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Your professional decline will come (much) sooner than you think.

Here's how to get the most out of it.


Image: Lucy Gutierrez

" It 's not true that nobody needs you anymore."

These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late night flight from Los Angeles to Washington. The plane was dark and quiet. The man whom I considered her husband mumbled almost silently something like “I wish I was dead.”

And again the woman: "Oh, stop saying that."

I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t do anything. I listened with unhealthy interest, making up the image of a person in my head while they spoke. I imagined someone who worked hard all his life in relative obscurity, someone with unfulfilled dreams - perhaps a degree that he did not achieve, a career that he did not build, a company that he did not run.

When the light turned on at the end of the flight, I finally saw a devastated man. I was shocked. I recognized him - he was and remains famous throughout the world. Then, at the age of eighty, he was loved as a hero for his courage, patriotism and achievements of many decades ago.

As he walked down the aisle behind me, other passengers greeted him with reverence. The pilot standing at the cockpit door stopped him and said: “Sir, I admire you from childhood.” The old man — who no doubt wanted death just a few minutes before — shone with pride from the recognition of his past merits.

For selfish reasons, I could not get rid of the cognitive dissonance of this scene. This was in the summer of 2015, shortly after my 51st birthday. I was not world famous as a person on an airplane, but my professional life went very well. I was president of the thriving Washington Analytical Center American Enterprise Institute. I have written several best sellers. People came to my performances. My articles were published in The New York Times .

But I began to think: can I continue in the same vein? I work like a maniac. But even if I continued to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at some point my career would slow down and stop. And when that happens, then what? Will I one day with longing look back and wish death? Can I do something, starting now, to give myself a chance to avoid unhappiness - and maybe even achieve happiness - when the music inevitably stops?

[ Derek Thompson: Slavery Makes Americans Unhappy ]

Although these questions were personal, I decided to approach them as a sociologist, mistaking them for a research project. It felt unnatural - like a surgeon cutting his own appendix. But I took a step forward and over the past four years I have been trying to figure out how to turn my possible professional decline from an alarming problem into an opportunity for development.

Here is what I found.

The past two decades have seen an explosion in the field of “studies of happiness”; consensus has been formed on the issue of well-being in the course of our life's journey. In The Curve of Happiness: Why Life Becomes Better After 50, Jonathan Rauch, Research Fellow at Brookings Institution, and Editor of The Atlantic Magazine, considers convincing evidence that the happiness of most adults decreases at the age of 30–40 years, and then drops to a minimum at the beginning of 50 years. Of course, this pattern is not carved in stone. But the data are very similar to my experience: the 40-50s of my life were not a very happy period, despite professional success.

[ December 2014: Jonathan Rauch on the true causes of the midlife crisis ]

So what can people expect later, judging by the data? Here the news is mixed. Nearly all studies of the happiness curve throughout life's journey show that in richer countries, the satisfaction of most people begins to increase again between the ages of 50 and 70 or so. However, everything is already less predictable there. After 70 years, some people are in stable happiness, others continue to be happier until death. Others - especially men - find that their happiness is plummeting. Indeed, the level of depression and suicide among men increases after 75 years.

This last group seems to include a hero on a plane. Several researchers have looked at this cohort to understand the reasons for their misfortune. This, in a word, is useless. In 2007, a group of academics from the University of California, Los Angeles and Princeton analyzed data from more than a thousand older people. Their results, published in the Journal of Gerontology , showed that older people who rarely or never “felt helpful” during the study period were almost three times more likely to have a mild disability and were more than three times more likely to die. than those that often felt helpful.

One would think that gifted and accomplished people like a person on an airplane should be less susceptible to this sense of uselessness than others; for achievements are a well-known source of happiness. If the present achievement brings happiness, should not some happiness give memories of this achievement?

Probably no. Although there are few materials on this issue, it is not clear that giftedness and achievements in the early stages of life protect against further suffering. In 1999, Carol Holahan and Charles Holahan, psychologists at the University of Texas, published a significant article in The International Journal of Aging and Human Development(International Journal of Aging and Human Development), which examined hundreds of older people who were previously recognized as very gifted. Kholakhanov's conclusion: “The knowledge at a younger age about his participation in the study of intellectual giftedness was associated with ... a less favorable psychological state at the age of eighty.”

