Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

by Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas

In the Dark Horse Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, bestselling author and acclaimed thought leader Todd Rose and neuroscientist Ogi Ogas studied women and men who achieved impressive success even though nobody saw them coming. Dark horses blaze their own trail to a life of happiness and prosperity. Yet what is so remarkable is that hidden inside their seemingly one-of-a-kind journeys are practical principles for achieving success that work for anyone, no matter who you are or what you hope to achieve. This mold-breaking approach doesn’t depend on you SAT scores, who you know, or how much money you have. The secret is a mindset that can be expressed in plain English: Harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence.

Rose and Ogas show how the four elements of the dark horse mindset empower you to consistently make the right choices that fit your unique interests, abilities, and circumstances and will guide you to a life of passion, purpose, and achievement.

Dark Horse is first and foremost a user manual for the dark horse mindset. In the chapters that follow, we share lessons from the Dark Horse Project that demonstrate how to harness your individuality to achieve fulfillment and excellence on your own terms. Our aim is not to help you become the best in the world—often a counterproductive proposition. Instead, we want to help you become the best version of yourself.

4 Elements of The Dark Horse Mindset

This is the dark horse prescription for personalized success. It elegantly summarizes all four elements of the dark horse mindset and converts gradient ascent into a simple set of directives: Get better consists of climbing toward a personal peak of excellence. It is the process of engineering achievement by Knowing Your Strategies and Ignoring the Destination. The things you care about most consists of choosing which mountain to climb. It is the processes of engineering passion by Knowing Your Micro-Motives and engineering purpose by Knowing Your Choices.

Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when—in a decade, a century, or a millennium—we grasp it, we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? —Physicist John Archibald Wheeler

They come out of nowhere, bursting onto the scene with their own signature version of excellence. There is a term for those who triumph against the odds—for winners nobody saw coming. They are called dark horses.
When the participants were asked what constituted society’s definition of success, the two most common responses by far were wealth and status. But when asked if they agreed with this definition, only 18 percent reported completely or mostly sharing society’s view, with 40 percent asserting that they had moved away from society’s view over the course of their life. Instead, a large majority of respondents asserted that their own personal definition of success prioritized happiness and achievement.
This discrepancy between public and private views of success manifested most clearly when participants were asked about what kind of person was considered most successful: though 74 percent declared that according to society’s definition it was “someone who is powerful,” 91 percent said that for them personally, it was “someone who is purpose-driven.” In other words, most of us tend to think that everyone else believes you must be rich and powerful to be successful, while at the same time feeling that we ourselves need personal fulfillment and a sense of self-determined accomplishment to consider ourselves successful.
Maybe most dark horses would turn out to be mavericks with outsized personalities, like Richard Branson—rebels driven by a fierce ambition to make their mark and prove the world wrong. That’s not what we found at all. Instead, we discovered that the personalities of dark horses are just as diverse and unpredictable as you would find in any random sampling of human beings. Some are bold and aggressive; others are shy and deferential. Some enjoy being disruptive; others prefer being conciliatory. Dark horses are not defined by their character. Nor are they defined by a particular motive, socioeconomic background, or approach to training, study, or practice.

★There is a common thread that binds them all together, however, and it was hard to miss. Dark horses are fulfilled.

No matter how they described it, every dark horse we conversed with was confident in who they were and deeply engaged with what they were doing. Simply put, their lives are meaningful and rewarding.
This discovery led us to the most important revelation of all. As we dug deeper, we realized that their sense of fulfillment was not a coincidence. It was a choice. And this all-important decision to pursue fulfillment is what ultimately defines a dark horse.
The fact that dark horses were choosing to prioritize fulfillment stands in stark contrast to the way we usually think about how we come by it. We tend to believe that we are granted happiness as a consequence of mastering our vocation—that fulfillment is the payoff for attaining excellence. But how many people do you know who are excellent at their jobs, yet unhappy all the same?
It is not that their pursuit of excellence led them to fulfillment. It is that their pursuit of fulfillment led them to excellence.
At first, we were puzzled. How on earth could prioritizing fulfillment consistently enable dark horses to attain excellence? But as we continued our interviews, we began to realize that the answer lay within the very reason we decided to recruit dark horses in the first place. Their individuality.

