The path to peace: life coach Sheri Riley taps into the heart of the high achiever.

WITH A FORMER CLIENT LIST OF STAR athletes, executives, and entertainers--including Usher, who wrote the foreword of her book--empowerment speaker, life strategist, and the author of Exponential Living: Stop Spending 100% of Your Time on 10% of Who You Are (New American Library; $26), Sheri Riley maintains that peace is and should be--the ultimate goal for most people, but that our sequential approach to achieving it is backward.

"What we all have in common is the belief that when we achieve our goals, we will gain freedom, security, status and control, and that these things will help us achieve our ultimate goal: peace." she writes. "But, we have our steps in reverse order. It is peace we should be pursuing first."

It's not an easy sell in a hyper-competitive, fame-and-fortune obsessed culture. However, Riley insists that personal development fuels professional growth, and that peace is not the antithesis to drive and power, it is the ultimate power.

"I love money, I love success, I love to achieve," she says. "But, I have had millions, and I've been broke, and in either one of those dynamics, peace is what enabled me to have joy."

The book is for doers, influencers; achievers, and all-around busy people, who find that joy eludes them. In other words, Riley is targeting the strivers who hit all their marks, reach all their dreams, and accept all the accolades, only to think, "Is that all there is?"

When Riley began developing the nine principles out-lined in Exponential Living 15 years ago, she wasn't thinking about writing a book; she was trying to gain peace and stop living a life that was filled with stress and anxiety. At the time, she had already weathered the career shift from successful music business executive at Atlanta's LaFace Records to an entrepreneur, launching a consulting firm called GLUE. But, she had yet to master the stressful balancing act of being a working mother and wife. Finally, she gave up trying, realizing that balance wasn't possible and not the elixir. What she truly sought was peace and clarity.

As mothers, entrepreneurs, and executives, we have to get out of this notion that peace is some 'Kumbaya' moment," Riley says. "The courageous pursuit of peace allows us to begin living fully today, not at some hoped-for point in the future. Peace is not a vacation, it's a lifestyle."

In the land of Exponential Living, "Peace is the new success."

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