Carlos Whittaker is The Moment Maker

Worship leader, blogger, speaker and now, author, Carlos Whittaker is the quintessential 21^st Century dad. He has an active, attentive blog audience. His videos of his kids have gone viral and his social media savvy rivals the best of them. In his first book, however, Carlos focuses not on documenting and posting life for the world to see, but rather on creating the moments that make life worth living. He shared with CCM his moment-making-method, along with some simple tips that he and his family put into play to get the most out of life and out of each other.

CCM: You’ve amassed an attentive audience in the blogosphere, along with your music fans. Why did you decide that this was the right time to launch into the book publishing world?

Carlos: It was four years between my two records. I wanted to wait until the right thing came along. I knew I had a blog audience ready for a book and different publishers were asking about books on worship leading or the creative process. But when I did a little bit of study and looked at the most popular posts, they were always the posts where I took a risk and made a moment. I think it’s because people are living vicariously through my family and me. We are moment makers and now I get to help the general public make those moments.

CCM: Given that you do have a family and kids aged 11, 10 and 7, how did you find time to write a book?

Carlos: It was a year-long process. I can’t believe I actually pulled this thing off! I’ve been blogging since 2005 everyday, so my writing muscles were ready. I would get up at 4:00, work out, then write from 5:30-9:30. I’m like an old man! My friends were calling me to go out, but when I got done writing, I’d blog and do social stuff until noon and then I was home to stay!

CCM: It seems a bit contradictory that in our world of facebook and instagram, we’re actually more inclined to miss special moments. What are some ways we can create and retain those special moments in the pace of 2014?

Carlos: We live in a society that goes a mile-a-minute. There are Twitter feeds flying by, we’re constantly capturing instagrams… I feel like we’re so worried about documenting the moments in our lives, we’re actually missing them. When my family gets home, everybody’s phones go into a bag. 

Then, we kind of put my moment-making method into play. Step one is to understand why we jump into moment-making at all. We are so concerned with fulfilling our bucket list, but we don’t know why.  Once we start to understand why, we can move into step two, which I call the exploration stage. I have an alarm that goes off three times a day to remind me to look around and capture the ideas and moments going on right then. Next, there’s a pausing phase. If we just pause and let those ideas sit with us and sink in, those moments can then begin to fill our days with meaning.

CCM: At the end of the day, what are you hoping people will gain from this book and new perspective on life?

Carlos: I really want people to understand that sometimes, you can live your life or it will live you. You see so many people just existing. They’re great people and they have great jobs and they love their families, but they’re exhausted. They’re missing so many moments. I hope people can use this method and start experiencing life in a whole new way.

Learn more about Carlos Whittaker and The Moment Maker at his blog, ragamuffinsoul.com.