Arthur Brooks is a man of many chapters, in life and on the page. From world class horn player to social scientist to CEO to Harvard professor and Atlantic columnist, his own trajectory provides the lived experience behind From Strength to Strength.
This is a book written by a man who has wrestled with ambition, identity, faith, and the long shadow of achievement.
The premise is straightforward. What if the talents and strengths that brought you success in the first part of life are not the ones you need in the second. In other words, what got you here will not get you there. And what if clinging to them not only brings diminishing returns but actual unhappiness. Brooks calls this the striver’s curse. In James Root’s new book The Archetype Effect, the striver is only one of six archetypes.
This striver framing therefore unfortunately narrows the book to the people who are ultra accomplished. “Oh, he is writing to fellow CEOs, perhaps current or future Harvard alums,” you wonder by the time you get to chapter 3. However, the author did run a think tank, and with a little readerly patience, we find that the emotional truths he explores could have a broader reach.
Brooks is at ease pairing modern psychology with ancient wisdom. He draws on thinkers from Aquinas to the Buddha, references neuroscience and Harvard longitudinal studies, and weaves it all into an accessible voice. He makes a familiar case that as we age, our cognitive strengths shift. What makes us shine early in life, fluid intelligence, tends to give way to a deeper, slower form of knowledge, crystallized intelligence. Knowing when and how to move from one curve to the other is, in his view, the secret to a fulfilled life. Cicero, in On Aging, offered a similar reminder centuries ago, that aging brings influence, reflection, and a different form of relevance.
Like many professionals, I have spent years working in environments where speed and pattern recognition were prized. But I have also noticed a shift and realignment. I now find greater satisfaction in mentoring, in distilling ideas, in shaping long term impact through conversation rather than control. Reading Brooks helped me frame this as shifting curves.
There are moments in the book, though, where Brooks’s tone carries the enthusiasm of the recently converted. For readers who feel trapped in achievement loops, this might be just the jolt they need. For others, those who have long centered meaning over metrics, it may feel off-key. Taken in the right spirit, this can be viewed as him sharing what he has learned, sometimes the hard way. Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis similarly blends ancient wisdom with behavioral science, but offers a more pluralistic view of purpose, calling, and personal growth.
The book moves through personal story, scientific insight, and spiritual reflection. One of the most memorable passages recounts his own experience walking the Camino de Santiago and separately meeting with a swami in India. In my own experience, when I met a monk about fifteen years ago, we spoke about masks, morality, solipsism, and the nature of the self. The monk’s quiet question, “Who is behind the mask?” has stayed with me far longer than any formula or framework.
Brooks returns often to the idea of attachment. Drawing from both religious and psychological sources, he outlines four common traps: money, power, pleasure, and honor. They are useful, even enjoyable, but when worshiped they distort. This part of the book echoes truths I have found in my own life and work. Still, I found myself wanting room for nuance in his writing. Joy is not always shallow. Some pleasures are deeply rooted in purpose. Visiting Leipzig to honor Bach is not a distraction. It is a form of reverence. And a worthy bucket list, if I may add.
In this instance, the prescription offered by my own father is what I carry with me. “Happiness in life,” he said to me during one of our annual fall sojourns to the Atlantic Shore, “is having the freedom to pursue your passion, but in later years having financial security is vital, to do so.”
This, I find, is the singular weakness of the book. Financial security is not within reach of all. Thus rejecting money as an attachment is easy for a former CEO, but not for the average citizen. Also, honor is not a vice, if it means being seen, which is a very important psychological need for the elderly. Here I believe Brooks has hastily dismissed these four aspects of human life as traps, where a little wider aperture might cast them as tools.
Where the book truly excels is in its treatment of relationships. Drawing from the famous Harvard Study of Adult Development, Brooks affirms what many of us sense but struggle to prioritize. The quality of our relationships, not our resumes, is the best predictor of lasting well being. This insight echoes recent warnings from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who has called loneliness a national epidemic with serious public health consequences.
Brooks does not shy away from the darker moments of midlife. He explores the U shaped curve of happiness, a dip in satisfaction that often hits in our forties or fifties before rising again. He offers cautionary tales, including the rise and fall of John DeLorean, and reframes the midlife crisis as a necessary transition. Here, he illustrates the concept of liminality. We are no longer who we were, but not yet who we are becoming. In that in between space, it is easy to panic.
There is a large stream of thinking on faith that courses through the book. I wonder if this would be off putting to the modern reader. I personally prefer faith to be more subtle and in the background and, as Brooks puts it, carrying an easy spirituality about us.
If there is a limitation, it may be in the assumptions the book makes about agency. The freedom to walk away from a high powered role, to retool a life in midstream, to reflect in quiet places, these are not universally available. Brooks acknowledges this briefly, but it deserves more exploration. You do not have to uproot your life to reframe your purpose, like he did himself. For many, especially those caring for aging parents, these reflections are happening against the backdrop of an impending caregiving crisis that threatens to overwhelm families and systems alike.
The closing section offers seven words. I will not repeat them here, to let the reader encounter them afresh. But I will say this. Their efficacy lies not just in their simplicity, but in their order. To invert them is to distort life. To live by them is to clarify it.
Hopping from one curve to the next, that alert that Brooks has provided us through this book, is good service.
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