Arthur C. Brooks - From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

Contents

To my guru

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,

whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

As they pass through the Valley of Baka,

they make it a place of springs;

the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

They go from strength to strength,

till each appears before God in Zion.

PSALM 84: 57

If there are errors or omissions in this book, they are mine alone. However, the work was far from a solo endeavor. My research assistant, Reece Brown, made this book possible, as did the teamwork and support of Ceci Gallogly, Candice Gayl, Molly Glaeser, and Liz Fields. These are the people around me every day working to bring the art and science of happiness to new audiences.

For inspiration and ideas, I am grateful to my colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, especially Len Schlesinger, who has heard me talking about this work for nearly three years and has never complained. The leadership of these great institutionsDoug Elmendorf, Nitin Nohria, and Srikant Datarhas been unfailingly supportive of my creative work at Harvard. And the MBA students in my Leadership and Happiness classes were an inspiring reminder that happiness is something we can improve and share at every age.

For their encouragement and guidance throughout, Im indebted to Bria Sandford, my editor at Portfolio; Anthony Mattero, my literary agent at Creative Artists Agency; and Jen Phillips Johnson and her team at Red Light PR.

Many of the ideas and some of the passages in this book originally appeared in my columns in The Washington Post in 2019 and 2020, and later in my How to Build a Life column at The Atlantic. I am grateful to my Washington Post editors Mark Lasswell and Fred Hiatt, and at The Atlantic, Rachel Gutman, Jeff Goldberg, Julie Beck, and Ena Alvarado-Esteller. Chip Conleys work inspired many ideas here. Many othersmost of whom remain anonymouscontributed their personal stories to this book, which proved invaluable to me.

For their friendship and support of my work, I will always be thankful to Dan DAniello, Tully Friedman, Eric Schmidt, Ravenel Curry, Barre Seid, and my friends at Legatum, including Christopher Chandler, Alan McCormick, Philippa Stroud, Mark Stoleson, and Philip Vassiliou.

A number of spiritual teachers influenced this book, directly and indirectly. The first is Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His mentorship over the past nine years, as well as our writing together, formed large parts of my thinking. A second is Bishop Robert Barron, who has helped me better see my life and work as apostolate. Finally, there is my wife of thirty years and counting, Ester Munt-Brooks. Through attitude and action, no one in my life has taught me more than she has about love and compassion for all people. She is my guru, and book is dedicated to her.

ITS NOT TRUE that no one needs you anymore.

These exasperated words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. The plane was dark and quiet, and most people were either sleeping or watching a movie. I was working on my laptop, feverishly trying to finish something now completely lost to memory but that at the time seemed to be of crucial importance to my life, happiness, and future.

A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost inaudibly in response.

Again, his wife: Oh, stop saying it would be better if you were dead.

Now they had my full attention. I didnt mean to eavesdrop but couldnt help it. I listened half with human empathy and half with the professional fascination of a social scientist. I formed an image of the husband in my head. I imagined someone who had worked hard all his life in relative obscurity; someone disappointed at his dreams unfulfilledperhaps the career he never pursued, the schools he never attended, the company he never started. Now, I imagined, he was forced to retire, tossed aside like yesterdays news.

As the lights switched on after touchdown, I finally got a look at the desolate man. I was shocked: I recognized himhe was well-known; famous, even. Then in his mideighties, he has been universally beloved as a hero for his courage, patriotism, and accomplishments of many decades ago. I have admired him since I was young.

As he passed up the aisle of the plane behind me, passengers recognized him and murmured with veneration. Standing at the door of the cockpit, the pilot recognized him and said, echoing my own thoughts, Sir, I have admired you since I was a little boy. The older manapparently wishing for death just a few minutes earlierbeamed at the recognition of his past glories.

I wondered: Which more accurately describes the manthe one filled with joy and pride right now, or the one twenty minutes ago, telling his wife he might as well be dead?

I COULDNT GET the cognitive dissonance of that scene out of my mind over the following weeks.

It was the summer of 2012, shortly after my forty-eighth birthday. I was not world-famous like the man on the plane, but my professional life was going pretty well. I was the president of a prominent Washington, DC, think tank that was prospering. I had written some bestselling books. People came to my speeches. My columns were published in The New York Times.

I had found a list written on my fortieth birthday, eight years earlier, of my professional goalsthose that, if accomplished, would (I was sure) bring me satisfaction. I had met or exceeded all of them. And yet... I wasnt particularly satisfied or happy. I had gotten my hearts desire, at least as I imagined it, but it didnt bring the joy I envisioned.

And even if it did deliver satisfaction, could I really keep this going? If I stayed at it seven days a week, twelve hours a daywhich I basically did, with my eighty-hour workweeksat some point my progress would slow and stop. Many days I was thinking this flowing had already started. And what then? Would I wind up looking back on my life and telling my longsuffering wife, Ester, that I might as well be dead? Was there any way to get off the hamster wheel of success and accept inevitable professional decline with grace? Maybe even turn it into opportunity?

THOUGH THESE QUESTIONS WERE PERSONAL, I decided to approach them as the social scientist I am, treating them as a research project. It felt unnaturallike a surgeon taking out his own appendix. I plunged ahead, however, and for the last nine

years I have been on a personal quest to turn my future from a matter of dread to an opportunity for progress.

I delved into divergent literatures, from my own field in social science to adjacent work in brain science, philosophy, theology, and history. I dug into the biographies of some of the most successful people in history. I immersed myself in the research on people who strive for excellence and interviewed hundreds of leaders, from heads of state to hardware-store owners.

What I found was a hidden source of anguish that wasnt just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers. I came to call this the strivers 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.