The Build a Bigger Life Manifesto

Adam Carroll

• Publisher: BookPress Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781947305144
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Persönlichkeitsentwicklung

The philosophy this book teaches all started with a simple statement to a friend: "Maybe you should build a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle."

Today, tens of thousands of people have been exposed to the message by listening to the Build a Bigger Life Podcast or attending a Build a Bigger Life Retreat. This book is a framework for building a bigger life and features step-by-step instructions on how to explore what you most want, how to leverage your existing talents and resources, and how to reveal the shortest path to the life you most desire.

Join the tribe known as "Life Architects" who have decided life is about living out your core values, pursuing a higher vision, creating successful and positive relationships, and making money irrelevant!

Tenet 1

Build on a Strong (Values) Foundation

Your parents undoubtedly raised you with a certain set of values, ways of living and of treating other people that they hoped you’d adhere to for the rest of your life. Yet something happens throughout our teens and twenties––we spend less and less time with our parents and more time with friends, co-workers, spouses, and kids. Whether you realize it or not, all of those interactions will subtly shift your personal values unless you are extremely conscious of your own core values and live them accordingly.

It’s fairly obvious to state that a person living according to their highest values is someone on the right track to building a bigger life. However, just one or two compromised values can cause your life to seem very small.

I recently had the opportunity to work on a project for a company that is doing big, creative things in the financial space. On the surface, everything looked right with the opportunity. They are a fun, fast-moving group of people who love to challenge the status quo. In fact, I was so honored to be asked to participate, I turned a deaf ear to the feedback of friends and mentors. Many of them asked if I knew what I was getting myself into, and still I plowed ahead.

About a month into the project, I noticed that on the days I worked in their offices, my neck and shoulders hurt by the end of the day. My energy level was nearly zapped by the end of the week, which was not at all normal for me otherwise. Furthermore, I found myself not wanting to get up and go to work on Mondays, which is the absolute opposite of how I normally feel at the start of a week.

Throughout the contract, I kept asking my inner knower (Tenet 5), “Where is the misalignment with my values?”

Two words kept coming up: Freedom and Impact.

Freedom and flexibility are hallmark values of late Gen Xers and most Millennials.¹ Those two core values have defined my work life since 2004, and living according to them has helped me build a bigger life for me and my family in the process.

What I underestimated until this contract came about was my need for the freedom to work when and how I want and the incredible value I place on having an impact on others. While I interacted with a number of people every day, the impact that helped validate the work wasn’t readily visible.

Today, I know that if I’m bidding on a project, the impact has to be considered right off the bat as does the ability to work on my terms in a way that supports my biggest life. If you are someone who isn’t feeling fully fulfilled in your work life, it’s time to dive deep into your highest values and see what’s missing. Quite often, just one minor tweak in how you work, what projects you’re on, or what you’re focused on will make a massive difference in how you feel at the end of the day.

Perhaps creativity is one of your highest values and you’re not working on anything that allows that value to shine through. Maybe your work life doesn’t require a lot of creativity but working on projects at home could really add meaning to your day. The problem may be that even those creative tasks get pushed to the back-burner for the sake of your spouse, your kids, housework, and chores.

I challenge you to find something that helps express one or more of your highest values and make that part of your daily or weekly routine. Perhaps it’s being more creative, learning to play an instrument or speak a new language, putting your unique skills to a good cause, or having a conversation at work about doing more of what you love to do (and are great at).

Leveraging Your Values at Work

A week or so after one of my speaking engagements, I met a gentleman for coffee. Through our conversation, it was apparent he had a core value of connection. He was a salesman and spent his days calling on companies trying to sell them a service in a very competitive field. As a result, he was getting a lot of rude gatekeepers telling him they already had a vendor for that service. At our first meeting, I remember him saying that this business just wasn’t for him, and he should probably find something else to sell. However, when pushed, he said he really believed in the product. He was just missing the closer connection with his prospects.

“What if you pursued relationships and allowed the business to come to you?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”

“Sure you would. You called and asked me to coffee. Just do more of that.”

For the past couple of years, this gentleman has been running networking appointments on a daily basis, and his business is thriving. People see him not only as an expert networker, but as an expert in his field because he functions more like a consultant and less like a salesperson. And the best part is he goes home having fulfilled one of his highest core values (connection) almost every day. It’s almost as if he doesn’t have to sell anymore because people are buying from him and referring him business all the time.

One of my favorite podcast interviewees is Troy Wittman (Episode 44). Troy was one of the presenters at the TEDx University of Wisconsin Milwaukee event where I delivered my first TEDx talk. What most inspired me about Troy’s talk was that he turned his profession as a teacher into a full-fledged calling. The students in Mr. Wittman’s class don’t learn the same way other kids learn. They engage their imaginations, their bodies, and their minds and have fun the entire time. Call it method teaching, interactive learning, or creative engagement; Troy calls it a passion for growth, which is one of his core values. He found that by adding elements of creativity and play in his classes, he could watch the growth in his students every semester.

Mr. Wittman’s class built a time machine into the corner of his classroom. This time machine allows students to re-enact scenes from history and teach their fellow classmates based on the scripts provided by Mr. Wittman. Students enter the time machine in present day and emerge from the blinking lights and fog machine-induced haze as characters from history, complete in costumes from the time period, wigs, and sometimes terrible accents.

What happens is both hysterical and memorable. And, thanks to Mr. Wittman, these students love to learn. He’s able to watch them grow in their knowledge, their passion for the subject matter, and their confidence as presenters of learned material.

Your Values and Relationships

A relationship expert once told me the reason couples break up is that they stop living in alignment with their own values. In effect, he said, they forget who they are or desire to be and instead are living according to the values set of the other person. Far too often, he added, the values were never defined, and the relationship was on an autopilot course for disaster.

One of the quotes that comes to the surface for me is Shakespeare’s “to thine own self be true.” Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some very talented coaches, and the question I’ve heard more times than I can count is, “What is out of alignment for you?”

What I’ve determined that question means for me is, “what values are you not living in accordance with?”

One night, my wife was putting our boys to bed and not getting a lot of cooperation from them in the process. It had been a stressful day for her at w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Tenet 1: Build on a Strong (Values) Foundation
• Tenet 2: See Yourself as the Architect of Your Own Life
• Tenet 3: Holding a Bigger Vision
• Tenet 4: Asking Bigger Questions
• Tenet 5: Trusting the Inner Knower
• Tenet 6: Leveraging the P.O.W.E.R. of Connection
• Tenet 7: Making Money Irrelevant
• Tenet 8: Elimination
• Tenet 9: Automation
• Implementation
• Notes