It took Jack Craven a year to realize that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life selling items in his family’s junkyard business. He also understood that his unhappiness with his job was affecting his relationship with his loved ones.
“I realized I wasn’t doing what I wanted,” said Craven, who lives outside of Chicago. “I blamed others for everything I didn’t like.”
How did you turn your life around? Having overcome the period of confinement and isolation of the coronavirus pandemic, people of all ages are reinventing themselves, leaving their jobs and looking for other paths that give meaning to their lives. Sometimes transformation is a slow process, as in Craven’s case. Other times, in trying to fulfill an old dream. Mostly, she arrives where no one expected her.
After working as a lawyer for a while, Craven took over the business his father founded. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t really know what he wanted. He then attended a holistic leadership retreat and took an in-depth look at all aspects of his life.
Retirement gave birth to a long-term support system of traders like him. In 2015, based on the emotional work he had done with himself, he began to practice as an executive coach, helping CEOs, presidents of companies and entire organizations to overcome the obstacles that were holding them back. It turned out that helping others was exactly what he needed.
“Being vulnerable is the first step, for sure,” Craven said.
His family went out of business when he left, but not all second acts have to be this drastic.
Michal Strahilevitz, from Moraga, California, has a Ph.D. and has taught marketing for more than 20 years.
“I loved it, I had a good time,” he said. “As time went by, she did it because it was what she had always done. Then COVID hit and many of my students were struggling with anxiety and depression. To be honest, I did too. I wanted to do something more meaningful.”
It was then that he invented a course on the science of happiness and well-being, in which the tasks were designed to give his students happiness and health. She did the chores herself.
“My advice to anyone considering changing their lives is to make sure you do something that fulfills you, that allows you to grow and shine,” Strahilevitz said. “If I win a mountain of money in a crazy lottery, I would keep doing this. I don’t think I’ll ever need to find myself again. I was born to do what I’m doing.”
Whether starting a new job or taking on another role at their current job, he said, “People all over the world are looking for things that are more fulfilling, that bring them happiness. We are no longer willing to settle for a salary.
Someone who knows what it is to seek happiness is Arthur C. Brooks. He was first a classical musician, playing the horn. Later president of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and now a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. He writes books, has a podcast on happiness, and publishes the “How to Build a Life” column in The Atlantic.
Brooks goes deep into the subject of happiness and second acts in life in his new book, “From Strength to Strength.” Brooks is a social scientist who filled his book with explanations and theories about how the brain works and its ups and downs over time, with anecdotes about the abilities of some of the most famous figures in history, from Charles Darwin to Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel prizes, one for chemistry and one for peace.
Brooks describes two types of intelligence, one that decreases over time and one that increases and stays high.
“In the beginning, we have a fluid, natural intelligence,” he told the Associated Press. “The harder you try, the more you get in your first race. This tends to decrease in the 40s and 50s. The second curve in life is the ability to understand the meaning of things, to combine ideas, to teach, to form teams. The curve of wisdom”.
This last curve, he said, increases in the 40s and 50s, and stays high in the 60s and 70s. “It’s very, very important to know how to go from one stage to the next if you want to stay strong and happy,” Brooks said.
Losing skills is what fighters are most worried about. “People fear loss of power,” he noted. “But for those who seek professional excellence, that is much more serious.”
It’s vital to face that fear, according to Brooks, who says that happiness requires three factors: contentment, joy and purpose.
“You need those three things and a good dose of balance. Satisfaction is not the hardest thing to achieve. But it is the most difficult to maintain, ”he said.
Brooks says that not all second acts revolve around work or business. It can also be a spiritual quest, a commitment to do volunteer work. Whatever it is, it’s not easy to get it.
“You need to have a life with a lot of problems to have a lot of opportunities,” he explained. “If everything comes easy to you and you have everything you want, you’re going to get bored.”