From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

What I found was a hidden source of anguish that wasn’t just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers. I came to call this 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.

We might call this the “principle of psychoprofessional gravitation”: the idea that the agony of decline is directly related to prestige previously achieved, and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige.[20] If you have low expectations and never do much (or do a lot but maintain a Buddha-like level of nonattachment to your professional prestige), you probably won’t suffer much when you decline. But if you attain excellence and are deeply invested in it, you can feel pretty irrelevant when you inevitably fall from those heights. And that is agony.

Fluid intelligence] is conceptualized as the decontextualized ability to solve abstract problems, while crystallized intelligence represents a person’s knowledge gained during life by acculturation and learning.”[6] Translation: When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom. When you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old, you know what they mean and how to use them.

Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age.

She was addicted—to work and, underneath that, to success. Like all addictions, these dehumanized her. She saw herself not as a full person but rather more like a high-performance machine—or perhaps one that used to be high performance but was now showing wear and tear.

That’s because you 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. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.”

Even if you are not a religious believer, his list rings true as the idols that attract us. They are money, power, pleasure, and honor.

the truth emerged to Siddhartha—that release from suffering comes not from renunciation of the things of the world, but from release from attachment to those things. A Middle Way shunned both ascetic extremism and sensuous indulgence, because both are attachments and thus lead to dissatisfaction. At the moment of this realization, Siddhartha became the Buddha.

The Buddha devised a practical guide—the Four Noble Truths—for dealing with these troublesome attachments. Noble Truth 1. Life is suffering (dukkha in Sanskrit), due to chronic dissatisfaction. Noble Truth 2. The cause of this suffering is craving, desire, and attachment for worldly things. Noble Truth 3. Suffering can be defeated by eliminating this craving, desire, and attachment. Noble Truth 4. The way to eliminate craving, desire, and attachment is by following the magga, the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

We know more or less how to meet our desire for satisfaction but are terrible at making it last. It’s almost as if our brains won’t let us enjoy anything for very long. And that is exactly what’s happening. To understand why, we need to introduce the concept of “homeostasis,” which is the natural tendency for all living systems to maintain stable conditions in order to survive.

Even more powerful than our urge for more is our resistance to less. We try even harder to avoid losses than we do to achieve gains. That’s the insight that earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for Princeton University’s Daniel Kahneman, for work he did with Amos Tversky on prospect theory.[11] Prospect theory challenges the assumption that people are rational agents who assess gains and losses the same way; in fact, it asserts that people are much more affected emotionally by losing something than they are by gaining the same thing. We have what Kahneman and Tversky call “loss aversion,” which is why the news media freaks out when the stock market loses 10 percent, compared with when it rises by 10 percent.

To sum up, here are three formulas that explain both our impulses and the reason we can’t ever seem to achieve lasting satisfaction. Satisfaction = Continually getting what you want Success = Continually having more than others Failure = Having less

Satisfaction = What you have ÷ what you want

Researchers have consistently found that most survivors of illness and loss experience post-traumatic growth. Indeed, cancer survivors tend to report higher happiness levels than demographically matched people who did not have cancer.[21] Talk to them, and they will tell you that they no longer bother with the stupid attachments that used to weigh them down, whether possessions, or worries about money, or unproductive relationships. The threat of losing their lives prematurely took a jackhammer to the jade encasing their true selves—the why of their lives.

Contemplating death can even make life more meaningful. As the novelist E. M. Forster put it, “Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.”[15] Why? Simply put, scarcity makes everything dearer to us. Remembering that life won’t last forever makes us enjoy it all the more today.

humans are naturally interconnected—biologically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, and spiritually. Creating an isolated self is dangerous and damaging because it is unnatural. Just as seeing only the one aspen is a misunderstanding of its true nature, the lone person—no matter how strong, accomplished, and successful—is a misunderstanding of ours as well.

