Quotes from Arthur C. Brooks

Planning for the end, then, is our next challenge—and opportunity. CHAPTER 5 Ponder Your Death A couple of years ago I was having lunch with an old friend, a CEO who is almost exactly my age.

the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined.

Coming face-to-face with people who hold discriminatory attitudes often breaks down their bigotry. This is consistent with a growing body of research that confirms much of what LaPiere discovered all those decades ago.

To be a happy warrior you must work to be a genuinely happy person.

That is, he tells them that to unlock their true potential and happiness, they need to articulate their deep purpose in life and shed the activities that are not in service of that purpose.

Your why is the sculpture inside the block of jade.

And to face this truth means defeating the fear of your own demise—literal and professional. This fear handcuffs you to your fluid intelligence curve. If you can master it, the reward is incalculable: it will set you free. But the only way to do it is by facing it head-on.

social comparison lowers our happiness.

My brain hadn't been wired to be motivated by passion, meaning, and purpose," he told me. "My brain had been previously wired to be motivated by fear.

Do you quantify your own success in terms of money, power, or prestige?

Is your "retirement plan" to go on and on without stopping?

Luther successfully jumped onto his second curve after he stopped adding and started chipping away. As he succinctly puts it, "I am loving my life.

It's better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed

Knowing our weakness, dividing leaders on both the left and right seek power and fame by setting American against American, brother against brother, compatriot against compatriot. These leaders assert that we must choose sides, then argue that the other side is wicked—not worthy of any consideration—rather than challenging them to listen to others with kindness and respect. They foster a culture of contempt.

I started the chapter by noting he connected with people through his weakness—the thorn in his flesh. But it was his words of sadness and suffering at the end of his life that magnetized the Christian faith for the ages as one of authentic human experience—a faith that understands the pain in ordinary lives and the human reaction to it.

From putting my career before the people in my life, deliver me. From distracting myself from life with work, deliver me. From my drive to be superior to others, deliver me. From the allure of the world's empty promises, deliver me. From my feelings of professional superiority, deliver me. From allowing my pride to supplant my love, deliver me. From the pains of withdrawing from my addiction, deliver me. From the dread of falling into decline and being forgotten, deliver me.

Another way to understand Brown's point is that, as we all know, defensiveness is a terrible quality and never helps us. The right goal is defenselessness.

You can say this, too, but you need to start chipping away

Prospect theory challenges the assumption that people are rational agents who assess gains and losses the same way; in fact, it asserts that people are much more affected emotionally by losing something than they are by gaining the same thing.

You can say this, too, but you need to start chipping away—managing your worldly wants—before more time passes.

So ask yourself: Which type of person do you want to be? One who declines with seeming indifference while suffering privately? Or one who—like Paul—acknowledges loss openly and yet maintains faith, believes in the power of love, and continues to serve others? Your decline, as painful as it is, should be experienced—and shared.

Prospect theory explains why you feel terrible if you lose your watch, even if you have four other watches. You are mistaking it in your mind for your caveman's stash of buffalo jerky.

As the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, "The craving of one given to heedless living grows like a creeper. . . . Whoever is overcome by this wretched and sticky craving, his sorrows grow like grass after the rains.

It makes no sense in modern life to use our energies to have five cars, five bathrooms, or even five shirts, but we just . . . want them.