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

by Arthur C. Brooks

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. Let’s

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”* Or

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.

psychiatry professor 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.

“Men’s Sheds.” It is basically parallel play for older men who are relearning friendship skills.49 Men who are lonely—many retired, but not all—are left by their loved ones in, well, sheds full of woodworking tools where they can work on crafts projects in parallel with other men. Remember, men tend to develop friendships in the course of shared activities, and these crafts allow this while not requiring direct collaboration—parallel play.

Could set up craft or hobbie group where women meet weekly side by side

Clayton Christensen, a longtime professor at the Harvard Business School, where I serve on the faculty. Christensen died a few months after I arrived at Harvard, but his legacy looms large at HBS, in no small part because of his famous book, How Will You Measure Your Life?51 Christensen analyzes a good life well lived in the same way he would assess a company, and the book is well worth reading in its entirety. However,