This is my favourite midlife crisis book.

Brooks confronts the topics of our mental decline, how we find contentment, and what it means to live well in the second act of our professional and personal life.

Brooks categorises our intelligence into Fluid (Young, sharp, fast) intelligence and Crystallized intelligence (wisdom, pattern recognition, judgement). And the sad news is that, once we are in our 40s, our fluid intelligence is in an inevitable decline.

It’s a horrific realisation. But it is a freeing one. Recognising the loss of fluid intelligence gives me the freedom and incentive to build teams full of young energy. Recognising the value of crystallised intelligence helps me to see the value in more seasoned colleagues, and to work on my transition between the two worlds.

Brooks presents a simple formula for life satisfaction: Satisfaction is what you have divided by what you want. Brooks’ compassionate and vulnerable storytelling helped me to take an honest look at my desires and drives, my haves and my wants, and reconfigure my happiness equation, with an immediate change in my outlook and priorities. How much of what you have would you give up for something you want?

There is enormous richness and chipping away at your wants.

In Brooks’ view there is a major reorientation that needs to happen: We need to shift from achievement to character. In his metaphor, we go from improving the quality of our resume to improving the quality of our eulogy.

Throughout the book, Brooks weaves ancient wisdom in with modern psychology. I particularly like his application of Aquinas’s 4 idols. There are 4 substitutes for happiness that will lead us astray: Money, Power, Pleasure and Fame. But understanding which of these are most seductive to us and which are less powerful, we can understand our drives, our likely weaknesses, and give our long term interests the power of our short term desires.

This book gets a huge recommendation from me for anyone in their 40s or 50s. It has really helped to to understand more sharply what I am losing as I age, to value what I have, and to build on what must be there for the second chapter.

There are other cracking books to read in your midlife. TRIUMPHS OF EXPERIENCE: MEN OF THE HARVARD STUDY by George Valient is an excellent summary of the insights on growing old well from the largest longitudinal study ever conducted. Richard Rohr’s FAILING UPWARD is a more spiritual but equally wise analysis of flourishing in the second half. But this was the one that helped my thinking the most. It is a mix of science, philosophy, wisdom and spirituality and it captured me.

We all have to do the work to shift our perspective from success to significance. But the work will help us live a fruitful and meaningful second half, while avoiding the landmines that our misfiring first halves lay for us in our midlife.

Don’t be a cliche

Happy reading!

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