For many, finding meaning in the second half of life can feel like a challenge when so many of life’s more notable accomplishments happen in the first half. The world and our biology urge us to relentlessly chase after the next win. This flawed formula for satisfaction ultimately leaves us unfulfilled. To find true purpose, we must break our addiction to success and confront life’s hard truths. In this episode, Cathleen speaks to Arthur Brooks, a prolific author and social scientist. At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.
Episode 27: Arthur C. Brooks is the Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019, he served for ten years as president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the world’s leading think tanks.
He is also a columnist for The Atlantic, host of the podcast “How to Build a Happy Life with Arthur Brooks,” and subject of the 2019 documentary film “The Pursuit”. Arthur has written 12 books, including the national bestsellers “Love Your Enemies” and “The Conservative Heart”. His most recent book is “From Strength to Strength”, will be available this February 2022.
Links:
Arthur's book: From Strength to Strength
Facebook: Arthur Brooks
Twitter: @arthurbrooks
Podcast: How to Build a Happy Life
Podcast: The Art of Happiness
Website: arthurbrooks.com
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Cathleen: Welcome to seniority authority. I'm your host, Cathleen Toomey, and I track down experts to answer your questions on aging. Together, let's get smarter about growing older Thanks to our show, sponsor the Riverwoods Group, Northern New England's largest family of a nonprofit retirement communities where active adults find community purpose and peace of mind. Visit riverwoodsgroup.org. Now let's hear from today's guest. Arthur Brooks is a multi hyphenated, multitalented man, a professional musician, accomplished social scientist and columnist for the Atlantic. He was formerly president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in DC, currently the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School. He started a documentary, is the author of 11 books and two popular podcast, How to Build a Happy Life and The Art of Happiness. They have long been a fan of Arthur Brooks, and his was the first podcast I ever listened to. Long before I had an idea to put one together. I'm so privileged to be talking to Arthur about his new book, which is being released this month. Titled From Strength to Strength. His book is about finding meaning, happiness and purpose in the second half of life, so thrilled to welcome to the program. Arthur.
Arthur: Thank you, Cathleen. And congratulations on the enormous success of seniority authority. It's touching a lot of people's lives and helping people to find their path in a world that seems like sometimes it only wants to help find the path of people in the beginning of their lives. And, you know, you're doing what a lot of people need and I appreciate it a lot.
Cathleen: Oh, thank you. That means a lot coming from you. I was absolutely captivated when I first started listening to your podcast, and I have been a big fan of your writing. But just hearing your focus and what you are encouraging people to do, find meaning and purpose and happiness in life so resonated with me. And I am really thrilled that you have this book that is focused also on the second half of life. But it's not just a new book for you. It's really a revelation that inspired you to change your life.
Arthur: Yeah, it really is, and the great thing about doing research on happiness is that it's actually not research its sort of me research. I know almost everybody who's, you know, the social scientists all over the world that didn't work on happiness. We're a pretty tight knit community, and everybody's just asking the same questions. But they have we in the social science community we have for the neuroscience community, for that matter. We have these tools that can help illuminate the big mysteries of our own lives, and the mysteries are all the same across. I mean, everybody's got different problems and different circumstances to be sure, different challenges and different opportunities. But but we're all kind of worried about the same things. We're worried about relationships. We're worried about our future. We're worried about who we are as people, and to the extent that which we're contributing to the world. And some years ago I was giving some thought to, you know, what can I do to really map out future? I have to admit, Cathleen, I was a little bit insecure at that point because I was running a company in those days. I was running a big think tank in Washington, D. C. and I saw a lot of my fellow chief executives that they were getting to a certain point in their careers, and they were finding that there they didn't kind of feel like they have their edge anymore. They were, you know, plenty smart. It was not some sort of problem, but they weren't. They didn't have the edge. They didn't have the hunger. They didn't have the itch like they used to in the old days, but they didn't know what to do, so they would try harder and harder and harder. And things weren't going as well as they should as a source of anger and frustration and even fear. I thought to myself, You know, that's not the right future. There's got to be a better way. And so I actually started on a research project and eight year research project to figure out kind of what happens to people in the latter part of their careers, especially strivers, hard workers, ambitious people. What generally speaking happens what we can expect and how we can actually turn what, for many people would be a source of fear and frustration, actually into a source of transcendence and triumph In other words, What is the new source of success that we can actually look too that's uniquely suited to people who are over 50/60, even 70. And I found the answer.
Cathleen: And what I loved about your book is it starts with a bang. It starts with a shocker. And do you want to reveal what that shocker is for most of us?
