From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in The Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks [2022]

BATB score: 4/10

omg just shut up already! 

Best as: supposedly a guidebook through mid-life crisis; yet the only person who is definitely struggling to let go of their old successful self and is in the middle of mid-life crisis is Arthur C. Brooks - the author himself 

Best for: Arthur C. Brooks wrote this book to heal himself

Best to: all the principles from Happiness Psychology Harvard University - just enroll, take the course, much more valuable than this book, and oh! you get a certificate at the end of it too!

Best quotes: “striver’s curse: people who strive to be excellent at what they do often wind up finding their inevitable decline terrifying, their successes increasingly unsatisfying, and their relationship lacking”

“almost nothing feels worse than becoming irrelevant, or even useless, to others who once held us in esteem”

“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”

“When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom. When you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old, you know what they mean and how to use them.”

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

“There are two pillars of happiness. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”