life.

These skills are basic, yet they are not taught in most homes or schools. I could not find any book, let alone one written for regular people, on the topic and all its components. I have read business books on motivation, but they tend to not be balanced and are business focused rather than individual focused. They also fail to cover the core skill sets underlying intrinsic motivation, according to the latest science.

So I started on this journey to gather and organize the ideas of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and researchers and combine them in such a way that you could learn the basic skills. With that foundation, you’re better prepared to realize any desires or goals you might have, even becoming a star. By making these skills your skills, you’re better prepared to learn even more advanced skills, concepts, and principles.

In the process of researching, pondering, and writing, I feel that I have refined skills I had only lightly touched on in the past. I developed new habits, gained perspectives, and honed a strong set of tools with which I am more successful myself and better able to serve others. I am confident that as you go through the book and try some new things, you will have a similar experience.

At some point in reading this book, you will discover an idea, bias, or problem and think to yourself, “That’s Joe to a T. He could really use that; I’m going to call him right now.” I urge you to restrain yourself. Joe may desperately need “that thing,” but you telling him that he has a problem and you know how to fix it based on this amazing book is more likely to turn Joe off than to get him excited. Remember, motivation must come from within, which means Joe must find his own, just like you did. What would work better? The next time you see Joe, tell him about this great book you found and how it introduced you to this idea that really has helped you out—and leave it at that. If he is curious at all, he will ask you or will look it up on his own. That’s how motivation works: it must be the right person at the right time so that it wells up within, and you can’t control it, as much as you might like to.

Throughout the book, I will use two common metaphors.

• The first is of a tree. The tree starts small, as most all things do in nature, and spends its life overcoming obstacles and setbacks as it serves its purpose. Starting underground, a seed must push its way through the soil, avoid being trampled or eaten, and develop roots and stem quickly so that eventually it can bear fruit. The roots, stem, and top must be balanced to be strong against drought, wind, and storm. Its path of life includes constant, steady growth to its own genetic limitation. I like this metaphor because we are natural, organic, and connected to the environment. The tree, through all the slings and arrows of life, remains constant in doing the best it can, considering its circumstances, as must you.


• The second is of a captain. The captain oversees his or her vessel (life). The key difference from a tree is that the captain can move, direct, and change in ways that a tree never could. In this way, it better represents the power and potential of you guiding your life in creative, productive, and resilient ways. While being first mate or even a regular sailor may be great for work, you can’t afford to cede control of your life, direction, and focus. Can you see how critical it is to be the captain of your own life? The principles in this book will help you.

As much as I will talk about goals, balance, achievement, and related topics throughout the book, the quote at the beginning is a wonderful place to end the introduction. This is not a bolted-on set of tools like a cyborg in a movie. The challenge with personal motivation is that you can’t bolt it on; it must come from within. It must be nourished, and you’re the primary one to do that. It is a lifelong journey of development that has no conclusion but many setbacks and victories along the way. As you make the skills part of who you are, you will enjoy greater accomplishment, which will build confidence, self-esteem, and self-compassion.

Your greatest joy will come from the process, however, not any single accomplishment. That’s the beauty of the book and of living your own unique best life. You will see the benefits permeate your life, relationships, work, and play until you find yourself in a boundless setting of sublime splendor of your creation.

A core premise of this book is that where you are today is a fact but not the limit of your personal growth and potential. In 1858, Oliver Wendell Holmes penned the poem “The Chambered Nautilus.” A nautilus is a small sea creature similar to a snail. As it grows, it sheds its small shell and adopts a larger one that better fits the now-larger nautilus. We are similar, though not with a physical shell. When your life is spent growing, developing, and evolving, your life is one of purpose and passion. You seek and find the things that you’re passionate about and pursue them. You outgrow your “old” self and develop into a new, larger, higher-capacity person. I share the last few lines of the poem:

Build thee more stately mansions,

O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length are free;

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.

Much more than a nautilus, your capacity to grow is limitless. It does not require a pill, surgery, or an all-in effort, just a little bit of belief and consistent effort on your part. If you will allow a tiny bit of hope and plant the seed with me, I know it will grow into a “dome more vast."