Fulfillment

The circumstances that provide fulfillment are different for each person, because each person’s interests, needs, and desires are different. Dark horses were not fulfilled by being excellent at something but by being deeply engaged with their own thing.
Even within a single profession, different dark horses find purpose and pride in different aspects of their work. (Some might like the creative element, some might like the negotiation, some might like the actual sale, etc..)
People often believe that when it comes to earning a living, you must choose between doing what you like and doing what you must. Dark horses teach us that this is a false choice. By harnessing their individuality, dark horses attained both prowess and joy.

Personalized success is living a life of fulfillment and excellence.

★The key to attaining fulfillment and excellence is a mindset that empowers you to fit your circumstances to your unique interests and abilities. This mindset can be rendered in plain English: Harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence.

“Escape competition through authenticity.” Naval

Chapter 1 The Standardization Covenant

Men in control of vast organisations have tended to be too abstract in their outlook, to forget what actual human beings are like, and to try to fit men to systems rather than systems to men. —Bertrand Russell

Time and again, we encountered a common theme in the journeys of dark horses: a period when they did not fit into their lives—when they felt like a round peg in a square hole.

Despite feeling bored or frustrated, underutilized or overwhelmed, most dark horses reluctantly plodded along for years before finally coming to the realization that they were not living a fulfilling life. Then came the turning point.
“I didn’t feel pride in myself until I embraced the winding path.”
Before arriving at their crossroads, dark horses tried to adhere to the track laid out for them by society, often unthinkingly. Afterward, their decisions were motivated by a new premise. They made their choices based on what seemed most likely to lead them to fulfillment. “Follow your bliss.” – Joseph Campbell
Thus, fulfillment manifested in our conversations with dark horses in two key ways. First, as a self-reported description of their state of mind. They told us they “loved their life.” Second, and more revealing, fulfillment consistently burst forth as a distinctive narrative element.
When we probed critical junctures in dark horses’ progression toward excellence, instead of focusing on training techniques or the acquisition of new skills, they described choosing opportunities that fit their truest self. Even in the face of all the mundane struggles of everyday life, such as bills, babies, family tragedies, and economic downturns, they strived for authenticity. For a sense that their individuality mattered.
Dark horses frequently encounter forks in the road that prompt them to forsake the straight path for a winding path. But that invites the question: What, exactly, is provoking these turning points?

Standardization Mindset

The standardization mindset is committed to the principle that individuality is a problem.
According to the terms of this Standardization Covenant, society will bestow its rewards upon you as long as you abandon the individual pursuit of personal fulfillment for the standardized pursuit of professional excellence.
The chief commandment for achieving success within the Standardization Covenant can be summed up in eight simple words: Be the same as everyone else, only better. *Not a way to go through life for fulfillment
But the unquestioning obedience to a system of talent development that ignores personal fulfillment has profound consequences for all of us. Most notably, it compels you to experience a crisis of soul-searching doubt when you realize you are not living a life of authenticity. It compels you to experience a turning point.

Know Thyself

Dark horses, meanwhile, harness their individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment, which creates the optimal conditions for attaining excellence. To do this effectively requires a commitment to knowing yourself as thoroughly as possible. Only by understanding the details of your interests and desires can you recognize and embrace opportunities that suit your authentic self.
“I didn’t really care how other florists made carnation balls or tied flowers together. Sometimes I want to do the exact opposite,” Ingrid explains. “I think of my flowers as a class of schoolchildren, and I treat each one like its own individual person. One is stronger, one should be hiding in the corner, one should be looking at me and smiling at the camera.” The result is a unique approach to floristry featuring hand-crafted containers, found objects, lush textures, strong contrasts, expectation-violating compositions, and a painterly sense of color.
- Love how she thinks about the flowers.