This study may simply show that it is difficult to justify high expectations, and that telling a child that he is a genius is not always useful in education. (The Kholakhans suggest that gifted children may have put their intellectual abilities closer to the basis of their self-esteem, creating “unrealistic expectations of success” and losing sight of “many other life factors that determine success and recognition”). Nevertheless, numerous data suggest that people with high achievements declinecapacity is particularly acute in psychological terms. Take, for example, professional athletes, many of whom are experiencing serious difficulties after finishing a sports career. There are many tragic examples of depression, addiction, or suicide; for retired athletes, misfortune may even be the norm - at least temporarily. A study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology in 2003, which provided a picture of life satisfaction among former Olympic athletes, found that as soon as they stopped participating in sports, they usually faced a low sense of personal control.

I recently asked Dominic Daws, a former Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, how she felt normal life after competitions and victories at the highest levels. She said she was happy, but the adaptation was not easy - and still not easy, although she won her last Olympic medal back in 2000. “My Olympic nature ruined my marriage and my children felt inferior,” she told me that it was so demanding and difficult. "Living as if every day is the Olympics only makes people around me miserable."

Why is it so hard for former elite figures? No scientific studies have yet proven this, but I strongly suspect that the memory of extraordinary abilities, if they are the basis of self-esteem, can for some clearly contrast with the subsequent less outstanding life. "Unhappy is one whose happiness depends on success," wrote once Alex Diaz Ribeiro, a former Formula 1 driver. “For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the road. His fate is to die of bitterness or seek greater success in other endeavors and continue to live from success to success until he dies. In this case, there will be no life after success. ”

[ April 2016: Quit Work ]

We will call this the principle of psycho-professional gravitation: the agony of professional oblivion is directly proportional to the previously achieved height of professional prestige, as well as emotional attachment to this prestige. Problems due to professional success may seem like an attractive kind of problems; even raising such a question may seem like an attempt to attract attention. But if you reach professional heights and are deeply interested in being at your best, then with the inevitable fall you can suffer infinitely. So it happened with a man in an airplane. Maybe it will be so with you. And without significant changes, I suspect this will happen to me.

The principle of psycho-professional gravitation can help to understand many cases when people who have done work of world-historical significance feel like losers. Take Charles Darwin, who was only 22 years old when he embarked on a five-year voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831. Returning at the age of 27, he became famous throughout Europe for his discoveries in botany and zoology, as well as the initial theories of evolution. The next 30 years, Darwin with great pride led the hierarchy of stars-scientists, developing his theories and publishing them in the form of books and essays - the most famous of which was “On the Origin of Species,” published in 1859.

[ July 1860: Review of Darwin's Origin of Species ]

But as Darwin lived his 50s, he stalled; he stuck into the wall in his studies. At the same time, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel discovered what Darwin needed to continue his work: the theory of genetic inheritance. Alas, the work of Mendel was published in a little-known scientific journal and Darwin never saw it - and in any case, Darwin did not have the mathematical ability to understand it. Since then, he has made little progress. Being depressed in the following years, he wrote to a close friend: “At my age, I have neither the spirit nor the strength to begin any long-term search, and this is the only thing that pleases me.”

Perhaps Darwin would have been pleasantly surprised to learn how his reputation had grown after his death in 1882. But from what he saw in old age, the world passed him by, and he became useless. That night, Darwin could be behind me on the plane.

It could be a younger version of me, because I had an early experience of professional decline.

As a child, I had only one goal: to become the greatest horn player in the world. I worked hard on it, doing hours every day, looking for the best teachers and playing in any ensemble I could find. For inspiration, there were photographs of famous trumpeters on the wall of my bedroom. And for some time I thought that my dream could come true. At the age of 19, I left college to play professionally in a touring chamber ensemble. I planned to continue climbing among classical musicians, in a few years to join the leading symphony orchestra or even become a soloist - the highest work that a classical musician can have.

But then, after my twentieth birthday, a strange thing happened: I began to get worse. And to this day, I do not know why. My technique began to suffer and I could not explain it. Nothing helped. I went to wonderful teachers and studied more, but could not return to where I was. Light works became heavy; heavy - impossible.

The shocking data clearly shows that for most people, in most areas, professional decline begins sooner than most people think.