There are seven big predictors of being Happy-Well that we can control pretty directly:[6] 1. Smoking. Simple: don’t smoke—or at least, quit early. 2. Drinking. Alcohol abuse is one of the most obvious factors in the Grant Study leading to Sad-Sick and putting Happy-Well out of reach. If there is any indication of problem drinking in your life, or if you have drinking problems in your family, do not wonder about it or take your chances. Quit drinking right now. 3. Healthy body weight. Avoid obesity. Without being fanatical, maintain a body weight in the normal range, eating in a moderate, healthy way without yo-yo dieting or crazy restrictions you can’t maintain over the long run. 4. Exercise. Stay physically active, even with a sedentary job. Arguably the single best, time-tested way to do this is walking every day. (More on that later.) 5. Adaptive coping style. That means confronting problems directly, appraising them honestly, and dealing with them directly without excessive rumination, unhealthy emotional reactions, or avoidance behavior. 6. Education. More education leads to a more active mind later on, and that means a longer, happier life. That doesn’t mean going to Harvard; it simply means lifelong, purposive learning, and lots of reading. 7. Stable, long-term relationships. For most, this is a steady marriage, but there are other relationships that can fit here. The point is having people with whom you grow together, whom you can count on, no matter what comes yo...

Aristotle wrote that there is a kind of a friendship ladder, from lowest to highest. At the bottom—where emotional bonds are weakest and the benefits are lowest—are friendships based on utility: deal friends, to use Carlos’s coinage. You are friends in an instrumental way, one that helps each of you achieve something else you want, such as professional success. Higher up are friends based on pleasure. You are friends because of something you like and admire about the other person. They are entertaining, or funny, or beautiful, or smart, for example. In other words, you like an inherent quality, which makes it more elevated than a friendship of utility, but it is still basically instrumental. At the highest level is Aristotle’s “perfect friendship,” which is based on willing each other’s well-being and a shared love for something good and virtuous that is outside either of you. This might be a friendship forged around religious beliefs or passion for a social cause. What it isn’t is utilitarian. The other person shares in your passion, which is intrinsic, not instrumental.

1. ALLOCATE TIME WELL AHEAD OF TIME Successful people are good at marginal thinking: making sure each hour is spent on its best use at that moment.

2. DO YOUR CORE JOB Many businesses fail because of what we might call the “Edsel problem,” based on the famous 1958 car that Ford executives loved but that consumers hated. They sell what they like, rather than what the customer wants and needs. We can be like this in our relationships, especially when our competence has diminished after years of neglect. We give our families and friends the opportunity to spend time at our convenience, doing what is interesting to us. And it makes sense—if I am the king at work, I am the king at home! It doesn’t work this way, of course. Love relationships are not hierarchical, but reciprocal. They require giving what people want and need, not that which is most convenient to the giver.

3. INVEST INTELLIGENTLY Once, when one of my sons was in high school, he asked me the three things I really wanted for him in life. I thought about it for a few days, and my own answer surprised me. I didn’t say happiness, because while that’s important, a good life of purpose and meaning also requires unhappiness. I certainly didn’t say money or fame, as you can already predict. In the end, I told him, “Honesty, compassion, and faith.” That’s what I felt would make him the best man he could become. After that, I decided to write down the three things I want for each of the people I love the most and then ask: Am I investing in those things in their lives? Am I putting my time, energy, affection, expertise, and money toward the development of these assets and qualities? Am I modeling them with my own behavior? Do I need a new investment strategy?

people with intrinsic goals had happier lives after a year. Meanwhile, the people who pursued extrinsic goals experienced more negative emotions, such as shame and fear. They also suffered more physical maladies. In a nutshell, if your life goals revolve around lots of money, prestige, and other worldly things, you are setting yourself up to have exploding wants and low life satisfaction.

In other words, we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama—and so defeat the scourge of attachments. That ordinarily occurs, if we are diligent, around age fifty.