Though the precise twists and twirls of every dark horse journey are unique, the first step of the journey is always the same: the decision to prioritize fulfillment.
When dark horses make that choice, they do not focus on the potential wealth to be had or how masterful they might one day become. Instead, they recognize that an opportunity exists that fits their individuality—and they seize it. From that point forward, they make their decisions based upon who they are, rather than who others tell them they should be. And by continuing to make decisions in this manner, dark horses inexorably develop excellence.

★That’s why the hardest part of the journey to personalized success isn’t adopting the new mindset . . . . . . it’s letting go of the old one.

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. You must get the old furniture of what you know, think, and believe out before anything new can get in. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” – Dee Hock

Chapter 2 Know Your Micro-Motives

For dark horses, passion is multidimensional and dynamic—and, crucially, under your intentional control. Dark horses reveal that passion is not something to be followed, but something you can engineer.

★The key to engineering passion does not lie in following the one motive that burns hottest inside you, but rather in deliberately leveraging as many different motives as possible.

The more distinct micro-motives you can identify and harness, the greater your engagement will be with your life.
For dark horses, passion is a blowtorch. You can aim it by choosing which micro-motives to activate. And you can always induce it to burn even brighter, because you can always find new micro-motives to use as fuel.
Following your passion takes little effort. Engineering your passion, on the other hand, is a more serious undertaking. It requires that you diligently pursue a deeper understanding of yourself.
- Uncover your micro-motives
When you Know Your Micro-Motives, passion becomes infinitely flexible since different opportunities will activate different sets of your micro-motives. This adaptability imbues your passion with something it lacks in the standardization mindset—sustainability.
Though your motives are deep and enduring, they do evolve over time. Your hottest micro-motives when you are twenty may not burn so brightly when you are fifty. The adaptability of engineered passion allows you to adjust to changes in your motivational profile by seeking out new opportunities that harness new combinations of your micro-motives.
It is not only a reliable source of the energy to act, it is a wellspring of personal authenticity. When you embrace the full range of your micro-motives, you are putting a stake in the ground that announces to the world, “This is who I truly am.”

Chapter 3 Know Your Choices

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. —William Jennings Bryan

Dark horses aren’t given their purpose; they engineer it by making bold moves. Each time you make a meaningful choice based on your assessment of the fit between your micro-motives and an opportunity, you are forging your own purpose. You are dictating the meaning and direction of your life.
If you follow the call of the Standardization Covenant and passively pick a standardized option based on the perceived odds of success instead of actively choosing the one that best fits your individuality, you are robbing yourself of your rightful sense of purpose.
That’s why dark horses fully invest themselves in their choices. They do not equivocate, hedge, or treat their choice as a trial balloon. They act decisively because they are committing to a particular direction. Whenever you make a bold move, you are announcing to the world, “This is where I’m headed.”

Chapter 4 Know Your Strategies

In the dark horse mindset, a strategy is a method for getting better. Thus, every strategy involves improving yourself over time.
Know Your Strategies is about letting your strengths guide you to the right study method, training regime, or learning system, instead of passively following strategies handed down to you from on high. When you do, you might very well come up with ideas that appear strange to others, even though they seem entirely natural to you.
- Reminds me of Josh Waitzkin getting rid of a chess coach because he was trying to fit Josh into a particular mold that didn’t fit his style. Josh had to change his strategy.

Today, we instinctively measure our worth by observing our performance on standardized methods of learning, training, and achieving. Of all the ways that the covenant can make you underestimate your own potential, perhaps the most deflating is when an institution insists that you adopt a strategy that does not suit you—and then reprimands you when you struggle, condescendingly attributing your failure to a lack of talent.
You must always harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment.

When you learn to Know Your Micro-Motives, you can engineer your own passion, which endows you with energy and authenticity. When you learn to Know Your Choices, you can engineer your own purpose, which provides you with meaning and direction. And when you learn to Know Your Strategies, you can engineer your own achievement. When you do, you will experience a deep sense of pride and self-worth because you will have accomplished meaningful feats while remaining true to your authentic self.

