4 Ways to Avoid Your Professional Decline

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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Arthur Brooks (0:29)

I want to talk about a phenomenon that I've heard about again and again and again from people all over the world. Successful people, strivers, go-getters, about how life changes and they don't quite know why. Why in the middle of their careers they don't know what to do with themselves. Why things that used to feel satisfying no longer are. This is not just burnout. It feels like a kind of a hinge in what they're doing. The truth is that we really enjoy our careers, whatever we're good at, not just because we enjoy the work day to day, but we like to see ourselves getting better. And it's just abject torture when we're not anymore. The world talks about going up. The world doesn't talk about coming back down again. Your decline is inevitable. Your misery is not. Because you can actually get better in a new thing if you choose the right thing. How do we do that? I want to tell you four things to do.

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It's not the same thing as in the podcast and starts with a bunch of my corny jokes and who wouldn't want to miss that. Well, today, I want to talk about a phenomenon that I've heard about again and again and again from people all over the world, successful people, strivers, go-getters, about how life changes and they don't quite know why. Why in the middle of their careers, they don't know what to do with themselves. Why things that used to feel satisfying no longer are. This is not just burnout. It feels like a kind of a hinge in what they're doing. People are kind of casting about when they didn't think they were going to. It's a sense of insecurity in a certain part of their lives. It is very, very common. In point of fact, I've experienced that myself when I was about 50 years old. I was the chief executive of a big non-profit in Washington, DC. A think tank, a public policy think tank dedicated to better policy and economics and national security, a famous place. It was the height of my career. It was the best thing I'd ever done. It was a dream come true for me professionally. And I'd done it for a while. I'd done it for six years at that point. And I recognized that I didn't know what I was doing, well, sort of emotionally. I didn't have the same drive. I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing it, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And that really put me at loose ends, I have to say, because I'd never felt anything like that. I'm an extremely ambitious and driven person, and I'd never had a lack of linearity before. I was asking my wife and anybody who would advise me, what's wrong with me? I don't feel the drive. I don't feel the fire in my belly. I don't want to go forward. I don't want to go back. I don't know what I want anymore. She didn't know how to help me because, you know, who knows what the heck I'm talking about?