Chapter 5

The Pinnacle

Man is made or unmade by himself.

By the right choice, he ascends.

As a being of power, intelligence, and love,

and the lord of his own thoughts,

he holds the key to every situation.

—Sir James Allen

Design Your Ideal Life

When you're at your best, fully thriving, and living in a way that's consistent with who you were born to be, you've achieved what I call The Pinnacle.

The Pinnacle is living at the peak of your existence.

Imagine living without compromise. Imagine fulfilling your dreams and desires, surrounding yourself with people you love, and engaging in activities that bring you the most joy. What would you do each day if you could design your life in any way you choose?

Take a few moments to think about this. I want you to dream.

Now, dream big.

Now, dream even bigger.

Assume there are no barriers to what you want.

If your optimal life is touring the world, then picture yourself sailing on your 300-foot yacht. If it's playing golf every day, then envision yourself playing 18 holes in the morning and 18 in the afternoon. If it's being married to someone you deeply love, having two wonderful kids, and being the CEO of a well-respected company, then create that image in your mind.

Don't hold back. This is your ideal life. Design it however you like, without fear or limits. When you're ready to describe what your optimal life looks and feels like, please do so in the space that follows:

Designing your ideal life is a powerful exercise that enables your soul to soar without restrictions. You may find that once you begin the first sentence, your hand can't write fast enough as your subconscious kicks in and demands you recognize what's most important. This happens because you seldom give yourself the Gift of identifying what would bring you meaningful pleasure and happiness.

It's not your fault. The education you received at school hasn't prepared you adequately for living an outstanding life. While you can read, write, and solve mathematical equations, you were never taught to strive for, and thrive at, the peak of your existence.

But that's okay…because you'll learn to do so now.

If you were honest, what you've just written reflects your deepest needs—so heed it. You have the ability to create the life you want and live at The Pinnacle.

Before you can begin the process of reclaiming your summit, however, it's important to understand how you were knocked down from your perch.

The Downward Slide

You were born with extraordinary Gifts uniquely yours to harness, cultivate, and share with the world. As a baby and toddler, and even into adolescence, these talents were displayed raw and unrefined.

As you grew older, though, you likely encountered events that caused you to lose sight of some, or even all, of your natural capabilities. These events led you to adjust your identity, moving you away from who you truly are.

Examples of such personality-altering events include:

• Being chastised for acting “inappropriately”
• Being physically punished for displaying aspects of yourself that ran counter to someone else's beliefs or tastes
• Trying out for something (the football team, the high school play) and getting rejected
• Asking someone out on a date and being told no
• Having a room full of students cruelly laugh at you for something you did
• Being discouraged by friends or family from pursuing your dreams
• Enduring emotional or physical abuse

No matter what age you were when the events that affected you happened, you were quick to recognize that behavior X resulted in pain Y. This was all it took for you to bury that particular way of being under piles of emotional baggage.

Physical and emotional anguish subsides over time. The real tragedy is when you never fully reclaim the part of your personality lost during such incidents. An integral part of who you are is banished to the nether regions, never to be seen or heard from again by anyone…including you.

That may sound dramatic, but it's one of the realities of life. You do something that's naturally part of who you are, and if you're slapped down for it, you react. Too often, what gives way is your willingness to expose yourself again to the emotional or physical discomfort you experienced.

Each time you relinquish a piece of your core identity, you move further away from The Pinnacle.

I call this process of descent The Downward Slide.

Traumatic events aren't the only factor. Another contributor is performing what you perceive as your duty. Whether you had a paper route, shoveled snow, or worked for your family's business, you did what you believed was required of you. It may be that what began as a way to bring in some extra cash became a straight line to a career path—even if it was work in which you had no genuine interest.

Or it could be that you accumulated so much debt from your schooling that you took whatever job you could find after graduation. It could also be that you turned your life upside down to accommodate your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse. Your good intentions for doing what was right, necessary, or expected of you became the grease on which you began your slide away from pursuing your true talents and passions—and away from The Pinnacle.

Once you begin the freefall, it's very difficult to reestablish your footing. Here's a typical scenario:

Chances are the job you started in Step 3 had nothing to do with fulfilling your deepest desires or pursuing happiness. It was simply the most convenient route at the time for making money, with the goal of eventually becoming self-supporting and putting yourself in a position to pursue your dreams.

This self-created fantasy is wonderful, but the reality is often more of a nightmare. After submitting to that first soul-deadening job, the downward slide away from The Pinnacle increasingly picks up momentum.

While everyone has to pay the bills, too few of us end up in professions even remotely resembling our dream jobs.

Family and monetary obligations can run deep, and it's certainly possible to feel you had no choice but to do what was required of you or to maintain the lifestyle you created. That said, you must own the fact that from this point forward, you are making a conscious choice to continue living this way. You can't blame others for the life you've picked. If you're working in a dead-end job, it's because you choose to be there. If you're with someone you know is wrong for you, you're not making the effort to leave and find someone who's right. If you wake up miserable every day because of an event that occurred 30 years ago, you're making a decision to allow what happened in the past to control the quality of your life today.

