# From Strength to Strength ## Metadata * Author: [Arthur C. Brooks](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B08WCKY8MB * ISBN: 1638083754 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WCKY8MB * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB) ## Highlights In middle age, the prefrontal cortex degrades in effectiveness, and this has several implications. The first is that rapid analysis and creative innovation will suffer—just what we would expect when looking at the evidence on decline.[15] The second is that some specific, once-easy skills become devilishly hard, like multitasking. Older people are much more easily distracted than younger people. If you have—or had—teenage kids, you might have found yourself telling them they can’t study effectively while listening to music and texting their friends. Actually, it’s you who can’t do that. In fact, older adults can enhance their cognitive effectiveness precisely by taking their own advice: turn off the phone and music and go someplace completely quiet to think and work.[16] — location: [306](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=306) ^ref-62827 --- Another skill is the recall of names and facts. By the time you are fifty, your brain is as crowded with information as the New York Public Library. Meanwhile, your personal research librarian is creaky, slow, and easily distracted. When you send him to get some information you need—say, someone’s name—he takes a minute to stand up, stops for coffee, talks to an old friend in the periodicals, and then forgets where he was going in the first place.[17] Meanwhile, you are kicking yourself for forgetting something you have known for years. When the librarian finally shows back up and says, “That guy’s name is Mike,” Mike is long gone and you are doing something else. — location: [313](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=313) ^ref-59526 --- Pauling’s hunger for relevance then led him to promote faddish, quasi-scientific ideas. He promoted eugenics, believing that people with certain genetic conditions, such as sickle-cell disease, should be prominently tattooed as a warning to potential mates. More famously, he became obsessed with his own theory that vitamins could cure a host of diseases, even cancer, and massively extend life. He promoted what he called “orthomolecular psychiatry” to treat mentally ill patients with massive doses of vitamins. Most likely, you have been told that high doses of vitamin C can prevent colds; this theory comes from Pauling’s famous writings from the 1970s, which have been scientifically debunked many times, as were virtually all of his later ideas. Indeed, as Cambridge professor Stephen Cave documents, Pauling came to be known as something of a quack in mainstream medical circles and spent a good deal of the last decades of his life bitterly denouncing his many critics in science journals. — location: [338](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=338) ^ref-57563 --- The old . . . should, it seems, have their physical labors reduced; their mental activities should be actually increased. They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.[10] Cicero believed three things about older age. First, that it should be dedicated to service, not goofing off. Second, our greatest gift later in life is wisdom, in which learning and thought create a worldview that can enrich others. Third, our natural ability at this point is counsel: mentoring, advising, and teaching others, in a way that does not amass worldly rewards of money, power, or prestige. — location: [519](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=519) ^ref-17187 --- Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age. — location: [648](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=648) ^ref-58139 --- Once again, it makes perfect evolutionary sense. In a time when humans were always on the edge of starvation—most of human history for most of the world, before the industrial age began—a gain was nice, but a loss was potentially lethal. Someone sneaks into your cave and takes your winter stock of dried buffalo meat, and you starve. Prospect theory explains why you feel terrible if you lose your watch, even if you have four other watches. You are mistaking it in your mind for your caveman’s stash of buffalo jerky. — location: [1182](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1182) ^ref-25022 --- Each year on my birthday, I list my worldly wants and attachments—the stuff that fits under Thomas’s categories of money, power, pleasure, and honor. I try to be completely honest. I don’t list stuff I don’t actually want, like a boat or a house on Cape Cod. Rather, I go to my weaknesses, which usually involve the admiration of others. I’m embarrassed to admit that, but it’s true. I imagine myself in five years. I am happy and at peace. I am enjoying my life for the most part; I’m satisfied and living a life of purpose and meaning. I imagine myself saying to my wife, “You know, I have to say that I am truly happy at this point in my life.” I then think of the forces in this future life that are most responsible for this happiness: my faith; my family; my friendships; the work I am doing that is inherently satisfying, meaningful, and that serves others. Next, I go back to my bucket list. I consider how these things compete with the forces of my happiness for time, attention, and resources. I ponder how empty they are by comparison. I imagine myself sacrificing my relationships to choose the admiration of strangers and the result down the line in my life. With this in mind, I confront the bucket list. About each item, I say, “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.” Finally, I go back to the list of things that will bring me real happiness. I commit to pursuing these things with my time, affection, and energy. This exercise has made a big difference in my life. It might help you, too. — location: [1292](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1292) ^ref-38514 --- A few sages give a clue on how to sort this out. According to Leo Tolstoy, “The worst thing about death is the fact that when a man is dead it is impossible any longer to undo the harm you have done him, or to do the good you haven’t done him. 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.”[11] — location: [1457](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1457) ^ref-47974 --- Loneliness is not the same as being alone, of course, because one can be emotionally and socially connected to others while alone. In fact, being alone is critical to one’s emotional well-being and peace of mind. Some people—not me, but one of my kids, for example—are happiest by themselves, as long as they have healthy social and emotional connections. The theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich put it like this in his classic book The Eternal Now: “Solitude expresses the glory of being alone, whereas loneliness expresses the pain of feeling alone.” — location: [1626](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1626) ^ref-14573 --- My father’s only truly close friend was my mother. He was an introvert, and intimate friendships came with great difficulty, so this was the path of least resistance. And they had a good marriage: their wedding came four days after they graduated from college and lasted forty-four years, until his death at age sixty-six. But having your spouse or partner as your one and only close friend is imprudent, like having a radically undiversified investment portfolio. If something goes wrong in your marriage, you can be left single and without friends. That is often the case when a couple divorces or when a spouse dies. Many — location: [1770](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1770) ^ref-28937 --- All this is important for older men to understand if they find their wives turning outward for friendship. Marriage bonds are more emotionally important to men as they age than they are to older women, because for many men, work has crowded out friendships, and those they have are more focused on, say, golf than feelings.[41] Their wives have invested elsewhere for emotional support, which frankly is prudent and wise. — location: [1779](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=1779) ^ref-39430 --- Finally, exposure to negative emotions makes us stronger for when there is a true crisis. Research shows that stress inoculation training—in which people learn to cope with anger, fear, and anxiety by being exposed to stimuli that cause these feelings—is effective in creating emotional resilience.[19] It is easy to imagine that attempts to eliminate pain and weakness from daily life could lead to a sort of emotional allergy—that when hard times come and someone feels grief or fear that is impossible to ignore, that person will not have the tools to face these feelings. — location: [2468](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=2468) ^ref-18582 --- This sounds like a sad ending for Beethoven. But, it turns out, it isn’t the end of the story. He finally gave up performing as his deafness progressed but found ingenious ways to keep composing. He would gauge the timbre of notes on the piano by putting a pencil in his mouth and touching it to the soundboard while he played. When his hearing was partial, he avoided using notes with the frequencies out of the range of his hearing. In 2011, three scientists in Holland published an analysis in the British Medical Journal showing that high notes (above 1568 Hz) made up 80 percent of Beethoven’s string quartets written in his twenties but dropped to less than 20 percent in his forties.[22] — location: [2495](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=2495) ^ref-53101 --- Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark For the straightforward pathway had been lost. — location: [2568](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08WCKY8MB&location=2568) ^ref-10726 ---