That is where this work begins. The HAIway is not about chasing status, optimization, or someone else’s definition of success. Your “upper right” is not a universal destination. It is a personal direction of alignment, what it looks like when your beliefs, decisions, relationships, and work begin moving coherently together.
For some people, that may lead to building a business. For others, it may lead to simplifying their life, repairing relationships, serving their community, changing careers, or completely redefining success. The point is not the outcome, because that will change based on the circumstance.
The point is learning to move in a direction that is aligned with what is true, meaningful, and life-giving, for YOU. Your upper right is not a fixed point you finally arrive at.
It is the ongoing practice of orienting yourself toward alignment, then adjusting as the path unfolds, regardless of where it takes you.
Define Your “Upper Right”
The Two Axes
Humans organize the world in directional hierarchies. In the US, up tends to represent growth, clarity, flourishing, health, or progress. Down tends to represent confusion, stagnation, fragmentation, or decline. In charts and graphs, positive outcomes are usually toward the top or to the right.
Over time, we internalize that pattern. We instinctively understand movement toward the “upper right” as movement toward something better. But most people never stop to ask an important question:
Better according to what?
That question is critical because in worldviews, the “upper right” cannot mean whatever we want it to. If the axes can be different for every person, the grid stops being useful. It becomes simply a mirror for personal preference rather than a tool for true discernment.
So The HAIway uses two fixed axes. They give the framework a stable way to examine how a person is currently oriented: where meaning is being sourced, and where attention is being directed.
The axes may fixed, but the evidence is personal.
The Two Axes
The HAIway map is built from two fixed axes.
The vertical axis: Source of Meaning
This axis asks where a person looks for meaning, authority, worth, direction, and what counts as good.
At one end, meaning is sourced primarily from the self, social approval, human systems, achievement, preference, or the surrounding culture.
At the other end, meaning is sourced from something beyond the self: God, transcendent truth, enduring wisdom, moral order, sacred obligation, or a greater good.
This axis is not about whether a person is religious. It is about what functionally has authority.
What do I treat as ultimate?
What gets to tell me what matters?
What do I obey when pressure rises?
The horizontal axis: Focus of Attention
This axis asks where a person’s attention, energy, and concern are directed.
At one end, attention turns inward toward self-protection, self-expression, self-definition, self-optimization, approval, control, or identity management.
At the other end, attention turns outward toward service, love, responsibility, contribution, relationship, stewardship, and the good of others.
This axis is not about ignoring the self. A healthy life still requires self-awareness, boundaries, rest, and care.
The question is what governs the direction of the life.
Am I mainly organizing life around myself? Or am I becoming more able to love, serve, steward, and contribute?