Arthur Brooks's From Strength to Strength and Cheerfulness (E6)

Arthur Brooks spent years running a think tank before becoming, improbably, one of the most-read writers on happiness, and From Strength to Strength is his guide to finding contentment in the second half of life. Its most practical idea is a formula for why so many successful people feel empty: satisfaction is not about how much you have but how much you have relative to how much you want. In his Tim Ferriss interview he lays it out: "The truth of the matter is that lasting and stable satisfaction, which doesn't wear off in a minute, comes when you understand that your satisfaction is your haves divided by your wants." How much natural contentment you start with, before any of that math, is in the Big Five one facet.

The contentment you start with is the Cheerfulness facet

That facet is Cheerfulness (E6), under Extraversion, your standing tendency toward good mood and positive feeling. E6 is roughly the baseline Brooks's formula operates on top of: the natural level of satisfaction you return to regardless of circumstances. A high scorer runs contented by default and needs less managing of the wants to feel fine; a low scorer sits lower and has to work the denominator harder. Brooks's insight is that the usual strategy, cranking up the haves through endless striving, barely moves the number, because wanting scales up right alongside having. The lever that actually works is the one E6 does not set for you: what you choose to want.

This fits neatly beside the science of the happiness setpoint. Where Sonja Lyubomirsky points at intentional activity and Daniel Gilbert at our knack for adapting, Brooks points at the wants themselves, the denominator you can shrink on purpose through what he calls a reverse bucket list. None of it rewrites your E6 score. A naturally low-E6 person practicing all of it may land where a high-E6 person sits without trying, which can feel unfair and is also the useful part: the baseline is a starting line, and the wanting is the part you can actually manage. High E6 is a head start, not the whole race.

For a reader placing themselves, your E6 is a fair read on how much contentment comes to you for free and how much you will have to build by managing what you chase. High on it and Brooks is handing you a sharper tool for a baseline that is already generous, with a warning that even the contented can get hooked on wanting more. Low on it and his formula is close to essential, the difference between coasting low and deliberately choosing enough. Where you sit on Cheerfulness tells you the baseline the wanting gets added to, and we take the facet apart in Cheerfulness (E6).

Read the book: From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur Brooks.

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