From Strength to Strength

Finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life requires understanding that our strengths change as we age—and that this change is not decline, but transformation.

The Second Curve: Fluid vs. Crystallized Intelligence

The painful truth: Our innovative, problem-solving abilities peak earlier than we’d like to admit. But this is only half the story.

Fluid Intelligence

Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence—the ability to solve novel problems, think quickly, and generate new ideas. This type of intelligence:

• Peaks in our twenties and thirties
• Drives innovation and invention
• Makes us better at generating raw ideas
• Declines as we age

Crystallized Intelligence

Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. This form of intelligence:

• Increases through one’s forties, fifties, and sixties
• Does not diminish until quite late in life, if at all
• Enables us to synthesize ideas and tell stories from data
• Transforms us from inventors to instructors

“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.”

As Brooks observes from his own career as a social scientist: “I am better at telling a story from data than I was earlier in my career. I invented ideas early on; I synthesize ideas—mine and others—now.”

The Career Redesign

The key is to redesign your career less on innovation and more on instruction as the years pass, thus playing to your strengths with age.

Examples:

• Better Scrabble players—not perfect accent, but superior vocabulary and grammar understanding
• Moving from generating ideas to synthesizing them
• Shifting from invention to instruction

Kick Your Success Addiction

The Choice: Special or Happy?

“Maybe I would prefer to be special rather than happy.”

One of Brooks’s students confessed this stark truth: “Anyone can do the things it takes to be happy—go on vacation, spend time with friends and family … but not everyone can accomplish great things.”

People who choose being special over happy are addicts.

The Symptoms of Success Addiction

1. Workaholic Behavior

Workaholics convince themselves that the fourteenth hour of work is vital to their success, when in reality, their productivity is likely severely diminished by that point.

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

The cost:

• Traveling for business on anniversaries
• Missing Little League games
• Forgoing marriage for careers—“married to their work”

2. Fear of Humiliation

The greatest strivers are terrified of failing in anything, even a silly class presentation.

Spanish Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta’s “Litany of Humility” addresses this directly: “From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, Master.”

Brooks’s modern version:

• From putting my career before the people in my life, deliver me
• From distracting myself from life with work, deliver me
• From my drive to be superior to others, deliver me

3. Positional Success

Many success addicts confess that they feel like losers when they see someone else who is yet more successful.

Success is fundamentally positional, meaning it enhances our position in social hierarchies. In experiments, the unhappiest people were consistently those paying the most attention to how they performed relative to other subjects.

The Satisfaction Formula

The Broken Equation

Most people operate on this formula:

Success = Continually having more than others

The problem? ”( I Can’t Keep No) Satisfaction.” We know how to meet our desire for satisfaction but are terrible at making it last.

Early on, when one has relatively little and a lot to prove, more worldly rewards can be temporarily satisfying, but as one ages, we start to realize that the satisfaction never lasts, and the realization of futility sets in.

As Carl Jung noted: “What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age.”

The Real Equation

Satisfaction = What you have ÷ what you want

You can easily be less and less satisfied as you move up the success ladder, because your wants will always outstrip your haves.

The Solution: Manage Your Wants

The path to lasting satisfaction isn’t getting more—it’s wanting less.

Cancer survivors tend to report higher happiness levels than demographically matched people who did not have cancer. They no longer bother with the stupid attachments that used to weigh them down—possessions, worries about money, unproductive relationships.

The Reverse Bucket List

Instead of making a list of things you want (which stimulates dopamine temporarily), try this:

Make a list of things you want and systematically contradict it. About each item, say: “This is not evil, but it will not bring me the happiness and peace I seek, and I simply don’t have time to make it my goal.”

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

Ponder Your Death

Eulogy Virtues vs. Resume Virtues

Your eulogy virtues are what you really would want people to talk about at your funeral.

These are different from your resume virtues—your achievements, titles, and accomplishments.

Living Without Regret

“The worst thing about death is the fact that when a man is dead it is impossible any longer to undo the harm you have done him, or to do the good you haven’t done him.” —Leo Tolstoy

The goal: Live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret.

Death as Concrete Reality

Research shows that the writing of those temporarily imagining death was three times as negative as that of those actually facing it—suggesting that death becomes scarier when it is abstract and remote than when it is a concrete reality.

