The Good News About Your Inevitable Decline | Arthur Brooks

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2022

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The unavoidable truth is that our skills change as we get older. We invest so much in our professional success, and then at some point, things change. But there's good news. While certain abilities and mental capacities erode with age, others get stronger. With some foresight, planning, and good habits, you can make the second half of your life way better than the first.

Arthur Brooks is the author of a new book called From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Arthur has seen the themes of this book play out in his own life. He started his career as a classical French horn player, then got his PhD in public policy analysis, and went on to run a think tank called the American Enterprise Institute. He then left that to be a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. He also does work with The Atlantic , where he writes a column and hosts a podcast called How to Build a Happy Life.

This episode explores: success addiction, and how to avoid it while still being successful; what it means to "live like Bach;" fluid intelligence vs. crystallized intelligence; what investments we can make now to increase the likelihood of more happiness later; the four most important habits of the happiest people; a workable definition of happiness; and how he feels about his own shifting capacities, having researched the subject for many years.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/arthur-brooks-419

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:07.0	Hey gang, I'll be honest. When I first started to engage with the subject of today's episode,
0:15.1	I found it horrifying. I did not want to look at this. But ultimately, I've come to see this topic
0:21.8	as both fascinating and hopeful, largely thanks to the skill and wisdom of today's guest. Today,
0:29.3	we're talking about your inevitable professional decline, the unavoidable truth that our skills change
0:35.7	as we get older. If you're young right now, you might be thinking, well, I don't need to worry
0:40.2	about this. But the data show that your mental processing can start to shift way earlier than you
0:46.4	might think, like way earlier. My guest today describes this as the strivers curse. We invest
0:53.3	many of us do so much in our professional success. And then poof, at some point, things change.
1:00.0	There is as I imagine good news here, however, while certain abilities and mental capacities change
1:07.1	or erode with age, others get stronger. And with some foresight and planning and good habits,
1:13.1	you can make the second half of your life way better than the first. These themes resonate
1:18.5	quite strongly with me as somebody who recently bailed on a nearly three decade career as a
1:23.7	TV news reporter and is now whatever you call what it is that I do. They resonate quite deeply as
1:30.8	well with my guest today who spent years wrestling with these issues. His name is Arthur Brooks.
1:37.4	He's the author of the new book From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness,
1:42.7	and Deep Purpose in the second half of life. It's out this week. I blurbed it. It's really,
1:47.5	really good. Arthur's had a fascinating career. He started as a classical French hornist.
1:53.2	Then he got his PhD in public policy analysis and went on to run a think tank called the American
1:59.7	Enterprise Institute. After a decade of doing that, he left to be a professor at the Harvard
2:05.1	Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. He also does work with the Atlantic where he writes a
2:10.2	column and hosts a podcast called How to Build a Happy Life. In this conversation, we talked about
	...

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