Perhaps the worst moment in my young but receding career was when I was 22 when I performed at Carnegie Hall. Speaking briefly about the music I was about to perform, I stepped forward, lost my footing and fell off the stage into the hall. On the way home from the concert, I gloomily reflected that this incident was probably a message from God.

But I floundered for another nine years. I got a place in the city orchestra of Barcelona, ​​where I began to practice more, but my game gradually waned. In the end, I found a job as a teacher at a small music conservatory in Florida, counting on a miraculous reversal that never came. Realizing that I might need to hedge my bets, I went to college again by correspondence course and received my bachelor’s diploma shortly before my 30th birthday. I secretly continued my studies at night, after a year I received a master's degree in economics. In the end, I had to admit defeat: I could never have launched my fading musical career. Therefore, at 31, I gave up, completely abandoning my musical aspirations in order to get a doctorate in public policy.

[Daniel Markowitz: How life has become an endless, tough competition ]

Life goes on, right? As if. After completing my studies, I became a university professor, which gave me pleasure. But I still thought every day about my beloved first career. Even now, I regularly dream that I am on stage; waking up, I recall that my childhood aspirations are now only fantasies.

I was lucky that I accepted my decline at a young enough age to direct my life to another area of ​​activity. But from the pain of that premature decline, these words are difficult to write to this day. I swore to myself that this would never happen again.

Will this happen again?In some professions, an early decline is inevitable. No one expects the Olympic athlete to keep fit until he is 60 years old. But in many physically undemanding professions, until the very advanced age, we secretly reject the inevitability of decline. Of course, our quadriceps and stiffeners may weaken slightly with age. But as long as we maintain our reason, the level of our work as a writer, lawyer, manager or entrepreneur must remain high until the very end, right? So many believe. I recently met a slightly older man who told me that he plans to “push until the wheels fly off.” In fact, he planned by any means to maintain maximum efficiency, and then discard the skates.

But most likely, he will not be able to. The facts make it very clear that for most people, in most areas, a recession begins earlier than anyone thinks.

According to the research of Dean Keith Simonton, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and one of the leading experts on career paths, success and productivity grow on average during the first 20 years after starting a career. Therefore, if you seriously begin your career at 30, expect that you will do your best job at the age of about 50, and soon after that you will begin to regress.

The specific peak and fall times differ from region to region. Benjamin Jones, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has studied for many years when people are more likely to make outstanding scientific discoveries and inventions. His conclusions can be summarized by this little song:

Oh age, fever, delirium,
for a physicist you are death.
Passed over thirty years,
it is better to die.

The author of these gloomy lines? Paul Dirac, Nobel laureate in physics in 1933 .
(Note: translation from Jeff Colvin's book “Outstanding Results. Talent for Nothing!” There is another translation here .)

Dirac exaggerates, but only a little. Having looked at major inventors and Nobel laureates for more than the last hundred years, Jones found that the most frequent age period for creating a major work is from 36 to 40 years. He showed that the probability of a major discovery is steadily increasing from 20 to 40, and then decreases in the interval from 40 to 70 years. Are there any exceptions? Of course. But the probability of a major discovery at 70 years old is about the same as at 20 years old - almost none.

A similar picture is observed in literary achievements. Simonton showed that poets reached their peak almost 40 years later. Novelists usually need a little more time. When Martin Hill Ortiz, a poet and novelist, collected data from The New York Times’s best-selling art from 1960 to 2015, he found that <a href = " martinhillortiz.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-york-times -bestsellers-ages-of.html ”> authors most often come in first place from 40 to 60 years of age. Despite the outstanding productivity of several novelists, even at a very advanced age, Ortiz shows a sharp decrease in the chances of writing a bestseller after 70 years (some non-fiction writers - especially historians - reach their peak later, as we will see in a minute).

Entire bookstore departments are dedicated to success. But there is no department called "How to Deal with a Professional Recession."

Entrepreneurs peak and begin to decline on average earlier. Having earned fame and fortune from 20 to 30 years, many technology entrepreneurs by the age of 30 are already in creative decline. In 2014, the Harvard Business Review reported that founders of enterprises valued at $ 1 billion are usually between 20 and 34 years old . Subsequent studies have revealed that they may be a little older, but all studies in this area have shown that the founders of most successful startups are under 50 years old.