Chapter 5 Ignore the Destination

The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. —Bill Watterson

Perhaps the most impactful difference between conventional recipes for success and the dark horses prescription concerns goal-setting. The Standard Formula commands you to know your destination. In contrast, the fourth and final element of the dark horse mindset advises you to Ignore the Destination. Destinations are great for institutions. They’re catastrophic for fulfillment.
- For more on this checkout Kenneth Stanely, Greatness Without Goals

Dark horses take a different perspective. When they consider excellence, they presume that individuality matters. You’ve already gotten a taste of the unbridled variety of human individuality in this book. The individuality of micro-motives. The individuality of choice. The individuality of fuzzy strengths giving rise to a lavish variety of personal strategies. Put all these together, and you get infinite winding paths leading to an infinite variety of excellence.

★The single most important finding of the Dark Horse Project might be the spectacular variety of individual expertise. In every field in which we interviewed multiple experts, we discovered meaningful differences in the way they approached their craft that were traceable to the individuality of the person.

It’s true that our institutions of opportunity must standardize time in order to produce standardized excellence. But let’s be perfectly clear. Standardized time is solely for the benefit of the institutions, not for you. Compelling everyone to conform to the same timeline makes it easier for administrators to manage educational processes by setting fixed dates for admissions, enrollment, course times, final exams, and graduations.

All of this invites us to believe that getting better is simply a matter of time.
But dark horses reject such conclusions out of hand. In the dark horse mindset, time does not matter.
Under the dark horse mindset, time is relative. Your pace of improvement is determined by the specific opportunities you decide to pursue and the specific strategies you decide to try. That means the time that passes on your journey of self-improvement will always be relative to the decisions you make.
Time does not inexorably drive you toward excellence. It is your choices, not the ticking of some metronome, that propel you toward excellence.
You should be skeptical of any “standard developmental timeline,” and certainly any institutional timeline, since they were developed with respect to static, one-dimensional averages without any reference to your own dynamic and multidimensional micro-motives and fuzzy strengths.
Instead of asking pointless questions like “How long does it take, on average, to master tennis?” or “Why am I taking so much longer than my peers to understand organic chemistry?,”
- The only question you should ever ask yourself is “Is this the right strategy for me?”

But when you embrace relative time by making your own choices at your own pace, time does not matter because you are maximizing your fulfillment every step of the way, which in turn will maximize the rate at which you will develop excellence.
When viewed through the dark horse mindset, it becomes apparent that standardized time actually impairs your ability to attain excellence, by making you lose hope when you fall behind the institutional pace car.
Ignore the Destination instructs us to focus on the opportunity at hand rather than the prospects at the end of the road.

Change

But an early commitment to a career is often doomed to failure because it disregards a fundamental feature of reality: the inevitability of change.
Attaining excellence requires that you engineer purpose. Engineering purpose requires that you maximize the fit between your micro-motives and the opportunity you choose to pursue. Thus, there are two obvious problems with pursuing a professional opportunity that lies somewhere in the far-off future.
- Number one, by the time you finally get there, your understanding of your micro-motives may have changed.
- And number two, the opportunity itself may have changed.

You simply have no way of knowing in advance whether your mosaic of authentic micro-motives will be a good match for the destination you are aiming for.
And even if you are fortunate enough to arrive at a fair understanding of your motives, there’s no way of knowing how they might change over time. The very process of pursuing success will cause you to grow and develop in unpredictable ways, leading to a different set of micro-motives that will no longer be a good fit for the standardized notion of excellence you decided to chase so long ago. Needless to say, the farther off the destination, the more likely your understanding of your individuality will evolve before you arrive.
But it’s not only you that can change. It’s an iron-clad guarantee that the world will have changed by the time you reach your destination. New opportunities will appear that weren’t there when you first embarked upon the straight path.

★Dark horses teach us that you can achieve success without ever knowing your destination. You just can’t reach it without knowing who you are.

