From Strength to Strength

Arthur Brooks (2022).?From strength to strength: Finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life.?Portfolio / Penguin

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xiv ?the “striver’s curse”: people who strive to be excellent at what they do often wind up finding their inevitable decline terrifying, their successes increasingly unsatisfying, and their relationships lacking

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xv?“Stein’s law,” … Herbert Stein … “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

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xv ?Instead of denying change in your abilities, you can make the change itself a source of strength

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1-2?Charles Darwin … died considering his career to be a disappointment … In 1859, at age fifty, he published … On the Origin of Species … that made him into a household name and changed science forever … however, Darwin’s work stagnated creatively

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3?if you, like Darwin, have worked hard to be exceptional at what you do, you will almost certainly face a similar pattern of decline and disappointment – and it will come much, much sooner than you think

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4?when asked in 2009 what “being old” means, the most popular response among Americans was “turning eighty-five.”?In other words, the average American (who lives to seventy-nine) dies six years before entering old age

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5-7?Benjamin Jones … shows that?the likelihood of a major discovery increases steadily through one’s twenties and thirties and then declines dramatically through one’s forties, fifties, and sixties … since 1985, the peak age … for physicists, fifty;?for chemistry, forty-six; and for medicine, forty-five.?After that, innovation drops precipitously.

????Other knowledge fields follow the same basic pattern … doctors … appear to peak in their thirties … Entrepreneurs are an interesting case … many are in creative decline by age thirty … Other scholars dispute this finding … air-traffic controllers … mandatory retirement age is fifty-six??

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13-14?the prefrontal cortex … is the last part of the brain to develop in childhood and the first to exhibit decline in adulthood … In middle age, the prefrontal cortex degrades in effectiveness … rapid analysis and creative innovation will suffer

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16?Most likely, you have been told that high doses of vitamin C can prevent colds; this theory comes from [Linus] Pauling’s famous writings from the 1970s, which have been scientifically debunked many times

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17?almost nothing feels worse than becoming irrelevant, or even useless, to others who once held us in esteem

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18?2007 … senior citizens who never or rarely “felt useful” were nearly three times as likely as those who frequently felt useful to develop a mild disability and more than three times as likely to have died during the course of the study

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20?studies show that people who have chased power and achievement in their professional lives tend to be unhappier after retirement than people who did not

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20?simply being identified early on as gifted can lead to problems, according to Carole and Charles Holahan … “Learning at a younger age of membership in a study of intellectual giftedness was related to … less favorable psychological well-being at age eighty.”

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21?satisfaction from success lasts but an instant

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21?No one feels sorry for a successful person

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22?So what are you going to do about it? … 3.?You can accept that what got you to this point won’t work to get you into the future – that you need to build some new strengths and skills

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23?Decline is unavoidable … But … there are some specific ways in which we naturally get smarter and more skillful

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24?people maintain and grow their vocabulary – in their native languages and foreign languages – all the way to the end of life

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24?with age, people are better at combining and utilizing complex ideas

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25-27?Raymond Cattell … 1971 … posited that there were two types of intelligence … The first is fluid intelligence … highest relatively early in adulthood … there is also crystallized intelligence … defined as the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past … When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom

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30?The idea of moving to instruction later in life is a theme one finds in the wisdom literatures from East to West

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30-31?first-century … Marcus Tullius Cicero … the most important voice from that period that still exists today … Cicero believed three things about older age.?First, that it should be dedicated to service … Second, our greatest gift later in life is wisdom …. Third, our natural ability at this point is counsel: mentoring, advising, and teaching others

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33?as the saying goes, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

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35-38?Johann Sebastian Bach … his fame and glory didn’t last … redesigned his own life, moving from musical innovator to master teacher … When he fell behind as an innovator, he reinvented himself as an instructor

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40?every change of circumstance is a chance to learn, grow, and create value … Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom

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40-41?Get on your second curve.?Jump from what rewards fluid intelligence to what rewards crystallized intelligence.?Learn to use your wisdom … three forces holding you back … addiction to work and success … attachment to worldly rewards … fear of decline … three things you need to do starting right now to make the second curve better than the first: develop your relationships, start your spiritual journey, and embrace your weaknesses

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45?nothing is permanent

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45?“objectification.” … it is easy to forget that we can do it to ourselves as well … self-objectification, workaholism, and … success addiction ??

