Notes on "From Strength to Strength" (Part I)
My underlined/paraphrased notes on the book by Arthur Brooks
I like to underline the interesting sections of non-fiction books that I read. I then transcribe them to a Google Doc which I print out and reference from time to time. I thought it might be useful to share some of these notes here. The first book I will start with is “From Strength to Strength” by Arthur Brooks, a good book about people looking for new challenges in the second half of their lives. What follows are words and ideas taken directly from the first half of this book. I’ll publish notes from the second half in the future.
From Strength to Strength (Arthur Brooks)
The Second Curve
You may notice that with age, people are better at combining and utilizing complex ideas.
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 that came up with them.
Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems.
Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past.
Think of a vast library. Older people may be slower at finding books, but they are able to wander and eventually find more books.
Crystallized intelligence tends to increase with age through one’s forties, fifties, and sixties--and does not diminish until quite late in life.
Cicero believed in three things about older age: dedicate yourself to service, our greatest gift is wisdom, and our natural ability is to counsel others in a way that may not amass money, power, or prestige for ourselves.
Before being assassinated for his criticism of Mark Antony after Caesar’s murder, he schooled the centurion: “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier. But do try to kill me properly.”
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it into a fruit salad.
It’s hard to make the jump from a career based on fluid intelligence to on using crystallized intelligence. It requires the courage and fortitude to make changes in our lives and careers- to become more of a teacher, whatever that means in one’s specific field.
Many refuse. But for those who make the jump, the reward is almost always enormous.
In interviewing people for this book, I found that invariably, the people who are happiest and most satisfied in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are those who made this leap.
Kick Your Success Addiction
We too often reduce other people to one or two enviable characteristics--physical beauty, money, or power. This is objectification.
This type of thinking sees being special as more important than being happy. But something is clearly wrong when the idea of being normal induces panic and makes someone neglect the ones they love in favor of the possible admiration of strangers.
A cousin of pride is fear.
A lot of people addicted to drugs and alcohol say they stay addicted because they are afraid of normal life, with its struggles, stresses, and boredom.
Success addicts frequently have a lot of fear, too- fear of failure.
Success is fundamentally positional, meaning it enhances our position in social hierarchies. Social scientists have shown for decades that positional goods do not bring happiness.
Arthur Schopenhauer: “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become, and the same is true of fame.”
If you want to be happy, you have to state your honest aspiration to be happy, to be willing to be a little less special in worldly terms, and thus to stop objectifying yourself.
You must state your desire to lighten your load with pride’s opposing virtue: humility.
Start Chipping Away
As we grow older in the West, we generally think we should have a lot to show for our lives- a lot of trophies.
This is backward. As we age, we shouldn’t accumulate more to represent ourselves but rather strip things away to find our true selves...and thus find our second curve.
Homeostasis is the natural tendency of all living systems to maintain stable conditions in order to survive. We have built-in mechanisms to regulate temperature, water, salt, sugar, protein, fat, calcium, and oxygen levels.
Homeostasis keeps you from getting too up or down emotionally. It’s natural. But we enter addiction when we get focused on always being up, which can include basing your self-worth on success. The buzzes are neutralized quickly (homeostasis) and you get on a hedonic treadmill, simply running to keep from slowing down.
We become wrapped up in three formulas:
(1) Satisfaction = continually getting what you want
(2) Success = Continually having more than others
(3) Failure = having less than others
Josemaria Escriva (a Catholic saint): “He has most who needs least. Don’t create needs for yourself.”
A journalist friend said to me: “My best friend and I often ask each other, “Aren’t we going to regret that we didn’t enjoy this time in our life more?” We agree that we will, and then we hang up the phone and go back to the madness.”
We want nice houses and schools and vacations and organic food and college and church and sleepaway camp and then we become tied to our circumstances.`
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. The threat of losing their lives prematurely took a jackhammer to the jade encasing their true selves- the why of their lives.
The reverse bucket list looks at all the thing you want to do and says: “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. I choose to detach myself from this desire.”
Death is the most normal, natural thing in life itself, and yet we are amazingly adroit at acting as if it were abnormal and a big surprise. We avoid thinking realistically about the length of our lives and our time left, lulling us into the false belief that we have all the time in the world. This expunges the urgency of life changes, such as jumping onto the second curve.
Ponder Your Death
In my conversations for this book, many people in the end stages of their careers talked about how they wanted to be remembered.
But it doesn’t work: other people will forget about you. People move on.
If you love your work so much, you might as well enjoy it while you are doing it. If you spend time thinking about and working on your legacy, you are already done.
Resume virtues are professional and oriented towards earthly success. Eulogy virtues are ethical and spiritual.
Resume skills fade, but eulogy skills deepen.
Practiced properly, old people have an edge over younger people, because they have more experience at life and relationships.
They say: live in such a way as to be always ready to die. I would say: live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret.
Discipline helps us work on mindfulness- living in the present as opposed to the past or future. Studies consistently find this mentality leads us to be happier people.
Michel de Montaigne: “To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.”
EM Forster: “Death destroys a man; the idea of Death saves him.” Because scarcity makes life dearer.
We all die alone. But we can decline together.
Part I of my notes from “From Strength to Strength” by Arthur Brooks