Arthur: Yeah, sure. It was basically a revelatory story. It was an experience for me that, you know, I was thinking about this and I was thinking about you know, what does the future hold do things have to kind of do big careers have to end a whimper? How am I going to feel when I'm no longer able to do the things that I've worked so hard for? And I was on an airplane. It was at night, and I was doing what I always did, which was traveling around giving speeches and, you know, doing feverishly doing my work, being as busy as I possibly could. And I heard a conversation of this couple behind me. It was too dark for I mean, I couldn't and I couldn't see him, but I could hear him talking. I could tell by the voices that they were elderly, probably in there. Eighty's from what I could guess. And they sounded like a married couple. And the wife was consoling the husband. He would mumble a little bit, and I would hear her say something like, Oh, don't say it would be better if you were dead. It was horrible. And I thought, Well, this is somebody who's really and he was going on and on He was inconsolable. Obviously, he felt from based on her reactions, at least that the world didn't appreciate him anymore. He wasn't anybody that he respected for himself anymore, etcetera kind of over the hill, really frustrated. And I got this image in my mind of somebody who was probably disappointed because he hadn't been able to achieve the things that he wanted to achieve in his life. And then, you know, maybe somebody who was forced to retire after a high school teaching career and, you know, whatever it was that he wanted to do something else with his life wasn't able to start the business to get the education that he wanted. Whatever. And then the lights go on when we land and everybody stands up. And I turned around because, you know, I was kind of curious and it turns out to be one of the most famous men in the world. Somebody that everybody would recognize everybody would know because of achievements a long time ago. And he is old, was all the time. And I'm not even reveal whether he's still living or not today, but because out of discretion. But the bottom line was that it was a shocker, because this is a guy who had every reason to go to his grave, just beaming. But he was confessing to his wife, and I heard it myself that he thought it would be better if he was dead, that his best years were behind him, that nobody loved him, that you know what he was that nobody, because he wasn't still at the top of his game. And I thought to myself, Man is not gonna happen to that guy. I'm not that guy. I'm a lot less than that guy. If it can happen to that guy, it can happen to me happen to anybody else. There's got to be a way around that conundrum because you know, sooner or later the party finishes. So what is success mean at that point in your life? How can you enjoy your life optimally? What are the secrets? What are the hacks? And I went in search as a social scientist for all of the best secrets I could possibly find. And that was the eight year research project that culminated this book.
Cathleen: And what I am fascinated by is, as you said, this is me research. This is something that you felt compelled to do and put eight years of your life into, and it's written for a very particular kind of person. It's written for people who are successful, who have look at yourself. You've had multiple successful careers, successful career as a professional musician, French horn player, a successful career leading a think tank, being a writer, being a leader, a thought leader. And you're anticipating that you don't want to be like this very famous guy. And you're writing this book for other people to say there is a way to live your life differently, as opposed to continuing the same thing that you know right now.
Arthur: Yeah, that's right, and part of it is a very human problem. What we can call it the satisfaction problem and we're taught is when we're young. When were kids? And you know, the people who are listening to this podcast are go getters. They're older, but they're go getters. And so every single person listening to us right now is going to know what I'm talking about. When you're a kid and you're a young adult, you're told that if you do this, then you'll be satisfied that life will be great, that the reward, the joy that will come from being successful will be just incredible and enduring. And it, of course, never is. I mean, the conundrum. The paradox of satisfaction is that you get to one thing, and then it's always the next thing. And so you get a big promotion and raise at work, for example, and everybody can remember the first time that that, you know, big promotion and raise came along at work. And you think, man, when I get this thing, it's going to be so great and you celebrate when you find out you pop a champagne cork with your with your spouse. But by the time the money shows up in your paycheck later in the month, you're like, Oh yeah, that and it's on to the next thing. There's a neurological reason for this. There's an explanation, very clear, but there's a neurochemical neurotransmitter called dopamine, and that gives us a little hit for rewards in exchange for a job well done, a goal met. The problem is that it doesn't last. It clears your bloodstream really quickly, and then you want the next dopamine hit. And when you're a success junk, when you're an absolute success addict, you're going to go for the next hit and the next hit, the next hit. And the thing about dopamine is that it always lies. It lies and lies, and we always believe it, that this one is going to last forever this time. And so we're going for it again and again and again. In a certain point in our career, the successes as we understood them as we were climbing the ladder become less frequent, and then dopamine turns against us. Then it basically punishes us because we get into a dopamine deficit and you know, every time that we don't get the rewards that we thought we were going to get because of the natural reasons in our lives. The frustration, the fear the anger starts to send in. And that's what actually was hearing from The Man Behind Me on the plane and many, many famous people throughout history as a document in this book, from Charles Darwin to once famous rock stars but also ordinary CEOs and working steps around America who did their best to build a career and build a family and be successful. And then they see less than the wards of worldly success. And frankly, they can feel like failures, as has been. And it's no fun,
Cathleen: that's terrible. And it is part of it is the devil dopamine. And you also say in your book that there are science that underlies the fact that we are all going to hit a professional decline sooner than we think, which was really not something fun to read. But it makes sense. So not only is it the dopamine that we're not getting, but also people are going to lose their edge sooner than they anticipate.