You must begin to fight tooth and nail to reclaim your life and pursue what's most important to you.

The first step may be as simple as giving yourself the time and permission to sit in a quiet place and start trying to identify your Pinnacle. Some people need to hit rock bottom before realizing they've been on a continuous downward slide. Don't let that happen to you. Stop your descent right now. You have the power to ascend towards and reclaim The Pinnacle. The rest of this chapter will show you how.

Maslow Meets The Pinnacle

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow famously hypothesized a Hierarchy of Needs that must be met before your ultimate state of existence—which he called self-actualization—can be reached. Maslow visualized the hierarchy as a pyramid (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has five distinct levels: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. These are genuinely powerful aids for understanding human behavior. However, Maslow believed that your physiological needs must be satisfied before you can move on to address safety needs; your safety needs must be secured before you pursue love/belonging needs; and so on. He claimed that it's only when you fulfill the first four levels of needs that you can pursue self-actualization.

I disagree.

From Nelson Mandela to Che Guevara, there are numerous examples of self-actualized people who meaningfully affected the world and lived their life at The Pinnacle without having met all five levels of needs defined by Maslow. I'm therefore suggesting a different way of visualizing human needs, illustrated by the Pinnacle Pyramid shown in Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.2 The Pinnacle Pyramid

The major difference between Maslow's Theory and mine is I contend the quality of your life is equally affected by each of the five levels. The Pinnacle serves as the stabilizing element for your life as a whole and enables you to thrive atop the delicate apex upon which your life balances. To live your life in this optimal state of being, you must become highly focused on the choices you make. Decisions that are incongruent with who you really are can easily send you flying off the summit—and send your Pyramid toppling to the ground.

The key to effective living is to first identify what most directly reflects The Pinnacle for you at each of the five levels of needs, and then apply The Pinnacle to your pursuit of those needs.

The following exercise will enable you to construct your own Pinnacle Pyramid. Doing so will help you understand what's most important to you, compare and contrast your current behavior with your answers, and provide a guideline for living that you can refer to and follow.

Let's begin.

Level One

Your physiological needs consist of breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion.

This may seem simple enough. But the choices you make in satisfying these needs spell the difference between living an ordinary life and living at The Pinnacle. To begin to understand this difference, please think about the following questions, and compare your answers with your behavior:

• What types of food are you most comfortable eating?
• What liquids do you most like to drink?
• What kinds of exercise do you enjoy?
• Does yoga or other breathing-related exercise fulfill you?
• How many hours of sleep are ideal for you?

Level Two

Your safety needs involve security of body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health, and property.

Being clear on the impact these needs have on you will help you maintain balance. Please consider how your responses to the following questions compare with your behavior:

• Do you feel the need for physical self-confidence? If so, do you practice martial arts or other physical activities that inspire a sense of safety in the event of an emergency? If not, do you instead practice sharpening your mental ability to get you out of dangerous situations?
• Does your job reflect your identity and passions? (There will be more about this in Part III, “Become Who You Were Born to Be.”)
• Do your actions reflect your morality? For example, if you consider yourself religious, does your business and social behavior reflect your beliefs? Do you regularly attend a place of worship? If you aren't religious, do you consistently follow your own moral code?
• If your family is of the utmost importance to you, do you demonstrate this by the way you treat your loved ones?
• What do you do to ensure your physical well being? For example, do you exercise, and avoid smoking and stress?
• Do you maintain your home well? Do you beautify it? Do you pay your mortgage or rent on time?

Level Three

Your need for love and belonging consists of friendship, family, and sexual intimacy. Your needs on this level may have been damaged by your past, but Chapter 2's “The Vortex of Vulnerability” should have helped you become aware of these issues and begin the process of getting past them.

With that in mind, please think about the following questions, and compare your answers with your behavior:

• What's most important to you in a friendship? Do you need a large circle of friends, or do you prefer one or two very close friends? How often do you like to see your friends? How often do you like to talk to them?
• Is your family an integral part of your life? Is your immediate family of overriding importance to you, or is maintaining close relationships with your extended family also important? Do you see your family as often as possible, or do you create space to spend time apart?
• Do you prefer to have intimate sex or casual sex? Do you seek monogamy or prefer having multiple partners? Are you clear on your sexual needs and desires?

Level Four

Your need for esteem consists of self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, and respect by others.

Please consider the following questions and compare your behavior with your answers:

• From where do you derive your self-esteem? What do you need in order to feel good about yourself?
• How do you maintain a strong degree of confidence? Do you require continuous validation from others, or are you able to establish self-confidence without looking outside of yourself?
• How do you judge your achievements? On how much money you make? On the number of close, loving relationships you have? On helping those in need?
• Are you intimidated by or envious of the success of others? Does working with successful people make you think about all that's wrong with your world? Or does being around those who excel inspire you to achieve greatness?
• Do you yearn for the respect of everyone, for the respect of a select few, or just for your own self-respect? Do you judge people by how high they jump when you tell them to? Do you feel less worthy if people don't compliment you on your accomplishments?

