Book Summary:
The Unconditionals: Five Timeless Values to Live Without Limits and Ignite Your Superpower introduces five core values—love, gratitude, integrity, accountability, and endeavor—as essential for personal fulfillment and growth. Combining timeless wisdom, scientific findings, and inspiring real-life examples, it illustrates how embracing these values unconditionally can transform our lives. More than a collection of quick fixes, it guides readers to overcome self-limiting beliefs, cultivate resilience, and achieve their full potential. The Unconditionals teaches that who we are matters more than what we achieve and that aligning our thoughts and actions with timeless values builds inner strength and inspires positive change within ourselves and our world. The book provides a clear, inspiring roadmap for living a meaningful, purposeful life.
Donna Meredith: Please share a bit about how The Unconditionals came into being. What happened in your life to spark this story?
Andy Crocker: The Unconditionals grew out of two life-changing events that happened around the same time.
The first event was professional. For five years, I led a team to develop a Human Landing System to return humans to the Moon for NASA. We competed directly against companies run by the world’s two richest man at the time—Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. Despite a great team and fantastic design, our concept wasn’t selected. It was the kind of project aerospace engineers dream of—a “holy grail quest”—and losing it was devastating.
The second event was personal. My son started his senior year of high school, and it hit me that my kids were almost grown. I’d always wanted to write down fatherly advice to give them, and I realized time was slipping away.
These two events caused me to step back and ask What’s my purpose? and What really matters? Writing the book started as a way to share important values with my children, but it quickly expanded into a broader examination of how we all can build lives that matter.
DM: Who would benefit from reading this book? Who do you envision as your audience?
Andy Crocker
AC: The potential audience is broad—new graduates, young adults, first-time parents, mid-career professionals, and leaders. Those most attracted to its message are personal development enthusiasts seeking deeper meaning beyond short-term solutions. It’s really for anyone who asks both How can I be successful? and How do I live with meaning and purpose?
DM: What does it mean to live “unconditionally” ?
AC: Living unconditionally means living by our values regardless of the circumstances.
Conditionality is a natural human tendency. We let situations dictate our behavior. It’s easy to be kind when others are kind or honest when the stakes are low. But when someone mistreats us, we feel justified in mistreating them back. When outcomes are uncertain and we could lose face, we often abandon accountability.
Living unconditionally means anchoring our thoughts, words, and actions in our values, not in what we can get or achieve. The book suggests five fundamental values we should strive to live unconditionally: love, gratitude, integrity, accountability, and endeavor. We should think, say, and act according to these values, no matter the situation.
Donna Meredith
DM: Your story is about timeless values. Would you share a little about what you mean by that? Do you see these values fading from the American way of life? If so, how and why?
AC: I call these values timeless because 1) throughout history, they’ve consistently been touted when humanity has searched for what creates fulfillment and meaning, and 2) they apply universally, across cultures and circumstances. Love, gratitude, integrity, accountability, and endeavor aren’t trendy life hacks. They aren’t specific to any religion or political faction. They’ve withstood the tests of time and vast social, cultural, and technological changes.
I do think American culture has drifted away from these values; but throughout history, cultures have drifted from them, and great thinkers have always pointed to them as foundational principles to help us find our way. Today’s culture seems to reward appearance over substance. It chases speed, convenience, and recognition instead of patience, depth, and character. The values aren’t gone—they’re still in us—but they’re buried beneath the noise.
The Unconditionals says these values are as relevant today as ever. They’re important in an engineering lab, boardroom, and kitchen. The goal of the book is to remind readers that these are the values that have always brought—and can bring today—fulfillment and meaning.
DM: How did an engineering background come to play in the writing of this book?
AC: My engineering education and career trained me in system-thinking—understanding how parts of a system interact and how every part affects the performance of the whole. That perspective shaped how I approached the book. Each value is a critical part of our human operating system; if any part is broken or weak, the system suffers. In other words, if we approach any of the five values conditionally—making our behavior contingent on circumstances or what makes us feel good—we can’t reach our full potential or experience our greatest fulfillment.
My background also gave me a bias for practicality. I didn’t want the book to contain only abstract ideals. So, each chapter has a section explaining why the value matters in our lives and ends with a section of tangible guidance, because the values only matter if they’re applied.
Finally, my engineering mind craves coherence, so The Unconditionals offers a framework for living. Just as designing a spacecraft requires that all its elements function together to achieve an objective, the values described in the book support each other and, when combined, create a powerful personal operating system.
DM: How does values-based living helps us weather setbacks, uncertainty, and emotional burnout?
AC: Although it’s inevitable that life’s conditions will change—we all lose jobs, relationships, or dreams—if we live according to our values, we don’t have to change who we are. Values are anchors that keep us from losing ourselves when challenges arise.
When my team lost the lunar lander project, I realized what sustained me (and the spirit of the team) were our values. Love offered connection and comfort. Gratitude gave perspective. Integrity kept us consistent and loyal. Accountability ensured we completed our commitments—to ourselves and each other. Endeavor provided purpose and perseverance and led to growth.
Values keep us grounded and propel us forward despite setbacks, uncertainty, and burnout.
DM: What question do you wish interviewers would ask you?
AC: I wish more people asked, What’s the most important lesson you learned writing the book?
What really sunk in for me—more than ever during my career—is that failure isn’t a roadblock; it’s a requirement to achieve success. Doing research for the book, I found that people who realize the biggest dreams or reach seemingly impossible goals never do so on a straight path. Failure is unavoidable. Everyone who achieves major success learns critical lessons by failing along the way, and most treat failures as opportunities for improvement.
Failure strips away illusion. It teaches humility, honesty, and resilience—traits that are hard to learn well by always winning. Writing The Unconditionals showed me that setbacks are often what shape us. Without them, we might reach goals, but we can’t grow into our best selves.
DM: What are you working on next?
AC: I’m extending The Unconditionals further into leadership and organizational contexts. My aim is to help professionals and companies apply the five core values in actionable and impactful ways. As part of this, I’m developing companion workbooks and talks to translate unconditional values into specific, everyday leadership and team culture settings.
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