She finally reached her turning point. “I looked in the mirror and realized—I have no idea who I am.”

She had been on the fast track for standardized success for so long that she had never stopped to think about what she actually wanted. “It suddenly became clear that I needed to start over. I was still living for my parents, for their expectations, for their idea of what it meant to be successful. I needed to find some way to figure out who I was, what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life.”
Dark horses may ignore destinations, but they don’t ignore goals. In the dark horse mindset, there is a clear distinction between the two.
- A goal always emerges out of your individuality. More pointedly, a goal is born out of an active choice you have made.
- In contrast, a destination is someone else’s idea of an objective that you have acceded to. More often than not, a destination is defined by a standardized institution of opportunity. If you are in high school, then getting into Harvard Law School is a destination.

But there are many purpose-driven goals you can work toward right now, such as reading philosophy books, winning your next debate club match, and trying to get an internship at a local law firm. Sure, it’s certainly possible that you will end up at Harvard Law. But it’s far more likely that the self-knowledge you obtain from your experiences pursuing these immediate goals will open up a whole new range of choices better suited for your authentic individuality.

When applied together, the four elements of the dark horse mindset function as a gradient ascent algorithm. Here’s how gradient ascent works. First, you look around at all the slopes near your starting point and determine which slope is steepest. You climb in that direction for a while, then pause and look around from your new vantage point to see whether there might now be a more favorable direction to climb—specifically, a steeper slope. By repeating this process over and over again, you steadily climb higher and higher until you reach a summit. While this process may not find the fastest possible route to the top, it will reliably get you there.

★Every person’s landscape of excellence features its own one-of-a-kind topography, because each person bears their own unique pattern of micro-motives and fuzzy strengths. The peaks and valleys available to you are different from those available to your neighbor. But if no two people share the same landscape, this means that there can be no universal path to excellence. The idea of there being a One Best Way to develop expertise that holds true for everyone is, mathematically speaking, nonsense.

If you believe in the variety of excellence and the individuality of micro-motives and fuzzy strengths, then the mathematics of gradient ascent explains how you can reach your destination without ever knowing your destination. If you stay focused on engineering your passion, purpose, and achievement, then you can be confident that you will attain a personal peak of mastery.
The dark horse mindset, in contrast, shines at its brightest when it comes to the how. It offers straightforward instructions for developing your potential to its fullest: Get better at the things you care about most.

Dark Horse Prescription for Personalized Success

Get better consists of climbing toward a personal peak of excellence. It is the process of engineering achievement by Knowing Your Strategies and Ignoring the Destination. The things you care about most consists of choosing which mountain to climb. It is the processes of engineering passion by Knowing Your Micro-Motives and engineering purpose by Knowing Your Choices.
This prescription also shows how tightly coupled together are fulfillment and excellence. Only by prioritizing your own fulfillment can you advance toward your peak excellence, and only by advancing toward your peak excellence can you experience fulfillment. You need the energy of self-engineered passion and the direction of self-engineered purpose to scale the mountain of excellence, and you need the pride, self-worth, and sense of meaningful accomplishment from self-engineered achievement to experience the full flush of fulfillment.
When you apply the four elements of the dark horse mindset in your own life, fulfillment and excellence come under your conscious control. You are no longer a puppet of fate, but the master of your destiny. When you focus on getting better at the things you care about most, you are not wandering. You are blazing a trail up the mountainside guided by the glowing beacon of your authentic self. The winding path is anything but aimless. It just won’t ever be straight.