And that new stage? It is called vanaprastha, which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.”[1] This is the stage at which we purposively begin to pull back from our old personal and professional duties, becoming more and more devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom, crystallized intelligence, teaching, and faith. It does not mean the perfect life requires retiring at age fifty into a forest; rather, that one’s life goals must readjust. Vanaprastha is the metaphysical context of the second curve.

But vanaprastha isn’t the last stop, Acharya told me. That would be sannyasa, the last spiritual stage that comes in old age. This is the stage totally...

The goal of the last phase of life is to drink from the chalice of life’s deepest secrets. But to be able to do that requires study and work on philosophical and theological matters, which happens in the years of vanaprastha. You can’t just show up and expect to be enlightened; that would be like showing up to the Olympics without ever having trained as an athlete.

I asked Acharya what is the one piece of advice he would give men and women my age who have been workaholics and success addicts—special, not happy—and who tremble at the thought of leaving grihastha. He paused for a long time. “Know yourself,” he finally said. “That is all. Nothing else. Nothing else can release.” “How?” I asked. “By going within,” he replied. “When your mind is quieter, you will find that treasure waiting for you within.”

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.

exposure to negative emotions makes us stronger for when there is a true crisis. Research shows that stress inoculation training—in which people learn to cope with anger, fear, and anxiety by being exposed to stimuli that cause these feelings—is effective in creating emotional resilience.[19] It is easy to imagine that attempts to eliminate pain and weakness from daily life could lead to a sort of emotional allergy—that when hard times come and someone feels grief or fear that is impossible to ignore, that person will not have the tools to face these feelings.

“Kid, there’s only one mistake you can make during a falling tide,” he said. “What’s that?” I asked. “Not having your line in the water.” I have remembered that day many times while writing this book. There is a falling tide to life, the transition from fluid to crystallized intelligence. This is an intensely productive and fertile period. It is when you jump from one curve to the other; when you face your success addiction; when you chip away the inessential parts of life; when you ponder your death; when you build your relationships; when you start your vanaprastha. Unfortunately, the falling tide of your life is also incredibly scary and difficult—it may even feel like some sort of midlife crisis. It might feel like everything you’ve worked for is rushing away. Seeing it as tragedy can be easier than seeing it as opportunity.

Dante Alighieri nicely sums up a fear many of us have had: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

there are resources to help you. A good example is the Modern Elder Academy, started by 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.

LESSON 2: THE WORK YOU DO HAS TO BE THE REWARD

LESSON 3: DO THE MOST INTERESTING THING YOU CAN

A group of German and American scholars sought to answer this question in 2017. They created what they called the “Work Passion Pursuit Questionnaire,” comparing the job satisfaction of people whose primary work goal was enjoyment with those whose primary goal was finding meaning in their work.[25] Across 1,357 people in their sample, the researchers found that enjoyment seekers had less passion for their work and changed jobs more frequently than meaning seekers. This is just an example of the age-old debate over two kinds of happiness that scholars refer to as hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia is about feeling good; eudaimonia is about living a purpose-filled life. In truth, we need both. Hedonia without eudaimonia devolves into empty pleasure; eudaimonia without hedonia can become dry. In the quest for the professional marshmallow, I think we should seek work that is a balance of enjoyable and meaningful.

At the nexus of enjoyable and meaningful is interesting. Interest is considered by many neuroscientists to be a positive primary emotion, processed in the limbic system of the brain.[26] Something that truly interests you is intensely pleasurable; it also must have meaning in order to hold your interest.

LESSON 4: A CAREER CHANGE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A STRAIGHT LINE

You are looking out over a precipice, unsure whether what awaits will bring net pleasure or pain—or, most likely, both. But you know what you have to do. Don’t think, dude. Just jump.

let me summarize the whole book in seven—a formula that encapsulates all the lessons I have learned and now strive to live: Use things. Love people. Worship the divine.