Arthur: True. And you know I have to start the book with the two x 4 across the chops a little bit because, you know, it's a hard topic, right? And so the key is, you know, everybody knows if you're, you know, a second baseman for the Red Sox that your decline is going to happen when you're pretty young because you're a professional athlete, you know, at your box or something you're not going to be, you know, winning prize fights in your sixties. Everybody knows that. But we all have this feeling that if we're not working with our outdoor with their hands, with our strength and our backs are doing something really physical that we can go on and on and on and on and on, and that turns out to be not true. You find that even an idea. Professions accountants, lawyers, doctors that you lose your edge between somewhere between the ages of 35 50 on average, and I've got the data and I present the data and there's a very strong social science reason for this. But the bottom line is that almost everybody is shocked and they think it's them. They think they're the only ones, like, how come I just don't feel that drive anymore. I don't feel that hunger anymore. And so a lot of you know, talk to these for this book. I talked to a lot of professionals that they literally thought they were the only ones. You know. There'll be this lawyer and they were the hungry young lawyer and they were killing it. And they were, You know, they go from associate to partner, and they're making a lot of money and working really, really hard. And then sometime in their forties, it's like, I don't know, it's just not coming as easy to me as it was. I don't like it as much as I liked it in the past, and and I want to have the fire, but I don't have the fire that I used to have. What's wrong with me? And the answer is, nothing is wrong with you. You're right on schedule. You're right on schedule Number one for that decline. But you're also right on schedule for the next hill to climb because there is a success curve behind that first success curve. And if you know what that is, and that's the second part of the book, that's when things get really interesting. Most people they fight and fight and fight and fight because they actually feel like they're losing their edge and they think they're the only one. They think it's not natural which it is, and they don't know that they need to actually start working to jump onto the next success curve. That only happens When you're in your 40s and 50s and where you can be uniquely successful. But you got to know where it is. You've got to know how to jump.
Cathleen: And that is the key that unlocks. This book is to understand the second success curve, which is what you spent eight years researching and what I love about this book. One of the things I love about this book is it starts out, but with the two by four saying you're going to professionally decline, don't be surprised. You're not the only one. It's a thing. And now here's how to start the next chapter because so many people that I talked to who are older have that loss of purpose and it is debilitating. It really can affect people's health and their mental well being. So people who will read the book will understand this second success curve. But could you take us through that?
Arthur: Sure, absolutely so. The key thing to keep in mind is there is the work of a psychologist and Britain named Raymond Cutell who was doing his work in the 19 sixties and 19 seventies and can tell Believe that intelligence wasn't one thing that really there were two kinds of intelligence, which he called fluid and crystallized intelligence and fluid. Intelligence is what we think of as raw brain smarts. The stuff gets measured on an IQ test, but more importantly for everybody who listens to senior authority, it's what you're made. You're really good at your job early on. You know you, you solve the problem faster you're willing to put in the time you innovated better. You know, it's the reason that startup entrepreneurs and tech they're always in their twenties, and they work 16 hours a day and people slipping on pizzas under the door, and they're coming up with these incredible new ideas. And that's because their fluid intelligence this raw, innovative capacity, is sky high. What happens is as cattle showed his research, it starts to decline in your thirties, and then it goes down really, really fast in your forties. It doesn't mean you're getting less intelligent in any sort of intelligent testing kind of way. It means your innovative capacity, your raw, innovative capacities, and declined. The thing that made you good originally at your work is in decline now. He also showed that there's this thing called crystallized intelligence, which is your ability to tell a story, your ability to take ideas that are already out there and assemble them in new and novel ways. You can be a better teacher. You can be a better coach. You can be a better manager. You can be a better leader because you're able to know what things mean. It's also known as wisdom, and that increases starts to increase in your thirties. But it's going up really fast in your forties and fifties, even in your sixties, and as long as you keep, your marbles will stay high in your seventies and eighties and even your nineties. In other words, this is the trick is wisdom. Now here's the best news of all. Nobody thinks that just raw brains is a virtue, but everybody thinks wisdom is a virtue. So the crystallized intelligence that you just don't get it, you know, when you're a kid, you know, And so, for example, I mean, there's all kinds of data that supports this. For example, you find it in my business now at the university, that the best teaching evaluations almost always go to the oldest professors. You know, literally, professors over 70 get the best teaching evaluations at universities. The reason is not just because they have all this experience. The reasons, because they're crystallized intelligence is super high. And that's what favors great teachers, great mentors, great story telling people who can put the ideas together. You don't want a 29 year old managing partner at a law firm. You want associates and young partners that are killing it in litigation, for example, and research who are in their twenties. You want you're managing partner to be about 60. Why? Because the managing partner has seen everything has seen every kind of problem, and so this is this unique wisdom that you can bring to the game when you get a little bit older. But you got to know that it's coming and then start jumping on it proposedly. In other words, stop trying to do what you were doing at 25. When you're 45, stop trying to do that and start trying to become the teacher. To become the mentor to become the person who shares the ideas. Start moving into whatever that means for your profession, for your own particular milieu because, you know, not everybody can be literally a professor. But everybody can be the professorial person in a particular workplace, and people have to figure out what that means in their profession.
