In April, 2026, Jim Collins, published what he believes is his best book yet – What To Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. As I listened to Jim discuss his book that took 10 years to research and write, I had goosebumps because it is the very resource that is needed at this very moment for all of us.
It is not at all surprising that Jim was called to this project 10 years ago. We were all feeling the changes that were happening even if we couldn’t put our finger on it. We were embracing social media all while our actual social lives were beginning to fray. What was intended to connect us, ended up doing the polar opposite.
At the same time, the old blueprint of a linear life built in some logical, chronological order was no longer applicable. Author Bruce Feiler recognized we were in need of a more fluid and dynamic approach to dealing with our lives now imprinted with constant change. He published his book, Life Is In the Transitions, in 2020. The big take-away that I got from Bruce Feiler’s book is that we can take a very proactive approach in shaping our lives for the better, as we go through the messy middle of transitions. Instead of letting a life transition impact us without any say in the matter, we can find our agency.
Now we have Jim Collin’s book underscoring just how imperative it is for us to have a deep working knowledge of ourselves. This is the foundation of our personal agency. The prevailing question he explores is “what does it take to really know yourself and to apply that empowering self-knowledge to each phase of your life?”
It is the subtitle of Jim’s book that really resonates with me personally and for this website. Cliffs, fog and fire are such relatable metaphors for how we feel when facing big life changes. What captivated me is how Jim reframed cliffs so that they become substantial footholds instead of dropping us into an abyss. The fog is when we can’t see where we headed with any real clarity – and the fire is our inner drive.
Jim Collins is drawing on metaphors from nature with intention.
In his book, Nature and the Mind, environmental neuroscientist, Dr. Marc Berman, reminds us that when we spend quality time in nature, we often get a lot more clarity about what matters most in life. We think in bigger picture ways and may even find clues about the meaning and purpose in our lives. You’d be surprised how much self-knowledge you gain from time spent in solitude in nature.
Most of us were never taught to cultivate self-knowledge.
We might hear the occasional question: What would you tell your younger self? Or what have you learned from this experience? However, rarely are we told we can repurpose a past experience, rebuild with broken parts; or re-tool our natural talents, strengths and experience to launch into something bigger than we ever thought possible.
This old paradigm of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, getting over it and getting on with it, is changing.
And it is changing in lock step with all that we are learning from neuroscience, psychology and emotional intelligence. It is the very reason that I built this resource for a lifetime of dynamic personal growth. We never stop growing and learning throughout our lifetimes. Jim Collins echoes this message through his research and compelling real life stories.
Here is Amazon’s summary of Jim’s book, What to Make of a Life:
Jim Collins, international bestselling author of Good to Great, offers transformative lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through the cliff moments and transitions we all will face repeatedly in our lives.
What to make of a life?
It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change a life? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog.
His exploration follows various lives side-by-side, paired together at cliffs, and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken. Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end. What emerges from Collins’s extensive studies—of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others—is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed.
We are at an incredible inflection point in our human evolution where we have ready access to science-based knowledge, tools and skills to help us shape our lives with intention and by agentic design. Books like Bruce Feiler’s and Jim Collins’ are chock full of personal stories of ordinary people who did incredible things when faced with life-changing events. The message is clear: If they could do it, you can too!
The transformational pivot point is being prepared with working self-knowledge and a clear understanding of how your brain and body actually works. Now that we know better, we can intentionally do better.