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46?people who choose being special over happy are addicts

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46?According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the likelihood of drinking, rises with education level and socioeconomic status

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47?workaholism.?This term was coined by … Wayne Oates in the 1960s

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49?Economists consistently find that our marginal productivity tanks with work hours beyond eight or ten per day

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54?In 2021, two French researchers … workplace objectification leads to burnout, job dissatisfaction, depression, and sexual harassment

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54?self-objectification, which scholars define as viewing oneself from a third-person perspective that does not consider one’s full humanity

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55-56?In his 1964 book, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan famously said that “the medium is the message.”?He noted that in the famous Greek myth, Narcissus did not fall in love with himself, but with the image of himself

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56?you are not your job

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56?At its root, self-objectification is a problem of pride

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57-58?perfectionism and the fear of failure go hand in hand

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59?researchers have long found that social comparison lowers our happiness

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61?pride’s opposing virtue: humility

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66?“… Westerners see art as being created from nothing.?In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it …”

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67?Art mirrors life … In the West, success and happiness come – or so we believe – by avoiding losses and accumulating more stuff … Meanwhile, most Eastern philosophy warns that this acquisitiveness derails the search for happiness by obscuring one’s essential nature

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68?“bucket list”

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70-72?Born … in 1225 … Thomas Aquinas … “substitutes for God” … money, power, pleasure, and honor … Honor here refers to fame … prestige and admiration … Thomas … attained true greatness only by forgoing the world’s definition of greatness … he is known as the greatest philosopher of his age

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73-74?Siddhartha Gautama … born in 624 BC … release from suffering comes not from renunciation of the things of the world, but from release from attachment to those things … Buddha

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75-76?neither Thomas nor the Buddha argued that there is something inherently evil about worldly rewards … But as attachments … they cannot bring us the deep satisfaction we desire … We chase our worldly attachments up our first success curve … These attachments must be chipped away to make it possible to jump onto the second curve

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76-77?Rolling Stones … 1965 … “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” … We know more or less how to meet our desire for satisfaction but are terrible at making it last

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77-78?“homeostasis,” …. 1932 … Walter Cannon … Addiction is basically a maladaptation of homeostasis, in which the brain becomes very adept at dealing with constant onslaughts to its equilibrium

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79?“hedonic treadmill.”?[Philip Brickman] … I saw a cartoon some years ago of a man on his deathbed, telling his grieving loved ones, “I wish I’d bought more crap.”

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80?our weird fixation all throughout life on social comparison based on position and wealth … success is all relative

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82?We try even harder to avoid loses than we do to achieve gains … Daniel Kahneman … with Amos Tversky … prospect theory

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83?Dopamine – the neurotransmitter of pleasure behind nearly all addictive behaviors

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84?Carl Jung noted, “what is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age.”

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86?Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want

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87?Josemaria Escrivá, “He has most who needs least.?Don’t create needs for yourself.”??

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87?1.?Ask why, not what …

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87-88?Simon Sinek always gives people in search of true success in work and life the advice that they need to find their why … most people spend their time on the what of their lives

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89?people don’t realize their unhealthy attachments in life until they suffer a loss or illness that makes the important things come into focus

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90?2.?The reverse bucket list

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90-91?the bucket list … creates attachments, which creates dissatisfaction as they grow

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91?a “reverse bucket list”

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92?Satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things

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93?to be mindful … is to be truly alive

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93?one good thing about the conventional bucket list … it makes us focus on the limits of time and thus on how to use time well

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94?Death is the most normal, natural thing in life itself … Planning for the end … is our … opportunity

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96?“I’m not afraid of dying!”?Maybe, maybe not.?Many psychologists would say you are deluding yourself if you say you aren’t

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96?“idea professions” see decline

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97?“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else,” … Ernest Becker … 1973 book, The Denial of Death … extreme … “thanatophobia.” … the fear of death has eight distinct dimensions: fear of being destroyed, fear of the dying process, fear of the dead, fear for significant others, fear of the unknown, fear of conscious death, fear for body after death, and fear of premature death

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97-98?While death is inevitable, it also seems impossible insofar as we cannot conceive of not existing.?This creates an unresolvable, unbearable cognitive dissonance … Stephen Cave calls this the “mortality paradox.”

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100?Jonathan Swift …. 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels … “struldbrugs.” … they do age … but never die … people who refuse to accept the fact that they are past their prime … “professional struldbrugs”?

