What to Make of a Life

This is a truly remarkable book.

It’s AT LEAST tied for first as my all-time favorite. Seriously. I think it’s that good.

I recently read it as I was making some big decisions with Heroic (and my role within Heroic!) and this book became one of my primary guides. It helped me create a more coherent narrative about my own evolution over the last twenty-five years and, Deo volente, will be helping me craft my evolution over the next twenty-five.

With that in mind, I encourage you to get a copy of it here today. (If you get a fraction out of the book that I did, you will thank me.)

Now... Jim Collins has been my favorite business strategist/thinker for a long time. His books have sold over 11 million copies—including the perennial bestseller Good to Great along with Great by Choice, and Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0.

Although his work has always emphasized the importance of what he calls “Level 5 Leadership” that integrates personal humility with indomitable will, those books are focused on businesses.

This book is all about the INDIVIDUAL’S Heroic path.

It’s funny because I was on a walk with Emerson when I picked up the package in which this book arrived from Amazon. I opened the box, looked at the front cover, then flipped to the back cover—which happens to feature a (big) picture of Jim.

I was IMMEDIATELY struck by his presence. In fact, I was so struck by his presence that I showed the cover to Emerson and said: “Isn’t he a BEAUTIFUL man?”

His Soul Force radiates throughout the book.

As per the intro above, he spent a DECADE conducting the research that forms the basis of this book. THEN he spent TWO MORE YEARS writing the book itself.

The main theme?

How a set of paired individuals (from writers, actors, scientists, leaders and others) answered the “Big Question” (with a capital B and a capital Q!): “What to make of a life.”

In the process, Jim shares “Transformative lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through the cliff moments and transitions we will face repeatedly in our lives.”

The book is PACKED with Big Ideas. We’ll barely scratch the surface of its life-changing wisdom, but I’m excited to share some of my favorites. Let’s jump straight in.

P.S. One important note. Jim tells us: “Let me be clear up front: It is not my intention to direct or advise you on what to make of your life. I promise no prescriptions or recipes or directives. Indeed, one of the conclusions of this entire effort is that no one can tell you what to do with your life or how specifically to lead your life. And if they do, they’re almost certainly wrong. This is decidedly not a self-help book. But it is a self-knowledge book. By getting to know the lives in this study through the concepts that follow, you might come a bit closer to the ancient precept, the imperative inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: ‘Know Thyself.’”