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

by Arthur C. Brooks

So what are you going to do about it? There are really only three doors you can go through here: 1. You can deny the facts and rage against decline—setting yourself up for frustration and disappointment. 2. You can shrug and give in to decline—and experience your aging as an unavoidable tragedy. 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.

Did you ever notice that as people get old, they almost never become less articulate? They tend to have a richer vocabulary than they did earlier in life. This leads to a number of abilities. They are better Scrabble players, for example, and can do quite well in foreign languages—not in getting the accent perfect but in building vocabulary and understanding grammar. Studies bear out these observations: people maintain and grow their vocabulary—in their native languages and foreign languages—all the way to the end of life.[1] Similarly, you may notice that with age, people are better at combining and utilizing complex ideas.[2] In other words, they may not be able to come up with shiny new inventions or solve problems quickly like in the old days. But they get much better at using the concepts they know and expressing them to others. They also get better at interpreting the ideas that others have—sometimes even to the people who came up with them.

In 1971, Cattell published a book entitled Abilities: Their Structure, Growth, and Action. In it, he posited that there were two types of intelligence that people possess, but at greater abundance at different points in life. The first is fluid intelligence, which Cattell defined as the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems. It is what we commonly think of as raw smarts, and researchers find that it is associated with both reading and mathematical ability.[4] Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. Cattell, who specialized in intelligence testing, observed that it was highest relatively early in adulthood and diminished rapidly starting in one’s thirties and forties.[5]

That’s not the end of the story, however, and this is where Cattell’s work matters. Fluid intelligence isn’t the only kind—there is also crystallized intelligence. This is defined as the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. Think once again about the metaphor of a vast library. But this time, instead of regretting how slow the librarian is, marvel at the size of the book collection your librarian is wandering around in, and the fact that he knows where to find a book, even if it takes him a while. Crystallized intelligence, relying as it does on a stock of knowledge, tends to increase with age through one’s forties, fifties, and sixties—and does not diminish until quite late in life, if at all.

Cattell himself described the two intelligences in this way: “[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.

Cicero believed three things about older age. First, that it should be dedicated to service, not goofing off. Second, our greatest gift later in life is wisdom, in which learning and thought create a worldview that can enrich others. Third, our natural ability at this point is counsel: mentoring, advising, and teaching others, in a way that does not amass worldly rewards of money, power, or prestige.

So here’s the secret, fellow striver: Get on your second curve. Jump from what rewards fluid intelligence to what rewards crystallized intelligence. Learn to use your wisdom.

Maybe you have never fully realized your addiction before reading this chapter and still aren’t sure. Let’s take a little quiz. 1. Do you define your self-worth in terms of your job title or professional position? 2. Do you quantify your own success in terms of money, power, or prestige? 3. Do you fail to see clearly—or are you uncomfortable with—what comes after your last professional successes? 4. Is your “retirement plan” to go on and on without stopping? 5. Do you dream about being remembered for your professional successes?

In his view, people who opt for the worldly path choose “substitutes for God”: idols that objectify the idolater and never satisfy the craving for happiness.[5] 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.

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. It’s also why we hate disappointment so much and, as research shows, are willing to go to great lengths to avoid being disappointed.[12]

I imagine myself in five years. I am happy and at peace. I am enjoying my life for the most part; I’m satisfied and living a life of purpose and meaning. I imagine myself saying to my wife, “You know, I have to say that I am truly happy at this point in my life.” I then think of the forces in this future life that are most responsible for this happiness: my faith; my family; my friendships; the work I am doing that is inherently satisfying, meaningful, and that serves others.

Unlike most of the junk on my old bucket list, that satisfaction endured. That memory still brings me joy—more so than many of my life’s earthly “accomplishments”—not because it was the culmination of a large goal, but because it was a small and serendipitous thrill. It was a tiny miracle that felt like a free gift, freely given.

The inevitable changes in my life—and yours—aren’t a tragedy to regret. They are just changes to one interconnected member of the human family—one shoot from the root system. The secret to bearing my decline—no, enjoying it—is to be more conscious of the roots linking me to others. If I am connected to others in love, my decrease will be more than offset by increases to others—which is to say, increases to other facets of my true self.

Robert Waldinger, popularized the study even more with a viral TED Talk, “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” which has been viewed nearly forty million times.

Having at least two—meaning at least one not being the spouse—was associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and lower levels of depression. For those who can’t name two, the spousal relationship was much more important for meeting emotional needs, and this can lead to problems. It is a lot of pressure on a marriage to fill almost every emotional role and makes rough patches in a marriage all the more catastrophic and isolating.

And so it is with my kids: our relationship is great, but they are focused on their lives, not mine—as they should be. For this reason, the research finds that contact with unrelated friends is more strongly correlated with well-being than contact with adult children.[42]

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.

we started organizing our social life specifically around conversations about profound issues. At the risk of becoming Mr. and Mrs. Intense, we directed dinnertime chats with friends away from trivialities like vacation plans and house purchases and toward issues of happiness, love, and spirituality. This deepened some of our friendships and in other cases showed us that a more fulfilling relationship wasn’t going to be possible—and, thus, where to put less energy.

It’s time to make amends. Success addicts can learn a thing or two about recovery from alcoholics. Those who have followed the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous know that recovery is not possible without step 9: “[Make] direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Alcoholics in recovery make a list of people they have hurt and neglected due to their addiction; they must make amends with each person on the list, if possible.

Stephen Colbert elicited an enormous amount of public admiration when he was asked in an interview by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about a plane crash that killed Colbert’s father and two of his brothers when he was ten years old. Cooper had heard Colbert say previously that he had learned to “love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” He asked Colbert to clarify this extraordinary statement. “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering,” replied Colbert. “I don’t want it to have happened . . . but if you are grateful for your life . . . then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”[10]

In his book, he interviews hundreds of people about their transitions, finding that a significant change in life occurs, on average, every eighteen months, and that lifequakes like his—or those that involve voluntary or involuntary career changes—happen very regularly. Most are involuntary—and thus unwelcome at the time—but nothing is more predictable than change.

In fact, it is the difficult, painful transitions that can yield the greatest understanding of purpose in our lives. Research on how people derive meaning has uncovered that we actually need periods of pain and struggle that make us temporarily unhappy.[10]

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? And to start . . . What will you commit to doing in the next week to evolve into the new you? What will you commit to doing in the next month? What will you commit to doing within six months? In a year, what will be the first fruits to appear as a result of your commitments?