Cathleen: So that means you have to shift your thinking as to what success looks like. And look at success in your second half as being the mentor, the educator, the collaborator, as opposed to the raw talent. Go, go, go
Arthur: exactly right! I'll give you a ton of examples of people who don't do it. The guy in the plane didn't know. He thought that success meant what he did when he was in his twenties and thirties, when he was really famous for his incredible achievements and what people really admired him, for what he didn't ever figure out where nobody ever taught him or he just never actually just came through on the basis of his own life experience was that there was a second curve behind it to do things in which he could share his knowledge and incredibly meaningful ways to tell the story surface new talent, to do all the things that people can do later in life. Much, much better. And so he was really frustrated because all of his great achievements and his success was in the rear view mirror. Charles Darwin is the same story. By the way. I mean Charles Darwin. He hit a wall in terms of his innovation when he was about 50 years old. Never felt like he ever made another scientific advance for the rest of his career. And he, you know, he died 25 years later, feeling like a failure. I mean, Charles Darwin the greatest, maybe the greatest scientist who has ever lived and died feeling like a failure because in the last 25 years were relatively unoriginal with respect to his research because he never got on the second curve. So who did? And here's an example of, you know, somebody who really did was quite famous as Johann Sebastian Bach. Often known as the greatest composer who ever lived, Bach was known as the greatest innovator of the high Baroque period music. When he was a young man, he was, you know, he played pieces on the organ that no human could play. He was writing fugues. He wrote 1000. He published 1000 pieces of music for all different instrumentation. By the way, Cathleen, he also had 20 Children, which is which is that's productive, very productive, very productive on the way to publishing 1000 pieces of music. And he was such an innovator. So incredible, high fluid intelligence. And then, at age 50, he hit a wall, and he couldn't actually innovate into a new musical style that was overtaking all of the audiences in Europe. But it was his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, that ushered in a new style of music and supplanted his father completely as the most famous composer of his generation. And so when people it's funny, you know, we only know one box we know Johann Sebastian Bach. You know, the great. But then his son was way more famous. And so Mozart himself, Wolfgang Mozart, one time said. Bach is the father. We are the Children. He was talking about. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He was talking about the son. Beethoven, totally. At the time, Beethoven was collecting the manuscripts of the son. Didn't know anything about the father. So what happened? Bach. The father went from being the big man on campus. To my husband, he was writing the equivalent of disco. Nobody cared. So what he did was he completely rebuilt his career as the finest teacher of his generation. He took a music teaching job at the cantor of the Thomas Leipzig, Germany, where he directed the choir. He taught the students. He taught composition. He wrote for the masses the style that he knew best. And he dedicated himself to teaching his Children his many, many Children, of promoting their careers, to surfacing the great talents of his generation and to educating the public on the joys of music. He was a You know, he was a Christian and he wanted to bring people closer to God with his music, and he had no idea that 100 years after he died, his manuscripts were going to be rediscovered and he was going to become literally considered to be literally the greatest composer who ever lived. But it wasn't till 100 years after he died he was by worldly standards, washed up as an innovator by age 50, died happy at age 65 because he was known as the finest teacher of his generation. And he was celebrating the fact that his famous sons, who were composers in the new style, were the innovators of that time that Cathleen was doing it right.
Cathleen: Wow, that is a great illustration and what I love about that also, no matter the fact that I had no idea and I'm sure most of our listeners were not professional musicians, did not know that back was washed up and was not considered great until he was rediscovered 100 years ago is that he felt fulfilled in himself. And I think that's the challenge of the second half of life. Is finding the meaning and purpose and the reason to keep going, I think plagues all of us who are looking at that second half of life and understanding that it's not the go go first part of life. But it's the worldly versus the meaningful, I think, is the difference. If you're getting smarter, help us reach more minds. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast. Tell your friends to follow us on social or subscribe to our newsletter at seniorityauthority.org.
Arthur: Absolutely. The other point is that if you want to be fulfilled, you have to do what you're uniquely called to do and where you can actually do something that's well done, you know, and the idea of struggling against time and hiding your weakness, you know, getting kind of the career equivalent of, you know, hair plugs and Botox, which, by the way, is fine. The problem is when you're actually covering over your vocational weaknesses so that nobody can see that things are harder for you than they used to be. Your hiding things about yourself is just it's a drag. It's just no good at all. And it's going to lead you to kind of the frustration and quiet desperation and instead being celebrated for the things that you can uniquely do well, where you're creating value with your life and value in the lives of other people. In other words, you gotta earn your success, and you can only earn your success when you're in your groove and you can't be in your groove if you're trying to sit on the wrong success curve for the other part of your life.
Cathleen: And what we've talked about before is that so many people resist that jump to the second curve. So many people fight the fact that they are going to be going into the second curve, and they continue to try to do everything the exact same way. What are those barriers? Why do people resist this? Why is there such resistance?
Arthur: It's a good question, and there are a bunch of different reasons for it. Number one is that people are afraid. They're afraid that there isn't a second curve. They're afraid that this is all that there is Number one. The second is that they don't know how there's ignorance of actually how to do it. How do you make this change? And the last is just can be kind of inertia. I don't want to make a change. Why should I make a change? The world should change. I shouldn't change. And of course, that's an exercise in futility because everybody who said The world's gonna change to conform to my expectations. You know, these are always the most frustrated people in the world. But these are the reasons that people do that and you don't transition. Cathleen is a bear. People don't like transitions. There's a lot of neuroscience behind why this is We have a tendency to see transition is naturally, really threatening because you know when things are changing in your environment, which is pretty much a constant because life is all about change. But changes are uncomfortable because that's when you don't know where the threats are, for sure. And so people don't like it. That's kind of scary. The second thing is that they don't know exactly the direction that they're going, which is intensely productive. I mean, it's a really fertile period is called in the neuroscience literature Liminality, liminality. This is a liminal state between two status quos, and you know you're going from one curve to another. That's a kind of a limb analogy. You're kind of jumping off into space, hoping you're going to land on something so walking away from even if your career is becoming frustrating to you or you find that your inexplicably board of the job that you used to love walking away from its really scary because, you know, this is my identity. This is who I am. It's just what I've been really good at. This is how people know me like that. I'm quitting. It's really scary. And I'm telling you, I did this research and it was very clear. You gotta jump. You've got to jump. And I was in a chief executive job and the writing was on the wall. I mean, I was getting towards my mid fifties and and I knew, you know, it was going to get harder, that things were not going to come as easily to me as they had in the past. I mean, I'm not losing my marbles, but I got the data, and so I thought to myself, I gotta jump and I did it. I walked away. I mean, I gotta eat my own cooking, right?
