11 Apr From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
The article I’m sharing today is ostensibly, about finding or maintaining happiness as you age.
Which will be, I’m sure, of interest and relevant to many of you.
But, no matter your age, this article is also very relevant to anyone undergoing change. Because at it’s heart, it’s about adapting our definitions of happiness and our approaches to happiness.
Read and enjoy …
via the Big Ideas Club by Arthur C Brooks
Arthur C. Brooks is an American social scientist, 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 has authored eleven books, including the bestsellers Love Your Enemies and The Conservative Heart, and writes the popular “How to Build a Life” column at The Atlantic.
Below, Arthur shares 5 key insights from his new book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Listen to the audio version—read by Arthur himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Happiness is not just up to chance.
To begin with, it’s not just a feeling. The feeling of happiness is like the smell of the turkey at your Thanksgiving dinner—it’s not the dinner itself. Happiness is a set of elements; it’s made up of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. And we can control all those things—not perfectly, but a lot more than we typically think. The truth is that happiness does not have to be left up to chance, and we can get happier as we get older. Each of us can be happier at 75 than we were at 25.
2. The striver’s curse.
After about age 70, there are two groups of people in the population—one group gets happier and happier as they age, and the other group gets less and less happy. It’s about 50/50 if you look at the data. Now, most people think that to be on the upper branch, to get happier as you get older, you have to be one of the successful people—the people who do a lot with their lives, who see a lot of worldly success—because then you can dine out on your success and be happy.
Well, it’s not true. The striver’s curse is that the people on the lower branch, the people who tend to get unhappier as they age, tend to be the ones who experienced a lot more success earlier in their lives. And it kind of makes sense—what goes up must come down. If you don’t do anything with your life, you won’t know when it’s over. But if you do a lot with your life and the party ends, you’re going to notice the difference. That contrast is really hard to take.
“If you don’t do anything with your life, you won’t know when it’s over.”
… keep reading the full & original article HERE