Rules to Live By: How Extraordinary Lives Define What Really Matters

In Rules to Live By, New York Times bestselling author, National Geographic photographer, and Academy Award–winning filmmaker of Free Solo Jimmy Chin turns to ten icons who have helped him think more deeply about how we choose to live, how we endure, and, in the end, what really matters.

Twenty-five years ago, as I headed out on my first expedition, I had a lot of questions. I’ve found a few answers since, but one question remains: In the end, what really matters?

A few fundamental truths are worth examining again and again, because we evolve and so does our understanding. When I have needed guidance, I’ve gone back to my mentors. The wisest of them never gave me straight answers: They asked me their own questions, and I arrived at things I never could have been told.

This book is ten conversations with ten extraordinary people―Lynsey Addario, Annette Bening, Simone Biles, Yvon Chouinard, Alex Honnold, Bill King, Yo-Yo Ma, Ridley Scott, Kelly Slater, and Kristine Tompkins―each of whom has earned the exceptional life they chose to live and the understanding that has come with it.

None of them gave me rules. They gave me honesty.

Good conversations, like good books and good films, make you feel a little less alone. I hope these do that for you. Maybe you’ll even find a few rules to live by.

Much love,
Jimmy

Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award-winning director, New York Times best-selling author and National Geographic photographer. He has been an active professional climber and skier on The North Face Athlete team for over 20 years. He has led cutting edge climbing and mountaineering expeditions around the world.

Jimmy has made difficult first ascents in some of the most remote mountain ranges on the planet - from frozen big walls in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan and Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, to the towers of the Ennedi Desert in Chad Africa. In 2006 he achieved the first successful American ski descent from the summit of Mount Everest with Kit and Rob DesLauriers. Five years later, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk captured the coveted first ascent of the notorious Shark’s Fin, a granite wall on India’s Meru Central.

As a photographer, Jimmy's work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Outside Magazine and others. Jimmy has won numerous awards for his photography including National Geographic’s prestigious Photographers’ Photographer Award. His first book of photography, There and Back, became a New York Times Best Seller in 2021.

"An energetic, resonant consideration of mastery, service, identity, and the risks of leaving one’s goals unfulfilled."
- Publishers Weekly