Cathleen: I know and that’s what’s incredible to me and makes this book so so personal is that you did this and you did this earlier than most people would do it. So you had a very successful career as a CEO, and you said and living in D. C and you left jumped, moved into the unknown and into this new entity. And that's that's pretty incredible that you did this and you said, OK, I'm going to I'm anticipating this and I'm welcoming it.
Arthur: Yeah, I mean, I was welcoming it. I mean, I'm welcoming. It had to be completely honest. I didn't completely welcome it because I was afraid, just like everybody else. I can have all the data in the world I can have. My crystal ball is pretty good because I've got data on literally hundreds of thousands of people. And but I always think maybe I'm different, you know, Maybe I'm the one where it doesn't apply to and for good or for bad. You know, maybe it doesn't apply to me. And, you know, I go on and on and on, and 20 years from now I'm still the most celebrated, whatever ever that I was doing when I was younger. Or maybe I'm the guy who doesn't have the second curve and I jump off into space and then fall forever. Maybe, but I had to have faith Look, I gotta if I believe these things and I'm willing to publish these things and talk about them to other people, I have to take my own advice. It's very, very important. I don't have credibility to the circumstances, and I did. And I'm telling you, it's funny because I was writing this book before I resigned as the CEO and and then became a professor, and I didn't know, and it was true. It was absolutely true. I left and it was hard and it was hard. It was just It was hard on my ego. It was hard on me. Yeah, neurologically I mean, what what we know is that serotonin levels, they tend to dip when your level of personal prestige or professional prestige falls. And sure enough, it, like, felt kind of depressed. And, you know, I didn't know who I was. I found that my signature changed weirdly and because I didn't because I didn't know who I was, you know? And I didn't I couldn't quite. I moved my wife and I, we moved. It was a time that our kids were growing up. They were moving out at the same time. We went to the coronavirus epidemic. We were just heading into that. It was very, very funny. Liminal time, I have to say. And it was intensely uncomfortable for a while, but incredibly fruitful. And so there's this geyser of new ideas and activity despite the fact that I was uncomfortable. And now I'm looking back on that period and I'm telling you that liberality was extremely productive and it was just like the data predicted. That Curve was just the first curve was just like what I thought it was and the second one as well, and I'm really, really glad I jumped.
Cathleen: Well, you jumped and you had kind of all of these forces. So kids launching and leaving home and leaving your well established home, another part of the country coming somewhere else, not being the CEO changing your identity. And then, bam, you're hit with covid and one of the chapter of the book. You talk about cultivating your aspen grove and your friends, your tribe, and can you talk a little bit about how that helped you come to appreciate your second curve?
Arthur: Yes, one of the things that when people are feeling frustrated and afraid about. They don't know that their first curve is declining. They don't know that it's a natural thing. They feel intensely alone, they feel. And part of the reason is because really successful people. Strivers are, and I teach this class I teach at the Harvard Business School called Leadership and Happiness, and one of the units is on love and relationships. And one of the things I show my students who are going to be the you know, the masters of the universe is that the top CEOs and businesspeople, strivers. A lot of people listening to us right now are intensely lonely people. And the reason is because they've become very good at establishing deal friends, but not real friends and real friends and real friends. And you've got a ton of deal friends, and then you find out, especially when you're trying to make a transition. You don't have any real friends, and so you're lonely already. And so and then the tendency is to want to go inward on yourself. You know, when people are really lonely, it actually impairs their executive function in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is why when people are really lonely. They want to lie by themselves with a pint of ice cream, watching Netflix alone on the couch. And that's exactly the wrong thing to do exactly the wrong thing to do. You need to call a friend. You need to get out. You need to talk to people. When you're lonely, you need to redress the loneliness. You don't need to accentuate the loneliness by doubling down on the loneliness behavior. But what happens is kind of a meta version of that for really successful people who don't have the maybe they don't have the skills. And so one of the things when I talk about jumping from curve to curve is don't do it by yourself. Don't try it by yourself. You actually need to establish right now everybody listening to us establish a thicker, deeper, better root system. When I talk about the Aspen Grove, when you look at the aspen tree, it looks like a stately, solitary wonder. The truth is that there is no aspen tree that's one plant. The largest single organism living in the world today is a single Aspen Grove in Utah called Pando. It's 106 million kg of wood in one plant. And the point is, it's acre after acre after acre of trees, all one root system. And that's the key thing for us to remember. You're not in decline. You're part of a root system. You've got to have a good root system where one shoot is doing this. And another shoot is coming out doing that, and only when you've got your friends. When you've got your family. When you have your loved ones, when you have your trusted people, can you actually go from one part of your life to another part of your life without feeling like you're dying? You're not dying
Cathleen: that is so incredibly important, and especially when you think of successful people and in particular men, I think have a very hard time cultivating friendships outside of work because often it's the female that is making the social plans and connecting, and it feels unusual for men to do that. But this is critical in terms of your health and happiness. Long term, connecting with people is the most important thing. I think if all the people that I'm talking to and our mutual friend at at Harvard and the longevity study. You need to be connected to people. It's not a frivolous thing.
