The 5 Essentials

Book excerpt: Raise the bar to become the best version of you Most of us set the bar too low in our lives, both personally and professionally. Bob Deutsch, a cognitive neuroscientist/anthropologist turned entrepreneur, has spent a lifetime studying people and found that we choose not to pursue our greatest ambitions because we feel we are incapable of reaching them. But he has also found that we are each born with the fundamental abilities to live the full, creative, dynamic lives we dream about. Curiosity, Openness, Sensuality, Paradox, and Self-Story—these are our five inner resources. Through interviews with inspiring people, including Wynton Marsalis and Richard Feynman, and case studies of personalities like Bruce Springsteen and Anna Quindlen, Deutsch shows us how to access and use these resources to open our lives to unimagined possibilities.