That study looked at people at the highest levels of atypical professions. But the main conclusion is applicable wider. Scientists from the Boston College Center for Retirement Age Studies have studied a wide range of professions and have found significant exposure to the age decline in various fields, from working in the police to caring for the sick. Another study found that the best domestic referees in the Major League Baseball are 18 years less experienced and 23 years younger than the worst referees (56.1 years old on average). Among air traffic controllers, the age decline is so dramatic, and the potential consequences of errors are so serious that the mandatory retirement age is 56 years.

In general, if your profession requires a high speed of thinking or significant analytical abilities - like those professions that most graduates choose - a noticeable decline will probably come sooner than you imagine.

Sorry.

If the recession is not only inevitable , but also occurs earlier than most of us expect, what should we do?

Entire sections of bookstores are dedicated to how to succeed. Shelves are lined with books with titles like "The Science of How to Get Rich" and "7 Skills of Highly Effective People." There is no department marked "How to cope with a professional recession."

But some people did it well. Take the case of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in 1685 in a long series of prominent musicians in central Germany, Bach quickly proved to be a musical genius. Over his 65 years, he has written more than a thousand works for all available instruments of his time.

At the beginning of his career, Bach was recognized as an amazingly talented organist and improviser. Orders were received, royal people demanded him, young composers imitated his style. He had real prestige.

However, it ended - not least because his career was supplanted by the musical trends that his own son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, known to the next generation as CPE, introduced to others. The fifth of Bach’s 20 children, CPE showed the same musical talent like his father. He mastered the baroque idiom, but was more passionate about the new "classical" style of music, which rapidly conquered Europe. As classical music supplanted baroque, CPE's prestige grew, while his father's music went out of fashion.

Bach could easily be upset like Darwin. Instead, he decided to rebuild his life, turning from an innovator into a mentor. He devoted a significant part of his last 10 years to the work “Art of the Fugue”, which was not known or popular in his time, but was intended to teach the baroque techniques of his children and students - and no matter how unlikely it seemed at that time - future generations, that might be interesting. In his later years, he lived a more relaxed life as a teacher and family man.

What is the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were naturally gifted and early became widely known. Both posthumously gained eternal glory. The difference was in their approach to the decline of middle age. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he fell into despondency and depression; his life ended in sad inaction. When Bach fell behind, he reincarnated as a master mentor. He died a beloved, held, and - although less known than before - respected.

A lesson for you and me, especially after 50: be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin.

How to do it?

A possible answer is in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of a moving and crystallized mind. Cattell called the moving mind the ability to reason, analyze and solve new problems - what we usually consider to be a raw intellectual ability. Innovators tend to have a moving mind in abundance. It is most numerous at a relatively early age and it begins to decline in the period of about 25–35 years. Therefore, for example, technological entrepreneurs in their youth are so well done, and therefore it is much more difficult for older people to be innovators.

A crystallized mind, unlike a moving mind, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. You can imagine this with an extensive library and an understanding of how to use it. This is the essence of wisdom. Since the crystallized mind is based on accumulated knowledge, it usually increases from 40 to 50 years and does not decrease until the very late period of life.

Activities that are primarily associated with a moving mind tend to flourish at an early age, and those that use crystallized mind more come to flourish later. For example, Dean Keith Simonton discovered that poets - very moving in their work - usually create half of their work around the age of 40. Historians who rely on a crystallized stock of knowledge do not reach this level until about the 60th anniversary.

The practical lesson from here can be learned: no matter what combination of mind your area requires, you can try to shift your career from innovation to those strengths that persist or even grow over the course of life.

What kind? As Bach’s example shows, teaching — an ability that only weakens very late — is the main exception to the overall picture of professional decline. Study in The Journal of Higher Educationshowed that the oldest university teachers in disciplines requiring a large amount of fixed knowledge, and in particular in the humanities, are more likely to receive a positive assessment from students. Perhaps this explains the professional longevity of professors, three quarters of whom plan to retire after 65 years - more than half of them after 70 years, and about 15% after 80 years. (The average American retires at 61.) Once, in my first year as a professor, I asked a nearly 70-year-old colleague if he had any chance of thinking about retirement. He laughed and said that he would rather leave the office in a horizontal position than in a vertical one.

I need a list of anti-desires. My goal for every year of my remaining life should be the exclusion of things, obligations and relationships.

