NEW YORK — It took Jack Craven 20 years to grasp that running his family’s wholesale business selling goods to discount stores wasn’t how he wanted to spend the second half of his life. He also figured out his ever-mounting unhappiness had taken a toll on his relationships with loved ones.
“I realized that I wasn’t taking ownership of what I really wanted,” said Craven, who lives in suburban Chicago. “I was more focused on blaming others.”
So how did he make it through to the other side?
With the pandemic’s Great Resignation has come a Great Reinvention as more people of all ages have given up jobs and find themselves pondering the work-life balance that lends meaning to their lives. At times, it’s transforming a side hustle as Craven did. In other cases, it’s chasing a long-dormant dream. In still more, it’s a complete surprise.
After a stint as a trial lawyer, then taking the reins of the business his father founded, Craven said he had no idea what he really wanted. That’s when he turned to a holistic leadership retreat and dug deep into every aspect of his life.
The retreat turned into a long-term support system of like-minded business people offering both direction and support. In 2015, out of the emotional work he did on himself, came his new full-time gig as an executive coach, helping CEOs and presidents of companies and organizations overcome the things that bog them down.
“Being vulnerable is definitely the first step,” Craven said.
His family closed the business after he left, but not all second acts — also called second curves — need to be complete life overhauls.
With a doctorate, Michal Strahilevitz in Moraga, Calif., has been a marketing professor for more than 20 years.
“At some point I loved it and found it exciting,” she said. “More recently, I was doing it because it was what I had always done. Then COVID hit and so many of my students were dealing with anxiety and depression. Truthfully, I was struggling, too. I wanted to do something more meaningful.”
That’s when she developed a course on the science of happiness and well-being, where all the homework was designed to make her students happier and healthier. She did the homework, too.
“My advice for those considering a second curve is to make sure it is something that truly lights you up and allows you to shine and grow,” Strahilevitz said.
When Strahilevitz half-pivoted (she still teaches marketing as well), she embraced a growing field of social research: Happiness with a capital H.
Nobody does it quite like Arthur C. Brooks, first a professional classical French hornist, then president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute and now on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.
Brooks has amassed vast research on happiness and the second half of life in his latest book, “From Strength to Strength.” A social scientist, he filled the book with explanations and theories about brain function and its ups and downs through time.
Brooks describes two kinds of intelligence, one that decreases as we age and one that increases and stays high.
“Early on, we have fluid intelligence, which is kind of raw smarts and focusing ability,” he told The Associated Press. “That’s the harder you work, the better you get in your first career. That tends to decrease in your 40s and 50s. The second curve is your ability to understand what things mean, to combine ideas, to teach, to form teams. That’s your wisdom curve.”
