I recently read “From Strength to Strength” by Arthur C. Brooks – its tagline is instructive, “Finding purpose and fulfilment in the second half of life” so an apt book for me as someone rapidly approaching 50 😮 🙂 

A lot of the book resonated with me…it puts forward the idea that even though our abilities fade as we age (and these abilities start fading earlier than you think!), we can still find our calling in life 🤔  

Brooks makes a distinction between 2 types of intelligence, which are prevalent in different parts of our life:

👉 Firstly, “fluid intelligence” defined as the “ability to reason, think flexibly and solve novel problems” – this is what is prevalent in our younger lives, and is what declines with time. 

👉 However, with age this is offset by growth in “crystallized intelligence, the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past” which is prevalent in our older lives.

👉 Unfortunately though making the transition from one to the other can be hard, because it involves accepting the decline in fluid intelligence and letting go of that as a source of value to ourselves and others. 

👉 This is particularly challenging for high achievers, something called the “striver’s curse”, the challenge they face entering the second half of their lives. 

👉 High achievers can find success harder by which to come in later life, and their sense of self-worth is challenged by “the principle of psycho-professional gravitation – the idea that the agony of decline is directly related to prestige previously achieved and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige”.

Sound familiar? I’ve worked with clients struggling to transition into the second half of their lives and Narrative Coaching is particularly effective for this as it is attachment to the narratives of the past that often holds us back, and often those narratives centre around fluid intelligence so we work on creating new narratives 📖 . 

Get in touch at [email protected] for an introductory conversation.

Pic Courtesy of George B Carver