How to Live: Fog, Cliffs, and the Inner Flame

Author Jim Collins · Publisher Feelm · Published 2026-07-15 · ISBN 9791124468272

About the Book

This book asks everyone facing a turning point in life:
What is the one core thing that will sustain your life to the very end?

This is the crucial difference between this book and existing self-help books. While most self-help books talk about how to succeed, "How Will You Live?" discusses life after having experienced both success and failure. The journey presented in "How Will You Live?" consists of three main parts. Part 1, "The Moment Life's Focus Becomes Clear," explains how to discover one's own core that penetrates life and establish an unshakeable central axis. Part 2, "How to Cross Cliffs and Fog," addresses the attitude of taking the next step even amidst failure, loss, and uncertainty. Part 3, "A Life That Keeps the Inner Flame Burning Long," discusses the principles for living a life that maintains meaning and vitality long after achieving success.

After reading "How Will You Live?", readers will no longer view moments of failure and change as the end of life. Instead, they will begin to see life's turning points as new starting points. This book does not offer immediate answers or formulas for success. Instead, it confronts a much more fundamental question: "What will I live for?" Its greatest significance is to help individuals facing life crises such as career stagnation, retirement, burnout, and loss, discover their own central axis and redesign their future lives. This is more than just a self-help book; it will become a life-rebuilding guide that readers will turn to whenever life shakes them.

An era experiencing the void after success
Why speak of 'cliffs' and 'fog'?

Today's self-help market has been about faster success and higher performance. Methods for working more efficiently, achieving more, and reaching goals faster are constantly consumed. Yet, many people experience emptiness and loss of direction even after achieving their goals. The pressure to succeed quickly grows, but where to go is unknown. "How Will You Live?" starts from this contemporary sensibility. Jim Collins questions not how to succeed more, but how to not lose one's direction even when life shakes.

This book does not negate success itself. Instead, it asks whether a sustainable life is possible even after success. Through examples of rock musicians who lost their way after the group that brought them success disbanded, activists who faced the question "What do I do now?" after achieving a lifelong goal, and athletes who had to start a new life after the Olympics, it states that everyone encounters life's 'cliffs' and 'fog.' What's important now is not a goal decades away, but taking the next step as far as one can see. "How Will You Live?" does not focus on the glamorous moments of successful people, but rather highlights how they navigated periods of wandering, failure, and burnout, offering courage to those who feel lost now to start anew.

In moments when life shakes, how do humans find themselves again?
The meaning and direction of life, revisited in an era of transition.

Moments when life shakes come to everyone. When we achieve a long-held goal, when a familiar role disappears, or when we feel unable to move forward due to failure and loss, we stand at the cliff of life. Especially during the midlife transition, when social responsibilities and realistic burdens increase, such moments bring even deeper confusion. In an era where achievements and titles are not eternal, many people face the questions, "How should I live from now on?" and "What will I live for?"

"How Will You Live?" is the book that answers precisely those questions. Jim Collins tracks the lives of people who have passed through life's transitions and discovers common principles among those who found their direction in life again even when external success wavered. This book is not about how to endure longer, but about discovering one's own core that will sustain life to the end and redesigning one's future life. It is a book that offers the most fundamental insights to everyone facing a turning point in life.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Moment I Faced Life's Cliff

Part 1. The Moment Life's Focus Becomes Clear
Chapter 1. The One Core
Chapter 2. The Constellation of Encoding
Chapter 3. Reverse the Flow of Money
Chapter 4. Focus on the Fire

Part 2. How to Cross Cliffs and Fog
Chapter 5. The Cliff
Chapter 6. The Fog
Chapter 7. How to Move Simply
Chapter 8. Life as a Roulette Wheel

Part 3. A Life That Keeps the Inner Flame Burning Long
Chapter 9. Expanding Outward and Returning Inward
Chapter 10. Choosing Responsibility
Chapter 11. Working Long While Fueling the Inner Fire
Chapter 12. Questions Are Better Than Answers

Acknowledgements
Appendix