Our dean could grin at it displeasedly - the university administration complains that the effectiveness of research among professors has been significantly reduced in the last decades of their career. Older professors occupy budget places that could otherwise be used to recruit young scientists who are hungry for advanced research. But maybe there is an opportunity: if older members of the faculty can shift the focus of their work from research to study without losing professional prestige, young members can do more research.

Such models coincide with what I see as the head of an analytical center full of scientists of all ages. There are many exceptions, but the deepest insights, as a rule, come from those who are from 30 to a few in 40 years. Complex ideas are best synthesized and explained - i.e. the best teachers are, as a rule, people about 65 years old or older, some of whom are deeply over 80.

The fact that older people with their baggage of wisdom can be better teachers seems almost cosmically correct. Regardless of the profession, as we age, we can devote ourselves to a meaningful transfer of knowledge.

A few years ago I saw a cartoon, where the man at death said: "It is a pity that I did not buy more junk." It has always amazed me that many wealthy people continue to work to multiply their fortunes, and collect much more money than they could spend or even bequeath for the good. Once I asked a rich friend why this is happening. Many wealthy people can only determine their own value in monetary terms, he explained, so they spend year after year in the squirrel wheel. They believe that one day they will finally save enough to feel truly successful, happy, and therefore ready to die.

This is a mistake, and not harmless. Most Eastern philosophers caution that absorption orientation leads to affection and vanity that impede the pursuit of happiness, obscuring the fundamental essence of man. With age, we should not acquire more, but rather, get rid of things in order to find our true essence - and therefore peace.

At some point, writing another book will not add to my joy in life, but simply delay the end of my career as a bookwriter. On the canvas of my life there will be another smear, which, frankly, others will hardly notice, and certainly will not really appreciate it. The same will be true of most other markers of my success.

What I need to do is stop perceiving my life as a canvas that needs to be filled, and begin to perceive it more like a block of marble, from which you can push something and form something out of it. I need a list of anti-desires. My goal for every year of my remaining life should be the exclusion of things, obligations and relationships, until I see myself cleansed to the best shape.

And this “self" ... is, actually, who?

Last year, the search for an answer to this question led me deep into the countryside of South India, in the city of Palakkad, located near the border between the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. I was there to meet guru Sri Nochur Venkataramanknown to his disciples as Acharya ("Teacher"). Acharya is a quiet, humble person dedicated to helping people achieve enlightenment; he is not interested in Western techies looking for fresh startup ideas, or burnt out people trying to escape from the religious traditions in which they grew up. After making sure that I did not belong to one or the other, he agreed to talk to me.

I told him my puzzle: many people who live on achievements suffer with age because they lose their abilities, acquired over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inevitable, like a cosmic joke on proud people? Or is there a loophole - a way to get around suffering?

Acharya answered succinctly, telling about the ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashrams. The first is Brahmacharya , a period of youth and youth devoted to study. The second is Grihastha , when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, creates a family. In this second stage, philosophers see one of the most common traps in life: people become attached to earthly goods - money, power, sex, prestige - and therefore try to extend this stage for life.

The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprasta., the third ashram, the name of which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning "departure" and "into the forest." This is a stage that usually begins around the age of 50, when we purposefully pay less attention to professional ambitions and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service and wisdom. This does not mean that you should stop working when you reach the age of 50 — few can afford it; this means that your life goals must be reviewed.

Vanaprasta is a time for learning and preparing for the last stage of life, Sannyaswhich must be fully given to the fruits of enlightenment. In past times, some Indians left their families in old age, made sacred vows and spent the rest of their lives at the feet of teachers, praying and learning. Even if staying at the age of 75 in a cave is not your goal, the meaning should still be clear: as we age, we must shy away from the usual temptations of success in order to focus on more transcendentally significant things.

I told Acharya the story of a man on a plane. He listened carefully and thought for a moment. “He could not leave Grihasta,” he told me. "He became dependent on worldly goods." He explained that a person’s self-esteem was probably still tied to the memory of long-standing professional successes; its further recognition is only a legacy of long-gone skills. Any glory of today was only a shadow of past glories. Meanwhile, he completely missed the spiritual development of Vanaprasta, and now misses the bliss of Sannyasa.