Level Five

Your need for self-actualization involves morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts.

Maslow defined self-actualization as “the full realization of one's potential; the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for the individual to become actualized in what he is potentially.” It's at this level, according to Maslow, where you have complete freedom to soar.

Keeping this in mind, please think about the following questions, and compare your answers to your behavior:

• What are your guiding principles? Why do you believe you're here?
• How are you most creative? Do you like working with your hands? Do you love music? Does solving complex mathematical equations inspire you? Does coming up with new games to play with your kids make you happy?
• Are you spontaneous? Do you like to try new things? Can you adapt to changing circumstances? Or do you thrive on planning?
• Do you enjoy helping others with their problems? Do you achieve a state of fulfillment from finding a solution to something others could not figure out?
• Do you enjoy taking on all that comes your way without preconceived notions or fear driving your choices? Do you thrive on each of us being unique? At the same time, do you see past differences to a common humanity?
• Are you most at peace when life just is? Do you question everything that crosses your path, or do you take pride in the fact that it has chosen to share its existence with you in that moment? Do you consistently want to persuade others to see your point of view?

By examining the five levels of needs within the context of The Pinnacle, you can gain valuable insights into what matters most to you. You can then construct a personalized outline for living focusing on those areas.

My completed Pinnacle Pyramid is shown in Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.3 Steve's Completed Pinnacle Pyramid

Think about your answers to the preceding questions, and use them to construct your own Pinnacle Pyramid. Keep your statements as concise as possible, yet detailed enough to represent your deepest needs and desires.

Use the blank template that follows to complete your personal Pinnacle Pyramid.

Alternatively, visit www.WhatIsYourWhat.com/resources to download the Pinnacle Pyramid template (see Figure 5.4), which will allow you to print out as many copies as you require.

Figure 5.4 The Pinnacle Pyramid Template

Use your Pinnacle Pyramid as a convenient reference tool to help you achieve and maintain a solid foundation whenever the winds of change threaten to move you off your path.

Attaining The Pinnacle is incredibly challenging. The climb up the mountain is steep, and the terrain is far from smooth.

Achieving The Pinnacle is absolutely possible, though. In fact, at some point in your life, you were already there.

Now that you're aware of how you were knocked down from your peak and understand how to reclaim the summit, nothing should prevent you from taking flight and ascending to your most natural state of being.

Word Is Bond

Completing the process of establishing your foundation isn't possible until you gain a solid understanding of how your word affects who you are. To move your life forward, you must fulfill your commitments. Otherwise, nothing you build upon your new foundation will hold firm.

In 1990, rap star LL Cool J introduced the mainstream world to the term word is bond in his song “The Boomin' System” (“cause I'm frontin' in my ride and my word is bond”). The term stems from financial stock and bond markets in which transactions happened so quickly that traders had to work from verbal commitments. It was understood that at the end of the trading day they'd stand 100 percent by their deals, always upholding their word.

You must conduct yourself the same way—and in all areas of your life. If you promise to be a kind, compassionate, and loving father, always behave that way. If you promise to get X done by Y time, get it done. If you make a mistake, own up to it, and do whatever it takes to fix it.

Your word is who you are. Make your word your bond.

Establish the Foundation—In Closing

Congratulations on completing Part I of What Is Your WHAT?

Mastering The Four Stages of Learning, entering The Vortex of Vulnerability, taking on The Vortex of Invincibility, and ascending to The Pinnacle are not easy tasks. I commend you for your commitment to completing the most difficult section of this book.

You should now have a substantially better understanding of who you are and why you do what you do. I hope it's clear that the positive choices you make directly support your desired way of being…and vice versa.

You hold the power to choose what to do in every moment and, as you now know, there are only two choices:

In which direction will you go?

Before moving on to Part II, where you'll be introduced to The Seven Life-Altering Principles, please take a few minutes to review the exercises, your answers, and any material you didn't fully absorb.

If any aspects of Part I were unclear, please take the time to reread those sections. Achieving thoughtful, rich understanding and leaving nothing to assumptions is a fundamental part of your reinvention process.

After you review the Takeaways for Establish the Foundation and are ready, proceed to Part II.

Establish the Foundation—Takeaways

• To live the life you deserve and desire, first Establish the Foundation.
• The Four Stages of Learning are powerful tools you can leverage to aid your understanding of who you are and why you do what you do.
• Set anchors deep into your soul. Be clear about what your path is and don't allow yourself to be blown off course by the whims of others.
• Don't let the “old you” come back and overthrow everything you've learned.
• Though you can learn from the past, it's largely irrelevant. In every current moment, you hold the power to choose what to do.
• You can design, create, and manifest your ideal life. Master your life instead of letting life master you.
• Achieving The Pinnacle is absolutely possible. In fact, at some point in your life, you were already there.
• Make the conscious choice to continue your descent or stop the slide and ascend to the summit.
• Your word is your bond. Say it, write it, do it, live it.

---