The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: 5 Lessons from the book: From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks

Today, I’m talking about the Stiver’s Curse, which is one of the first lessons you’ll come across if you read this book. The striver’s curse is the torture that people experience who strive to be excellent at what they do, who “often wind up finding their inevitable decline terrifying, their successes increasingly unsatisfying, and their relationships lacking.” 

Even if they’ve previously made it and were held in high esteem by their peers and colleagues, many strivers find that at some point they start to feel irrelevant, and as the author points out: “if you attain excellence and are deeply invested in it, you can feel pretty irrelevant when you inevitably fall from those heights. And that is agony.” This is the striver’s curse. 

A former CEO interviewed for the book lamented after his retirement:“In just six months I went from ‘Who’s Who’ to ‘Who’s He?”

One of the things that surprised me the most as I was reading this book is that this decline starts to set in earlier than we think. Later this week, I’ll talk more about what’s really happening in our brains that’s causing this decline, but according to research, “In in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties.” The difficult truth is that most of you listening are likely many years past your prime in your career. And no matter how hard you might push back, there’s nothing you can do to stop this decline. 

For financial professionals, like myself, peak performance happens between the ages of thirty-six and forty. I’m 37, so I’ve only got 3 more years apparently before I can expect some of my mental sharpness to begin to fade. And considering that I’ve lost collectively about 2 years of sleep from having small children the last 8 years, there’s a good chance I’m already over the hill in my career. 

One of the most interesting stats in the book is on doctors: “they appear to peak in their thirties, with steep drop offs in skill as the years pass. It’s sort of reassuring to have [an older and more experienced doctor]. However, one recent Canadian study looked at 80 percent of the country’s anesthesiologists and patient litigation against them over a ten-year period. The researchers found that physicians over sixty-five are 50 percent more likely than younger doctors (under fifty-one) at being found at fault for malpractice.

So the first step is to recognize that decline is a natural and part of aging, and it happens to everyone, no matter how smart or healthy we are. Denying this inevitable decline will only lead to frustration, but embracing this decline will open our eyes to strengths we develop as we age, strengths that if embraced and nurtured can bring happiness, meaning, and fulfillment in the second half of life. 

That’s why the book is called “from strength to strength” - because it’s about going from your old strengths to new strengths seamlessly. 

If you’re intrigued by the book and you’d like a free copy, keep listening because I’ll share with you later this week how you can win a free copy of the book. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast. 

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