This is the message for those of us who suffer from the Principle of Psycho-Professional Gravity. Let's say you are a tough, aggressive-ambitious lawyer, manager, entrepreneur, or - hypothetically, of course - the president of the analytical center. From early maturity to middle age, you drowned in the floor in your professional activities. Living according to your conclusions - made by your moving mind - you seek material wealth for success, you achieve many of them, and you are strongly attached to them. But the wisdom of Hindu philosophy - and even many philosophical traditions - suggests that you should be ready to leave these blessings before you feel ready. Even if you are at the peak of professional prestige, you may need to reduce career ambitions in order to increase metaphysical ones.

When the browserThe New York Times David Brooks talks about the difference between “virtues from a resume” and “virtues from a gravestone,” he actually translates these ashrams into a practical context. The virtues of the resume are professional and aim at worldly success. They require comparisons with other people. The virtues from gravestone speech are ethical and spiritual and do not require comparison. Your virtues from grave speech are what you would like people to talk about at your funeral. In the spirit of “He was kind and deeply spiritual,” not “He became a senior vice president at an astonishingly young age, and he has accumulated many bonus miles for frequent flights."

[ November 2002: David Brooks on the Spread of Elitism ]

You will not be able to hear the gravestone, but Brooks claims that our life is most saturated - especially when we reach middle age - due to the pursuit of the virtues that are most important to us.

I suspect that my own horror from a professional recession is rooted in the fear of death - a fear that, even if it is not realized, prompts me to act as if death will never occur, denying any reduction in my virtues from the resume. This denial is destructive because it leads me to lose sight of the virtues from the gravestone that bring me the greatest joy.

The biggest mistake of professionally successful people is an attempt to maintain maximum productivity indefinitely.

How can I overcome this trend? Buddha recommends, among other things, meditation on corpses : in many Theravada Buddhist monasteries in Thailand and Sri Lanka, photographs of corpses are displayed at different stages of decomposition so that monks can contemplate them. “So it will be with this body,” they are taught to talk about their own body, “such is his nature, such is his future, such is his inevitable fate.” At first glance, this seems unhealthy. But their logic is based on psychological principles - and this is not only an Eastern idea. “To take away her trump card,” wrote Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century, “by depriving her of mystery, we will take a closer look at her, get accustomed to her, thinking about her more often than about anything else.” (Note perev .: translation of Montaigne's words from here .)

Psychologists call this desensitization, in which repeated encounters with something repulsive or frightening make it seemingly mundane, prosaic, and not frightening. And in the case of death, it works. In 2017, a team of researchers from several American universities recruited volunteers to imagine that they were terminally ill or sentenced to death, and then wrote blog posts about their imaginary feelings or their future final words. Researchers then compared these statements to the notes and final words of people who were really dying or who were facing the death penalty. Results Published in Psychological Science, were vivid: the words of people who only imagined their inevitable death were three times more negative than the words of people who actually face death - which says that, contrary to logic, death is worse when it is hypothetical and distant, than when she really stands on the threshold.

For most people, actively thinking about our death so that it feels real (instead of avoiding the thought of it through a mindless pursuit of worldly success) can make death less intimidating; accepting death reminds us that everything is temporary, and can make every day of life more meaningful. “Death destroys a person,” wrote E.M. Forster, the idea of ​​Death saves him. ”

Recession is inevitable, and it happens earlierthan most of us want to think. But misfortune is not inevitable. The recognition of the natural cadence of our abilities opens up the possibility of transcendence, as it allows us to shift our attention to higher spiritual and life priorities.

But such a transition requires more than simple platitudes. I began my research with the goal of creating a practical roadmap that will guide me throughout the remaining years of my life. This resulted in four specific commitments.

Knock over


The biggest mistake that professionally successful people make is the desire to maintain maximum productivity for an infinitely long time, trying to use such a moving mind, which begins to weaken relatively early. It's impossible. The main thing is to enjoy the achievements that they are at the moment, and leave, perhaps, before I am completely ready - but on my terms.

Therefore: I left the position of president of the American Enterprise Institute in time for the publication of this essay. Although I did not notice any deterioration in my work, it was only a matter of time. As in many leadership positions, this work is heavily dependent on a moving mind. In addition, I wanted to free myself from her absorbing duties, so that there was time for a more spiritual quest. In truth, this decision was not only for me. I love my organization and I saw how many other similar organizations suffered when the leader lingered for too long.

