The Happiness Curve – Navigating the Cliff

I spoke to you a little bit about one of the books I started reading over vacation a couple weeks ago “The Happiness Curve” by Jonathan Rauch, sub titled “Why Life Gets Better After 50”.   I haven’t gotten very far into it but the basic premise is that your happy as a kid, miserable as an adult but then get happy again when you’re a senior.

I re-read an article this week, helpfully forwarded by our friend Tim, that went into the same subject and I found it fascinating and instructive. Usually I just scan long form articles like this because who has the time or attention to read 5,000 words?  And, I think that’s what I did first time I saw it.  So, it ended up as blah, blah, blah old people, blah, blah, blah happy in my summary.

The Atlantic publishes many articles on happiness so maybe it wasn’t this one I read, but that abundance speaks to how much mindshare happiness gets in the public zeitgeist, at least with the Atlantic Demographic.

Regardless, the article I read this week was “Your professional decline is coming (much) sooner than you think” by Arthur C. Brooks.  The link is in the show notes.

He starts with the happiness curve and his own personal project to understand what happiness is.  He answers the headline grabbing question of “Do you have a predictable decline?” as well.   And this decline is, of course, intertwined with your happiness.

Guess what?  Life gets happier after 50 but only in certain situations.  There is a lot of things you can do to make yourself happy or unhappy when you get there.  It ends up being a mindset thing as much as an ability thing.

And, guess what? There is a predicable decline in your abilities at certain points in your life.  But, again, it’s a mindset thing that you can turn to your advantage.

I’m going to cherry pick some points that I found particularly intriguing and share them with you.

There is a steep decline in your abilities around 50 years old.  It’s all individual of course and everybody is different, but this decline is inevitable.  Of course, there are two types of decline.  There is the physical and the mental.  The physical is pretty obvious but the mental is what effects your career and ability to perform at those career related things.

What tends to make you unhappy is if you were very successful at what you did.  And that is true in athletics and everything else.  For example; let’s take a totally made up example of a fellow who was quite proud of having qualified for and run the Boston Marathon many times.  That fellow has the ability to make himself unhappy by dwelling on the fact that he was successful and now is not.

This is why you see so many athletes having a rough time of it after they retire.   They invested so much of their self-worth in that ability, that achievement, that when it is gone, they are miserable.  They lose a big part of how they define themselves.

This is true for whatever you are successful at.  It sounds obvious, almost to the point of cliché’ but the most miserable people in old age are those that can’t let go.  They continue to value themselves based on what they were and what they could do.  And those things just don’t exist anymore.

This is also another way that rich people are miserable, because they have always measured their self-worth by having more money, more power.   They don’t have a way to be happy with what they have.

Being super successful in the meat of your life correlates to having a rough transition to old age. The more successful you think you are, the more miserable you will be to lose it.

The author then lists some of the careers and where the measurable inflection point is.  Wher the cliff is so to speak. Writers tend to do their best work in their 40’s and early 50’s.  Entrepreneurs and start up people do their best work under the age of 30!  And, take note of this, college professors are very effective the older they get.

This is because different roles, jobs, careers require different types of capabilities.  He draws a nice distinction between “Fluid intelligence” and “Crystallized Intelligence”.

Fluid intelligence is what entrepreneurs use.  That ability to surf the wave and come up with new, different and unstructured ideas and concepts.  As you get older you lose that.

But, crystalized intelligence is gained by having a lifetime of learning, collecting and testing.  These people have a vast store of knowledge they can draw on for pattern matching and deductive reasoning.  Hence – the late life effectiveness of professors and coaches.

So, my friends, I did not tell you this to depress you.   It’s under your control and there are things you can do to be happy as you make the transition.  You folks who may be getting close or experiencing the transition will find this useful.  You young pups who are still in the productive part of your life can lay the groundwork for a smoother transition when you get there.

First, isn’t it interesting how this is totally supported by the concepts in “the Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle we talked about a few months ago?  The surest way to make yourself miserable is to live in the past or worry about the future.  The best way to be happy is to be in the ‘now’.  Or as this article concludes, “to live the season of life that you are in’.

The Buddhist call the third season of life ‘the season of bliss’. Leave that second season behind and enjoy the bliss.

Next, there is nothing inherently good or bad about this science.  It is what it is.  As you hit 50 your abilities decline ion some areas and you should adapt your life accordingly.

You probably shouldn’t be fighting battles in the startup world.  You should be transitioning from doing, to teaching.   That is a perfectly valid way to make a living and stay engaged and be fulfilled.  Help the next generation.  Use what you have learned to make a difference.

Become a “Master Instructor”.

It’s inevitable.  It’s a natural cadence.  Learn how to lean into it and it will be the happiest season of your life.