Interlude

The Battle for the Soul of Human Potential Managers . . . scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman, whereas in the past he chose his own work and trained himself as best he could. —Frederick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. —John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Chapter 6 Tricking the Eye, Cheating the Soul

Thus, a standardized system of talent development is always a system of talent selection. Just think about that for a moment. Nothing in these rankings reflects the actual process of developing talent that occurs in our institutions of talent development. When our schools impose quotas on educational opportunity, we end up caring more about what administrators think than what students, parents, or employers think. We end up caring more about who gets in then who comes out.
Every day, families of every background and socioeconomic level rely upon such rankings to make life-altering decisions about where to apply and how much money to spend. But strip these rankings bare, and we find they have nothing to do with developing our potential and everything to do with securing a spot in a quota.
Every set of standards for evaluating talent has one essential feature: a fixed and predetermined threshold. If you exceed this bar, you qualify as talented. If you fall short, you do not. That’s the dictionary definition of a standard: a fixed metric of merit. Nothing could be simpler. (Think elite schools only allow in X number per year even if that year the talent pool is way greater)
If an institution employs standards, it must accept all applicants who exceed a fixed and predetermined set of criteria. There’s no way of knowing in advance what this number will be. But if an institution employs a quota, it must accept a fixed and predetermined number of applicants, no matter how many talented candidates apply.
Everything important about your individuality and your potential for excellence is erased by an IQ score—and will be ignored by any talent equant (or any talent standards, for that matter) that relies upon an IQ score as a criterion for opportunity. With a one-dimensional score, you can pretend that someone possesses more talent than someone else. With a jagged profile, you cannot. This is crucial, because everything important about you is jagged.
- You have a jagged mind, a jagged body, and a jagged heart. Put these together, and you end up with a uniquely jagged profile of talent.

It’s not wishful thinking to say, “Everybody is good at something.” Whenever the human sciences break down the physical, mental, and emotional profiles of individuals into increasing numbers of distinct dimensions, at some level of granularity they eventually find that every person possesses some dimensions that are above average (and some that are below average). Everybody is highly motivated by something (and every person is highly unmotivated by something). Everybody has a part of their body that is larger than average (and a part that is smaller than average). Everybody is naturally proficient at some tasks (and everybody is naturally limited at some tasks). Finding them is just a matter of expanding your dimensions.
Sometimes a dimension of ability that appears to be a weakness becomes a strength in the right context.

Let’s sum up. We have hard evidence that the standardization mindset’s assumptions about talent are erroneous: the ubiquity of dark horses. We have a logical formalism that explains how everyone can possess the potential for excellence: the jagged profile. This same logical formalism explains how to convert your potential into proficiency: by harnessing your jagged profile of micro-motives and using trial and error to find strategies that fit your jagged profile of fuzzy strengths.

Chapter 7 The Dark Horse Covenant

Tennis, backgammon, and sumo wrestling are all examples of a “zero-sum game.” The term comes from the science of game theory and refers to situations where one person’s gain results in an equal loss for someone else. If I win, you lose; if you win, I lose: that is a zero-sum game. If a quotacracy consisted of 50 percent winners and 50 percent losers (such as 50 percent of college applicants getting admitted and 50 percent getting rejected), it would be a zero-sum game of excellence.
But that’s not how a real-world quotacracy works. Instead, it consists of a small minority of winners and a large majority of losers. This is worse than a zero-sum game. This is a negative-sum game. As long as we have a system that disproportionately rewards educational opportunity to an arbitrary minority, we will always be stuck with a negative-sum game of excellence.
Make no mistake about what this means for any society that abides by the Standardization Covenant: Far more than half the population will never even get the chance to realize their full potential.

