From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life is a nonfiction book by Arthur Brooks (2022). It was a New York Times #1 bestseller for several months. ­­In 2019, Brooks became a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. For a decade before that, he was the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC, that research issues in economics, politics, and society. This guide is based on the first edition hardcover.

Plot Summary

The Introduction relates a story that kicked off the book’s premise and led Brooks on the path of research. In 2012, Brooks overhead a very famous man on a plane talking to his wife. The man complained that he no longer felt needed, and he felt it would be better if he were dead. He was still revered by people, but his exploits were in the distant past. Brooks was intrigued about what research said about people who accomplished much early in life and what happened as they aged. What he learned was that people in nearly every profession experienced a decline starting in middle age, which he discusses in Chapter 1.

The second chapter introduces what Brooks calls the “second curve.” If productivity and creativity, what one researcher has called fluid intelligence, show a decline with age, the second curve represents crystallized intelligence. This is the ability to use the inventory of knowledge and wisdom built up earlier in life. The graph of this over time shows an increase, or upward curve, well into the last years of life. Brooks argues that one needs to jump to this second curve as one ages.

The rest of the book focuses on how to do that. Chapters 3 to 5 examine the reasons why people resist moving to the second curve. The first reason, discussed in the third chapter, is addiction to work and the never-ending striving for success. The next chapter explains how attachment to worldly possessions and rewards prevents this shift, as people become accustomed to accumulating ever-increasing quantities of things. Brooks recommends paring down such possessions to only the essentials.

Chapter 5 looks at how the fear of decline keeps people on the striver’s track, pushing themselves harder and harder to maintain their peak level despite impossible odds. Brooks’s advice is for people to ponder their death—even envision it—as a way to break its grip and free themselves to act without fear.

Next, Brooks suggests ways people can prepare themselves for the leap to the second curve. In Chapter 6, he discusses the importance of cultivating and maintaining close personal relationships, as well as why this can be so difficult for overachievers and leaders. Chapter 7 examines the need for spirituality that often accompanies middle age and the ways people can embrace that, even when it doesn’t come naturally. Chapter 8 looks at how to drop one’s defensiveness about weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Being open about one’s weaknesses and showing vulnerability often leads to unexpectedly deep connections with others and even a new, more rewarding path.

In the last chapter, Brooks delves into making the leap to the second curve, why transitions are challenging, and how to overcome them. In fact, transitions can be opportunities as much as crises. Finally, the Conclusion summarizes the book’s advice in a seven-word mantra. Brooks reminds people that love is the key to happiness, but only love for people, not things.

The main themes discussed in the book are Managing the Mental Decline That Comes With Aging, Love as the Key to Happiness, and The Importance of Spirituality.