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101?One of the most common strategies to avoid the agony of being forgotten is by trying to engineer a professional legacy … But it doesn’t work

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101?Marcus Aurelius reminds us that our efforts at posterity always fail, and thus are not worth pursuing

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102?obsessing over the future squanders the present … If you love your work so much, you might as well enjoy it while you are doing it.?If you spend time thinking about and working on your legacy, you are already done

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102-103?There is one way to leave a legacy that will help you live better right now.?In his book The Road to Character … David Brooks … distinguishes between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.” … You lose your edge on those résumé skills … you will live the most fulfilling life by pursuing the values that are most personally valuable to you

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104?live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret

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105?Exposure therapy has been firmly established as the best way to take on fears and phobias … “desensitization,”

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107?Like resistance to death, resistance to the decline in your abilities is futile … Resisting your decline will … distract you from life’s opportunities

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108?The true master, when his or her prestige is threatened by age or circumstance, can say, “Don’t you see that I am a person who could be utterly forgotten without batting an eye?”

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108-109?we all make the passage of death alone … But … With decline, you don’t have to experience it alone.?In fact, you shouldn’t

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112?The aspen tree … forms part of an enormous root system.?In fact, the aspen is the largest living organism in the world; one stand of aspens in Utah called “Pando” spans 106 acres and weighs 6 million kilograms

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112?The redwood, which can grow to 275 feet tall, has remarkably shallow roots – often only 5 or 6 feet deep … the redwoods grow in thick groves because their shallow roots are intertwined and, over time, fuse together

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112??We are all intertwined

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113?humans are naturally interconnected … Creating an isolated self is dangerous and damaging because it is unnatural

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115?Robert Waldinger … TED Talk, “What Makes a Good Life??Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,”

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116-117?There are seven big predictors of being Happy-Well that we can control pretty directly:

1.?????Smoking …

2.?????Drinking …

3.?????Healthy body weight …

4.?????Exercise …

5.?????Adaptive coping style …

6.?????Education …

7.?????Stable, long-term relationships?

… George Vaillant, the single most important trait of Happy-Well elders is healthy relationships … “There are two pillars of happiness … One is love.?The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.” … Robert Waldinger … “… good relationships keep us happier and healthier.?Period.”

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118?Paul Tillich … book The Eternal Now: “Solitude expresses the glory of being alone, whereas loneliness expresses the pain of feeling alone.”

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118?Loneliness … has the weird property of being utterly ubiquitous yet feeling completely unique … Lonely people feel like they are the only ones who feel lonely

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119?In her book The Lonely Century, Noreena Hertz shows that in terms of health outcomes, loneliness is comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes per day and is worse than obesity.?It is also strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia

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119?The insurance company Cigna … 2018, 46 percent of Americans felt alone, and 43 percent of Americans felt that their relationships were not meaningful

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119-120?marital status matters: married people are less lonely than those who are divorced, widowed, and never married.?However, loneliest of all are those who are married but with an “absent spouse.”

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120?The top two loneliest professions, according to the Harvard Business Review, are lawyers and doctors

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121?successful, upwardly mobile people are the ones most prone to suffering when their skills start to decline

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122?Leaders are particularly prone to loneliness … 70 percent of people say friendship at work is the most important element to a happy work life

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123?No one wants to hang around with the lonely boss

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124?The relationships that best mitigate loneliness … are romantic partnerships and close friendships

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125?Analysis of the Harvard Study [1938+] data shows that marriage per se accounts for only 2 percent of subjective well-being later in life.?The important thing for health and well-being is relationship satisfaction

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125?The secret to happiness [is] … “companionate love” – love based … on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment

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126?the Journal of Happiness Studies, “The well-being benefits of marriage are much greater for those who also regard their spouse as their best friend.”

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126?the romance of companionate love seems to make people happiest when it’s monogamous

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127?your marriage cannot be your only true friendship … 2007 … close friends … at least two … was associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and lower levels of depression

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127-128?having your spouse or partner as your one and only close friend is imprudent, like having a radically undiversified investment portfolio

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129?research finds that contact with unrelated friends is more strongly correlated with well-being than contact with adult children … “Interaction with family members is often dictated by obligation, whereas interaction with friends is primarily motivated by pleasure.”

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130?“A real friend, or a deal friend?”