Arthur: Yeah, you're talking about Bob Bob Waldinger, who runs the Harvard study of adult Development, and he says, Look, he's got 80 years of longitudinal data on people who are happy and not in their older years. And he says the difference is happy people and unhappy people when they're old is love with the human connections that they have. There's nothing who's going to console you at the end of your life. You know, like you know, they're going to say at my funeral, Cathleen, he had a lot of frequent flyer miles. It's just not nobody wants that, you know. He was in a Million Miler club for three airlines. I mean, this is not a consolation. It'll be. He was a father who raised us and loved us. He was a true friend. He was her husband. She was a wife that loved and knew how to give love and new how to accept love. I mean, these are the things that we want people to be saying about us because ultimately these are the things that are most satisfying in our lives, and we know that. So we have to get after this. We have to get after this right now. The second curve is all about sharing. It's all about putting wisdom together in people's lives that can create value in their lives. And that's all about relationships, too. So this is all of a piece.
Cathleen: And yet in Chapter six, you talk about we have all these barriers to love. Why is that?
Arthur: Yeah, that's true. Well, it's because we've built up all of these convenient ways of doing everything except that again in the early part of our career, is on the first on the on the fluid, intelligence curve loving relationships. They feel like a distraction from the sources of our success. You know, when you're when you're working 75 hours a week and so what brings you the success that you crave? Money, power, fame, prestige On the way up, you know, there's a lot of these loving relationships which take time. I mean, it's like friendship is very time consuming. Marriage is very time consuming, spending time with your kids very time consuming, and we make these decisions what we call marginal decision making might colleagues at Harvard Business School who passed away a couple of years ago. Clay Christianson. He used to call it marginal thinking, which is really good economically and really bad when it comes to a family, and here's kind of how it works. It's like What gives me the greatest benefit right now for an extra hour, my 14th hour at work or my first hour with my irritating kids? Hmm? Let me think. And the office always wins for strivers. And yet that what that does is that cultivates a garden that is hyper nourished in one kind of plant, which doesn't endure very well. It doesn't turn into tasty vegetables after too long, and it under nourishes the plants that they're supposed to grow long term. And they're supposed to nourish you, and especially in later parts of your life. And so what I talked about in the book is okay, okay, What's done is done like I mean, I'm not. I was not perfect. I was working 75 hours a week when my kids were little. I'm not going to lie about it, and when I did this research, I had some repair work to do. I had some things to learn about my kids. You know, there are a lot of Little League games that I missed because one hour of a Little League game seemed a lot less useful to me than that last hour. Raising money for my organization. And you know, I can't can't come, sort of. I'm not going to lie. I mean, my kids went to college and in my family's well taken care of. And the widow Brooks at some point will be very well taken care of because of that 75th hour of work during the week, sort of. But I'm also kind of making an excuse, and it's important I had to re establish those relationships. And so I talked about not you go back in time and do things differently. What's done is done. I talk in the book about how you can actually do it on the basis of the best research on how to reestablish relationships when it is a little bit late in the game and it can be done, has been done, and everybody listening to us can do it
Cathleen: so you can do it. You can make those changes in your life right now?
Arthur: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely Particularly because recognizing that that you need this is critically important and articulating this well, actually kind of make the forces of the universe turn in your favor to say, Look, I want more love in my life. I'm not going to expect that. Everybody is going to say, Hey, thanks for skipping all my Little League games, Dad, everything's fine. But if you say basically, I want to have you in my life, these people who love you, they've been waiting for this and you're going to find it's a much, much happier reception than you thought.
Cathleen: Well, I think there's a lot to be said for being clear. And just as you changed your career and you said, I'm doing all this research and now I'm going to make that leap, telling people this is my intent. I am in this new period, and I am focusing on my second curve, and recognizing that you are in this liminal period is important to establish your root system, to find your and connect and reconnect with people, and to tell them this is something that I want to do.
Arthur: Absolutely and it's a pretty vulnerable thing to do, but it's incredibly rewarding. And a lot of especially men, You know, men are pretty bad at this is sometimes interesting, and I looked at a lot of research on the nature of relationships. You find that women my age, late 50s, they tend to make very close relationships with each other, friendships on the basis of what they feel about you know how they're experiencing life. You know, the phenomenon of being alive. Men established relationships around, doing things, you know. And so they'll they'll have really, really close friends like What do you do? We golf? What do you talk about? Talk. What are you talking about? Talk? I don't know. We talk about putters, I don't know, but they're really close friends because men tend to bond around, doing when that doing is work and the work goes away. That means the friendship goes away, and that means that there's a particular set of skills that a lot of guys my age need to establish, and it's been pretty interesting for me. You know, it's building my friendships on the basis of human life as opposed to running a think tank or whatever I happen to be doing at the time. It's a different set of skills
Cathleen: How has it gone for you?