The Age of Personalization

Empowers us to create a system of opportunity that institutes a radically expanded form of fairness. A system where you still have to earn your success, but where opportunity is available to anyone and everyone, instead of those who fit an institutional mold. A system that delivers on the promise of personal fulfillment. For the first time, we finally have everything we need to build a meritocracy that is worthy of the name. A democratic meritocracy.
There is only one thing missing—one thing that each of us must actively choose instead of passively accept.
We want a democratic meritocracy for ourselves and our children, then we must each choose to ratify a new social contract: Society is obligated to provide you with the opportunity to pursue fulfillment, and you are accountable for your own fulfillment.
The supreme institutional obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is to provide Equal Fit. The supreme individual obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is Personal Accountability. These two obligations—when conjoined together—are necessary and sufficient to inaugurate a democratic meritocracy.
Under Equal Fit, every person is given their best opportunity to succeed, according to their individuality. It’s not concerned with adjusting the talent equant, because there is no equant—no mold you must fit, no judge you must please. Instead, Equal Fit adjusts to accommodate your unique jagged profile.
In a system with Equal Fit, we are not competing with each other to ascend to the next narrowing rung of the ladder; we are each performing our own gradient ascent. With Equal Fit, your win is not my loss. Your goal under the Dark Horse Covenant is not to become the best in the nation (a massively negative-sum game), but to become the best version of yourself, through a process that does not limit the ability of others to become their own best self.
Choice is utterly essential for fulfillment. Genuine choice is necessary to find, compare, and select different opportunities that fit your micro-motives. Genuine choice is necessary to freely explore different strategies that might suit your fuzzy strengths. Choice is the navigation system for gradient ascent.
Fulfillment is not something that can be given to you. It can only be earned. That’s why the supreme individual obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is Personal Accountability.

★Under the Dark Horse Covenant, the calculus is simple: with greater freedom of choice comes greater personal accountability. You are accountable for Knowing Your Micro-Motives. You are accountable for Knowing Your Choices. You are accountable for Knowing Your Strategies. And when you are accountable for all of these, then you are responsible for your own fulfillment.

Thus, a democratic meritocracy can only function properly if you are willing to view your pursuit of fulfillment as a duty you owe society.
At heart, the Dark Horse Covenant is a simple declaration that fulfillment is both an individual right and a civic duty.

Conclusion The Pursuit of Happiness

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. —Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson considered the Declaration the crowning achievement of his storied life. The epitaph on his gravestone, written by Jefferson himself, lists his authorship of the Declaration of Independence as the foremost achievement by which “I wish most to be remembered.” And no phrase from the Declaration more succinctly expresses Jefferson’s vision of a society predicated upon universal fulfillment than “the pursuit of Happiness.” Each of Jefferson’s known drafts of the Declaration from first to last contained the four-word phrase,
Nowadays we think of happiness as meaning merriment or pleasure. But that’s not what it meant during the Age of Enlightenment. The word “happy” is the adjectival form of the noun “hap,” which meant an event or a situation. This definition provided the basis for an assortment of “hap” words: mishap (a bad event), hapless (without any favorable events), and haphazard and happenstance (chance events).
Thus, in its original form, the adjective “happy” referred to something that fit a particular event. A “happy thought” was one that was perfectly suited for the conversation; a “happy garment” was one that was appropriate for a social event. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume spoke of a “happy theory” because it kept fitting new data; Hume also penned a line that could serve as the dark horse motto: “He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper.”
happiness “was not as vague a goal as it now seems. Happiness did not mean pleasure, though 18th-century thinkers held that happiness ought to be pleasant. For thinkers like Mason, a person achieved happiness when his condition fit his character, talents and abilities.”
According to Enlightenment thought, if something was a law of human nature, it was therefore necessarily a moral law. It was a right. In other words, since everyone was designed by nature to pursue happiness—to seek those circumstances that fit them best—this quest was a fundamental individual freedom that must be protected. “When they found what they must pursue,” Wills explains, “they knew they had a right to pursue it.”
Many of Jefferson’s Enlightenment idols believed in the existence of a positive feedback loop between the individual pursuit of fulfillment and the collective fulfillment of all members of society. According to this thinking, an individual’s pursuit of fulfillment inevitably benefits her neighbors, while the act of increasing her neighbors’ fulfillment elevates that individual’s own experience of fulfillment.
Jefferson imbibed these Enlightenment ideas about the social dynamics of fulfillment and concluded that the individual pursuit of fulfillment was not only a right, but a duty—a duty that served as the essential mechanism for increasing the collective fulfillment of society.

“According to Thomas Jefferson, the ‘pursuit of happiness’ has to do with an internal journey of learning to know ourselves and an external journey of service to others.”