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130-131?Aristotle … Nicomachean Ethics … friendship ladder … At the bottom … friendships based on utility … Higher up are friends based on pleasure … At the highest level is … “perfect friendship,” … Aristotle’s three baskets

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131?name two or three real friends … If you struggled to name two or three, there’s a problem

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132?Building real friendships … is often harder for men than women

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132?the number of real friends needs to be more than zero and more than just your spouse

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134?a classic sign of addictive behavior is when something not human starts to supplant human relationships … “workaholism,”

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134?the cliché image of an old man on his deathbed saying to his family “I wish I’d spent more time at work” is a joke

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136?men tend to develop friendships in the course of shared activities … parallel play

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136?to kindle friendship requires acts, not intentions

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138-140?Clayton Christensen … book, How Will You Measure Your Life? …

1.?????ALLOCATE TIME WELL AHEAD OF TIME …

2.?????DO YOUR CORE JOB …

3.?????INVEST INTELLIGENTLY

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140-141?2009, researchers at the University of Rochester… goals fell into two basic categories … “intrinsic” and “extrinsic.” … you are probably going to get what you wish for in life … as the old saying goes ...?“be careful what you wish for.” … people with intrinsic goals had happier lives … extrinsic rewards are foolish goals ?

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142?Visualize yourself at a party.?Someone asks, “What do you do?”?You answer not with extrinsic stuff like your job title, but with what you know will give you the most purpose, meaning, and joy

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143?An intimate friendship … is better than any professional success

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143?J.S. Bach … died a happy man … not because of his success as a composer … It was because of the relationships he had cultivated

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145?English is an impoverished language when it comes to love

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149-150?[Sri Nochur Venkataraman] … Acharya explained the ancient Indian teaching that a proper life must be lived in four stages – these are the ashramas … The first ashrama is brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning.?The second is grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and maintains a family … we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama … called vanaprastha … becoming more … devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom … teaching, and faith … the last stop … would be sannyasa, the last spiritual stage that comes in old age.?This is the stage totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment ?

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154?Mountains of research show that religious and spiritual adults are generally happier and generally suffer less depression than those who have no faith … religion and spirituality are also linked to better physical health

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155?Religion and spirituality are touchy subjects … and … controversial

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157?Spain today is effectively a post-Christian country

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161?Carl Rogers famously argued that we always need an answer to the question “Who am I?”

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165?You must make the time by scheduling your meditation, prayer, reading, and practice.?Every day

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165?go for a walk … Nearly all major religions have pilgrimages

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166?walking is excellent exercise; indeed, it is one of the best exercises we can engage in for health and happiness

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169?gratitude

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169-170?Being open to reevaluating our ideas about ourselves can keep us from getting stuck in patterns that aren’t true to our changing selves

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174?The secret to going from strength to strength is to recognize that your weakness – your loss, your decline – can be a gift to you and others

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175?Brené Brown … book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

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177?Elite credentials don’t make you relatable.?They are a barrier to deep human connection

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179?people who are defensive or aloof reduce trust among those they lead, are unhappier, and are less effective as a result

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182?Emerging research shows clearly that most people are resilient – even more, that they grow from losses and negative events

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182?2009 … Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson argue that sadness has persisted in the face of evolution because it brings cognitive benefits

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182-183?Research shows that stress inoculation training … is effective in creating emotional resilience

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187?When you are honest and humble about your weaknesses, you will be more comfortable in your own skin

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191?Psychologists have a special word for uncomfortable life transitions: “liminality.”?It means the time between work roles, organizations, career paths, and relationship stages

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191?Bruce Feiler … book … 2020 … Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

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192?Buddha … It struck him as the greatest irony that the central characteristic of the universe – change – is the thing with which we are most uncomfortable

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195?unpleasant feelings fade more than pleasant feelings do, a phenomenon known as “fading affect bias.”

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195?Research on how people derive meaning has uncovered that we actually need periods of pain and struggle that make us temporarily unhappy

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196?There is a big scholarly literature on the high correlation between creative genius and mental suffering

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196?the “midlife crisis” … 1970s … Gail Sheehy … book Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life

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198-199?The term “midlife crisis” was actually coined by … Elliott Jaques in the early 1960s … Apparently, he became unconvinced that the crisis was ubiquitous … 1995 … “Most people don’t have a crisis,” … Margie Lachman

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199?One thing we do know, however, is that people naturally tend to experience a big transition in the middle of adult life

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199-200?In 458 BC, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was the dictator of Rome … We … named a city in Ohio after him.?He is remembered as great because he wasn’t afraid to walk away

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203?[Chip] Conley … There are four learning steps in becoming a “modern elder”: evolve from a fixed to a growth mindset, learn openness to new things, collaborate with teams, and counsel others …

With an average age of fifty-three …

In your next phase of life …

What activities will you keep?

What activities will you evolve and do differently?

What activities will you let go of?

What new activities will you learn?

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214?sometimes, we must fight our natural instincts if we want to be happy

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215?Use things.?Love people.?Worship the divine?