Arthur: It's good I I have have a closer group of friends that I've had in the past, and talking openly about these things turns out to be pretty fruitful. I mean, not all the guys that are good about talking about their feelings, and we're not going to do it the same way that women do for sure. But I have found that especially, you know, it's really an advantage. Cathleen, is that when you're a so called expert on something, people are really, really willing to give you a wide berth. It's like, Yeah, my research says that we need to go out and hang out like Okay, you know, you're the professor
Cathleen: and you know, you're the professor that teaches the most popular class at Harvard, where there's a waiting list, you're the expert on happiness. You tell me this is what I should be doing. I'm going to trust you, and I'm going to start doing
Arthur: it. It's a big responsibility. I have to say now, and I'm sure that they're using your
Cathleen: It’s using your reputation for good.
Arthur: Yeah, I'm sure that there are classes at Harvard that are more oversubscribed. But when you teach happiness, people do want to take the class, to be sure. But like you said, you got to be right. You
Cathleen: talked about liminality. And in the book, you talk about four Rules of liminality. And one of things I do want to talk about is to help people prepare for this second curve. How can they get themselves ready to be vulnerable like this and to be in this liminal state?
Arthur: So it starts by recognizing that you know, the patterns that we're seeing here. It isn't just you. The first curve is real. The second curve exists. You can get there. That's the information that everybody needs, you know, And that's incredible. The second thing to recognize is that a liminality per se you're going to get It's just it's like you're you're going into a gold mine. I mean, it's it's uncomfortable, but everybody you meet who actually tries to jump from curve to curve. They find incredible things about themselves. Unbelievable productivity. That doesn't mean you're gonna write books or symphonies or something like that. But there's all this fertility that comes from this period. The way that I talk about it in the book is that it's like the people who do fish in the ocean. They talk about the falling tide, which is this time when the tide is going out really fast. It feels like, you know, all the water is going away and the fish should disappear. That turns out that's when the fish bite the most is because that's when the plankton and game fish are all stirred up. And so the game fish bite like crazy. I found this out by accident from this old wizard barrier when I was a kid and I was fishing off the rocks and Lincoln City, Oregon, and I wasn't catching anything, he says. That's not the falling tide, kid. He said. Wait till the falling tide and he waits with me and then we throw our lines in the water and share that we're pulling fish out one by one. By one by one. It was super fun, and he said, and I said that I didn't know that, he said. Of course not because you're from the city Kid City I was from Seattle, you know? And so it was. It seemed like the big city. And afterwards, you know, we're sitting on the rocks. This old guy, I never met him before and he he lights up a cigarette. He's feeling all kind of philosophical, and he says there's only one mistake you can make in a falling tide. And I said, What's that? He said, Not having your line in the water.
Cathleen: That’s great.
Arthur: And that's just that That's a lesson for life, Cathleen. I mean, it's just It's like when things feel like you're losing everything and the tide is going out and there's nothing to be gained. Get your line in the water. That's when you get your line in the water. And the last lesson about liminality is you've got getting your line in the water. Another way of saying it is jump. I mean, there's all this Buddhist philosophy that talks about this idea that there's a particular point. The most courageous but most productive thing that you can do is when you're most afraid and you feel like you're on a precipice. Not literally, of course, but to jump because that's an act of courage. That's an act of ownership of your own life that is getting your line into the falling tide. And I'm telling you, I've seen the data and my cause is just you're going to pull stuff out of that tide.
Cathleen: I am thrilled to hear this because it's also an act of optimism. It's saying I can do more. I can do things differently. I can do things that are that I have not yet done before. I don't have to keep doing the same thing I've been doing the last 30 years. The last 40 years I can start rewriting my script.
Arthur: Yeah, and each one of us is really the author of our own text, the text that is our life and the idea of having your life happen to you. There's just no fun in that. And if life is really going to be an adventure treated like Lewis and Clark, which is to say that we're going to find something, we're going to look for this particular thing. We're going to find something and then go in search of it and be in charge. And it's just that adventure is so sweet and the people that you talked to that have the best aging experience are the ones who really treated in this particular way. The biggest problem, once again, is this fear that this thing that I did was my only shot is the only game in town. The only thing that I can do and now it's being taken away from me. But the good news is that that's actually an erroneous understanding of life on Earth
Cathleen: and what I love about this one of the things I love about the book is you pull from all these different under data and spiritual tradition of religious tradition and all. I think a lot of people go into the second half of their life and they say, Okay, I'm going to have this bucket list to do this and do this and do this And it's another kind of way of focusing on worldly acquisitions like I'm going to be able to go to all the big cities and see all the museums and do all these things. And you reference the teachings of Buddha and the concept of chipping away vs adding more in your second half of life.
