Jim Collins: What to Make of a Life

What to make of a life?

It is a question just about everyone confronts in their life, and it centers on how we find our way in the world. How do we deal with challenges that can radically change a life? And what comes next?

Author Jim Collins returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share his lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through those"cliff moment" challenges and transitions that come up repeatedly in our lives. 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.

He followed people in side-by-side positions who shared "cliffs," and he analyzes the different decisions people made and the divergent paths taken. Such as two rock musicians facing a future without the group that brought them success. Or two public figures who endured scandal and then had to figure out how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieved their big goal—and then had to decide out what to do next. Then there are two figure skaters scoping out a new life's purpose for their post-Olympic careers.

From Collins' studies, he developed a framework for figuring out how a life can be rebuilt and constantly renewed. Come hear him for yourself and hear his deeply researched prescription for discovering deeply fulfilling roles in life, enduring tough times and even pivotal events, and building personal momentum, decade after decade, throughout life.

Notes

Collins photo: Jim Collins; all speaker photos courtesy the speakers

Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.

All ticket sales are final and nonrefundable.

SPEAKERS

Jim Collins, Author, Good to Great and What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative

In Conversation With Charles Duhigg, Investigative Journalist; Author

5:15 p.m. doors open & check-in
6–7 p.m. program
7 p.m. book signing
(all times Pacific Time)

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