Moving away from something you love can make you feel like a part of you is dying. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a concept called “bardo,” which is a borderline between death and rebirth““ As the moment you step to the edge of the abyss, ”as the famous Buddhist teacher put it. I am leaving my professional life, which served as the answer to the question “Who am I?”

I was very lucky that I have the means and the ability to leave work. Many people cannot afford it. But it is not necessary to quit work; what is important is the desire to gradually distance oneself from the most obvious earthly rewards - power, fame and status, money - even if you continue to work or move up the career ladder. The bottom line is to enter the next stage of life, Vanaprast, to conduct the study and practice that prepare us for implementation in the final stage of life.

Serve


Time is limited, and professional aspirations crowd out things that ultimately matter more. To move from the virtues from a resume to the virtues from a funeral speech - this means to move from self-centered activities to others-centered activities. This is not easy for me; I am by nature a selfish person. But I have to admit that the costs of indulging selfishness are devastating, and now I work every day to overcome this tendency.

Fortunately, serving others can take advantage of our strengths. Remember that people whose work is aimed at training or mentoring (in the broadest sense) reach their heyday in the later stages of life. In this way, I move to such a stage in my career where I can completely devote myself to the transfer of ideas for the benefit of other people; primarily through teaching at the university. I hope that my most fruitful years are yet to come.

Worship


Since I talked a lot about different religious and spiritual traditions - and emphasized the shortcomings of excessive attention to career success - readers can naturally conclude that I draw a Manichaean separation between worship and work, and suggest that emphasis be placed on worship. This is not my plan. I really strongly recommend that everyone investigate their spiritual "I" - I plan to devote a significant part of my remaining life to the practice of my own religion, Roman Catholicism. But this does not contradict the work; on the contrary, if we can distance ourselves from worldly attachments and direct our efforts to enriching and educating others, then the work itself can become a transcendental occupation.

“The purpose and ultimate meaning of all music,” Bach once said, “should be nothing but the glory of God and the renewal of the soul.” Whatever your metaphysical beliefs, renewing your soul may be the goal of your work, as with Bach.

Bach finished each of his works with the words Soli Deo gloria - "Glory to God only." However, he could not write these words in his last manuscript, “Counterpoint 14” from “The Art of the Fugue,” which suddenly interrupted in the middle. His son CPE added the following words to the score : “Über dieser Fuge ... ist der Verfasser gestorben” (“At that moment in the fugue ... the composer died”). Bach's life and work merged with his prayers when he took his last breath. This is my desire.

Connect


Throughout this essay, I have been focusing on how reducing working capacity will affect my happiness. But numerous studies convincingly show that happiness - not only in later years, but throughout life - is directly related to health and completeness of relationships. Moving work from its leading position — better sooner than later — to create a space for deeper relationships, you can create a flap for a professional recession.

Sending more time to relationships and less time to work does not impede further achievements. “He is like a tree planted by streams of water,” says the Psalter about the righteous, “who bears fruit in due time, and whose leaf does not wither.” No matter what he does, he will succeed in everything. ” (Note transl .: taken one of the options for translationfrom here .) Imagine an aspen. To live a life full of incredible achievements - this also means how a tree grows alone, to achieve majestic heights in solitude and to die in solitude. Truth?

No. Aspen is a great metaphor about a successful person, but not about his solitary greatness. On top of the earth, it may look lonely. However, each individual tree is part of a huge root system , which together represents one plant. In fact, aspen is one of the largest living organisms in the world; one grove in Utah, called Pando , occupies 106 acres and weighs about 13 million pounds.

The secret to being able to endure my recession - to enjoy it - is to remember more about the roots that connect me to others. If I have forged a relationship of love in my family and with friends, my own wilting will be more than offset by the flourishing of other people.

When I talk about this personal research project , people usually ask: what happened to that hero from an airplane?

I think a lot about him. He is still famous, occasionally appears in the news. At first, when I met stories about him, I felt a flash of something like pity, which, as I now understand, was really just a refracted feeling of anxiety for my own future. The thought “Poor thing” actually meant “To me krants”.

But as my understanding of the principles set forth in this essay deepened, my fear decreased accordingly. My feeling towards a person on an airplane now became a thank you for what he taught me. I hope that he will find peace and joy, which he inadvertently helps me find.

Arthur C. Brooks is the author of The Atlantic, a professor of public administration at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior fellow at Harvard Business School.

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