Cultivate Your Aspen Grove

The Misunderstanding of Individualism

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.

Aspens appear to be individual trees, but they’re actually connected by a vast root system underground—they’re a single organism.

Relationships Are Everything

According to George Vaillant, the single most important trait of Happy-Well elders is healthy relationships.

“The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty were the healthiest at age eighty.”

Loneliness vs. Solitude

From Paul Tillich’s The Eternal Now: “Solitude expresses the glory of being alone, whereas loneliness expresses the pain of feeling alone.”

Research findings:

• Married people are less lonely than divorced, widowed, and never married
• Loneliest of all are those who are married but with an “absent spouse”
• The top two loneliest professions are lawyers and doctors
• Half of CEOs experience loneliness on the job

The Work Problem

The top three activities for producing negative feelings:

1. Working
2. Childcare
3. Commuting

The most negative interaction partners:

1. The boss (top spot)
2. Clients
3. Coworkers

Why? Subordinates objectify leaders by seeing them not as people per se, but as dispensers of power, information, and money. Meanwhile, leaders often purposely distance themselves from employees so they can appraise their performance fairly.

The Two-Friend Rule

Having at least two close friends—meaning at least one not being the spouse—was associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and lower levels of depression.

Your marriage cannot be your only true friendship.

For those who can’t name two close friends:

• The spousal relationship becomes much more important for meeting emotional needs
• This can lead to problems
• It is a lot of pressure on a marriage to fill almost every emotional role
• Makes rough patches in marriage all the more catastrophic and isolating
• Like having a radically undiversified investment portfolio

Marriage bonds are more emotionally important to men as they age than to older women, because for many men, work has crowded out friendships, and those they have are more focused on, say, golf than feelings.

The Marginal Thinking Trap

The cognitive error that feeds relationship neglect is the idea that our time is limitless, so the marginal decision—what to do with the next hour—is not very important in the broad scheme of things.

Successful people are good at marginal thinking: making sure each hour is spent on its best use at that moment. The trouble is that this always marginalizes the things in life that don’t have a clear payoff in the short run—like relationships.

Love relationships are not hierarchical, but reciprocal.

You Get What You Wish For

Research shows: You are probably going to get what you wish for in life. This makes it all the more true: “Be careful what you wish for.”

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

Start Your Vanaprastha

The Four Ashramas

Ancient Indian teaching divides a proper life into four stages (ideally twenty-five years each):

1. Brahmacharya - Youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning
2. Grihastha - Building a career, accumulating wealth, maintaining a family
3. Vanaprastha - Retiring “into the forest”—purposively pulling back from worldly duties to focus on spirituality, wisdom, teaching, and faith
4. Sannyasa - Old age, totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment

The Problem of Grihastha

People become attached to grihastha’s earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime.

The result: Missing out on the spiritual development of vanaprastha and the bliss of sannyasa.

The Transition

The decline in your fluid intelligence is a sign that it is time not to rage, which just doubles down on your unsatisfying attachments and leads to frustration. Rather, it is time to scale up your crystallized intelligence, use your wisdom, and share it with others.

“Know yourself. That is all. Nothing else. Nothing else can release.” “How?” “By going within. When your mind is quieter, you will find that treasure waiting for you within.”

The Spiritual Path

Mountains of research show that religious and spiritual adults are generally happier and generally suffer less depression than those who have no faith.

Why? When you spend serious time and effort focused on transcendental things, it puts your little world into proper context and takes the focus off yourself.

The Self-Concept Challenge

Psychologist Carl Rogers: We always need an answer to the question “Who am I?”

Well-balanced people are those with a self-concept that matches their life experiences.

The transition is intensely uncomfortable because it requires redefining who we are.

The Time Commitment

You can’t really contemplate the secrets of the universe in a couple of hours; that’s more like a commitment to watching a movie.

Any advanced practitioner of faith or spirituality spends as much time on this as a fitness buff does at the gym, because that’s what it takes to make progress.

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

The Camino as Example

Brooks walked portions of the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

The secret of the Camino is the utter lack of thrills.

