Thoughtful reflections and practical counsel on career downshifting at midlife and beyond.
The bestselling author and popular Atlantic columnist ponders a way to “get off the hamster wheel of success and accept inevitable professional decline with grace.”
Drawing from his media columns and research, Brooks, author of Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt and other books, approaches the conundrum of the later-life career striver from a social science angle and presents the bounty of his analysis through advice and encouragement. He begins with an idea that many professionals find personally devastating: that the majority will peak in their careers much earlier than they’d imagined, like entrepreneurial tech founders who experience creative declines in their early 30s. He examines the problem with psychologists and, most notably, career professionals feeling the pinch of dissatisfaction while remaining hooked on the pursuit of smoothly unabated career advancement. Brooks shows how this process of decline can bruise pride and elicit fear, and he investigates how it can also be difficult to comprehend and even more challenging to accept, as it contradicts our innate instinct to continue creating successful ventures. In accessible, affable prose that also incorporates spirituality, including teachings of ancient Indian and Buddhist philosophers, Brooks discusses the psychology and addictive allure of satisfaction. One of the less attractive but essential keys to achieving contentment, he notes, lies in the power of downsizing. The author urges those facing a midlife career quandary to move forward and discover new strengths and skills and to zero in on the things that bring lasting happiness—instead of merely “adding brushstrokes to an already full canvas.” Using his goal-oriented structure and sage guidance, like-minded readers may be able to break the “striver’s curse” and avoid unnecessary disillusionment. As he shows, there is real meaning and happiness to be found in the second half of adulthood.
Thoughtful reflections and practical counsel on career downshifting at midlife and beyond.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-19148-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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