Arthur: That's right. So I think that one of the worst concepts that we have for happiness is the bucket list, because the bucket list is always a list of worldly accomplishments, and it's a way that people think that it's going to keep them hungry and bring them satisfaction is when they get the things on their bucket list. But of course, satisfaction is elusive. You'll never get it by by doing these things, especially when you're looking for these worldly rewards and accomplishments. And you know, these all fall under the heading of money, power, pleasure and fame or prestige. And you know this includes all these experiences. I want to see Paris. I want to see Rome. I want to see New Guinea. You know this. I want to. I want to be on a boat among the, you know, the the Antarctic or something like this. I mean, they have all of these things on them. That's the wrong way of looking at it, because what it does is it actually enhances the cravings that you have in your life and the attachments that you have in your life. They don't bring satisfaction, but they will remind you of what you haven't done the way to do this, particularly the second half of life is a reverse bucket list where every year you take those cravings and earthly desires and you say to you and you convert them. You take them out and you convert them into the kinds of desires that are really wholesome, all wholesome desires around a faith B family C friendship and d serving others. That's what all of the you know, that's what your ambitions should focus around. So don't say I want to see Paris. I want to see Rome. I want to go to Berlin, Say I want to have beautiful, meaningful, loving time with my spouse someplace, even if it's whether it's on my back deck or it's in Berlin. That's what I want. And that's those are the things that actually have. Your reverse bucket list is take out all the junk and let the things flow into that bucket that are the natural fruit of what a meaningful life is all about. So get rid of the money, power, pleasure and fame and put in faith, family, friends and work where you serve others and watch 1000 flowers bloom
Cathleen: that's incredible. That is absolutely the right way to spin your head around and to make your life more meaningful. And I hope that everybody who's listening is thinking about how they can do that, how they can make those four things faith, family, friendship and serving others part of their life because that is going to deepen your satisfaction. Your it has more meaningful pleasure, and it's going to make you happier. More content.
Arthur: Absolutely, absolutely. And and here's the best news. It works for everybody. It's 100% better, you know that the key is that if you're going with the stuff that never really brought you that much satisfaction but was pretty successful and it was okay along the way. But it's getting harder and harder and harder. Your odds are next to nil that this is going to somehow work out for you as the first person in the history of humanity.
Arthur: I got 100% bet Faith, family, friends and service, faith, family, friends and service. I mean, and and dedicating yourself to that which, by the way, requires a high level of crystallized intelligence and saying this is what the back half of my life is all about. This is really what my legacy is all about. This is how people are gonna remember me that is in intensely satisfying, and that's possible for every single person listening to us and for you and me. And that's what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life.
Cathleen: Well, that's what I'm going to do with my life. It has been It is absolutely so inspiring. And and I would highly highly recommend. I think I devoured this book in a day and a half, highly recommend reading from strength to strength. It's all the data. It's all the research is eight years of work and travel and talking to leaders, spiritual leaders and social scientists. And it's It's so simple when you read this, but I don't want to conclude our podcast without the seven words to remember. So this is a very important part of the book, and I want to make sure you have an opportunity to talk about that.
Arthur: Yeah, I mean, it's usually when I when I read a book, I try to put myself in the shoes of a reader. You know, you're not going to remember everything like the author remembers the book and let's let's not kid ourselves. I mean, people are busy. And so in the end of the book, usually I like to say, Okay, if you're gonna remember one thing, remember this now the world, the reason that we have frustration, the guy on the plane and Charles Darwin and me and you and everybody else. And when these moments of frustration, it's because we follow the world's formula, and that's the world's formula for your success early on in life. But it's also kind of a false formula for happiness, it says. Basically love things, use people and worship yourself. That's what the world tells you to do. Then you'll be fulfilled. Then everything will be okay and along, you know, 10, 15 years into your career. And as time passes, you realize that's kind of a counterfeit formula, and on top of that, it starts to get harder and harder to execute. And then you find out along the way that there is a formula. It just changes the verbs and nouns around. If you want to remember just the seven words to Actually get happier as you get older. It's use things, love people and worship the divine, and then do what you will that actually will sort out everything else that we've talked about in the past hour and everything. I wrote 300 pages in this book. Just remember to only use things only love people and only worship what is divine. And then you'll be okay.
Cathleen: That is wonderful. I do disagree. You have to read the 300 pages because it is so meaningful and memorable. But I just want to say thank you, Arthur, for all of this incredible, revelatory wisdom for being a crystallized thinker and learner and for taking that leap, what you've done has helped us show others what is possible. And I really appreciate it.
Arthur: Thank you, Cathleen. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You're lifting up a lot of people. You're lifting up thousands and thousands of people with your show and you know the people who are leading families leading lives, giving an example of what a good life is all about. And you're helping people to be a better example and to be happier to boot. So thank you.
Cathleen: I’m so thrilled that you are able to be here. That's our show for today. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends about us so we can reach more minds and give us a rating on Apple podcast. Send in any questions that you have so that we can keep answering your questions on how to get smarter about growing older until the next time you start your second curve. And let's get smarter about growing older. Thanks to our show, sponsor the Riverwoods Group, Northern New England's largest family of a nonprofit retirement communities where active adults find community purpose and peace of mind. Visit Riverwoodsgroup.org That's our show for today. Did it spark a question? If so, send us your questions at seniorityauthority.org and will track down the answer. Meanwhile, don't forget to subscribe like us on Facebook. Follow us on YouTube and rate us on your favorite podcast platform until next time. Let's get smarter about growing older.