By about day three, the walk begins to harmonize the mind with the body to a pace that is natural and unforced.

The walking meditation creates a sense of love and compassion, finishing with a concrete resolution to act accordingly.

“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” —Rumi

Make Your Weakness Your Strength

The Counterintuitive Truth

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.

The Power of Vulnerability

Brooks discovered: It was through my weakness, not my strength, that I was able to connect with people I never would have met otherwise.

These were strivers, outsiders who were overlooked in the traditional ways. “I never would have connected to any of them had I not shared my story, with all its twists and turns.”

Your decline, as painful as it is, should be experienced—and shared.

Trust and Effectiveness

People who are defensive or aloof reduce trust among those they lead, are unhappier, and are less effective as a result.

Finding Meaning in Suffering

Viktor Frankl: “No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”

People could find the meaning of their lives, and personal growth, in all kinds of suffering.

The Cognitive Benefits of Sadness

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

Exposure to negative emotions makes us stronger for when there is a true crisis. Research shows that stress inoculation training is effective in creating emotional resilience.

Beethoven’s Example

Beethoven went deaf but created his greatest works after losing his hearing. He did not know the extent to which his radical new compositional style—heard only by others—would define him as truly great for hundreds of years after his death.

The Superpower of Honesty

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

To share your weakness without caring what others think is a kind of superpower.

If you are reluctant to embrace your weaknesses, start by imagining the peace in your heart from no longer pretending you are not weak.

Cast into the Falling Tide

The Paradox of Meaning

Research from 2013 surveying 397 adults found: “Worry, stress, and anxiety were linked to higher meaningfulness but lower happiness.”

Psychologist Roy Baumeister: When you find meaning, life seems more stable. Suffering during transitions can create the meaning in life that imposes a sense of stability over subsequent transitions.

Painful periods can stimulate intense expressive productivity. (Remember the falling tide? That’s when the fish bite.)

Designed for Conflict

“Man was made for conflict, not for rest.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Professional Reset

A major inflection in your life does not mean you will abandon your spouse or buy a red sports car. On the contrary, your professional reset can bring you closer to your family and friends and inspire others.

Professional transitions don’t always require push or pull—sometimes there’s just an overwhelming desire for a change.

The Four Questions (From Modern Elder Academy)

In your next phase of life:

1. What activities will you keep?
2. What activities will you evolve and do differently?
3. What activities will you let go of?
4. What new activities will you learn?

And to start:

• What will you commit to doing in the next week?
• 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?

Four Lessons for Career Transitions

Lesson 1: Identify Your Marshmallow

The question, at this moment of reset, is: What exactly is the next marshmallow? Do you know what you want as you start making new sacrifices?

Lesson 2: The Work Has to Be the Reward

One of the biggest mistakes people make in their careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end.

Lesson 3: Do the Most Interesting Thing You Can

Two types of commencement speeches:

1. “Go find your purpose”
2. “Find work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”

Research on 1,357 people found: Enjoyment seekers had less passion for their work and changed jobs more frequently than meaning seekers.

Hedonia is about feeling good; eudaimonia is about living a purpose-filled life. In truth, we need both.

We should seek work that is a balance of enjoyable and meaningful.

Lesson 4: A Career Change Doesn’t Have to Be a Straight Line

Career types:

• Linear careers - Climb steadily upward, everything building on everything else
• Steady-state careers - Staying at one job and growing in expertise
• Transitory careers - Jumping from job to job or field to field, looking for new challenges
• Spiral careers - A series of mini careers; spending years developing in a profession, then shifting fields seeking work that builds on previous skills

Earlier in life, you might have had a super-linear career, and that’s OK. But most likely, as you now move to the second curve, a spiral pattern will be more appropriate.

The Leap

“Don’t think, dude. Just jump.”

Seven Words to Remember

David Foster Wallace: “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

3 Big Takeaways

1. The shift from fluid to crystallized intelligence is not decline but transformation—redesign your career from innovation to instruction, playing to wisdom rather than raw intelligence.

2. Satisfaction comes from the formula: What you have ÷ what you want—lasting happiness requires managing your wants down, not achievements up.

3. Your weakness and decline can be your greatest gifts—sharing your struggles creates deeper connections and meaning than success ever could.