Building A Life Of Value

If you’re looking to stimulate your thinking, energize your spirit and create your own blueprint for living a life of value, add this book to your shopping cart. It has been very well received by readers as well as philosophers, businesspersons, professors, thought leaders, and cultural creative types. It makes an incredible gift or coffee table book, but you are welcome to return it if you don’t find if valuable.

The flagship of these books on values is Building a Life of Value. It is a beautiful hardcover book of 289 pages. It features fourteen chapters, each comprising a “ValueSet,” or grouping of two or three values. By values I mean concepts such as truth, creativity, honor, etc. So what does it mean to “build a life of value?” Though kind of a long explanation, I think the following will be worth your time:

“Imagine that you decide to add a room onto your house to accommodate your growing family, or to give yourself that office that you’ve always dreamed of having. Despite the investment, you know it’s worth it because, in the long run, it will add to the value of your home, and it will make living there more comfortable and fulfilling.

Ambitious and motivated, you pull out the original blueprints for your house, and make a trip to your nearest hardware supply store to begin stocking up on all the materials you think you’ll need. You decide to save a little money by having your brother and closest friend help you do the work – neither of whom claims to be an expert or specialist, but they’re both avid watchers of home improvement TV shows.

Everyone is on-hand the next day and the building of your new room begins. It doesn’t take long for your team to realize that something isn’t right… The materials you bought don’t seem to fit right, there is no architect drawing of the addition, and by the end of the first week it’s obvious that your project isn’t turning out exactly as you’d expected. Not wanting to give up on your dream, you keep at it for another three weeks, until the problems on the project become too big to handle. You’re not where you want to be, and it is frustrating. You feel like you’re wasting time and “screwing it up.” Finally, you call in a specialist.

Bright and early the next morning he arrives at your home, where you lead her to your makeshift office in the kitchen to begin viewing the blueprints. In just a few moments, she looks up from the blueprint, having identified the source of your problems. You’re astounded when she turns to you and says, “I don’t know who drew these plans, but they are old and they aren’t even about the addition you have in mind. You don’t want to rebuild your existing house, do you? You can’t build competently if you are just winging it.”

Happily, when it comes to building a life of value, you are the architect. And the contractor. And the carpenter. And the painter. And the interior designer. And the Realtor. That’s the good news. It is also disappointing to some people to learn of this responsibility. “Winging it” just won’t get you where you want to be and it won’t make your life very valuable to you. Nor will you end up being very valuable to others in your life and in your community.

Alas, many of us struggle and fake our way through the design and building process. We work hard every day to make life changes and improvements, not realizing we’re working from a blueprint that is outdated or not our own. One of the most compelling books on values, Building a Life of Value is helpful in designing and building the life you really want to live.”