who was president of a think tank

 According to Brooks, who was president of a think tank before he left to teach at Harvard in his mid-50s, one way to avoid sinking into midlife despair is to step gracefully onto the rising wave of your crystallizing intelligence and notice all the new doors of opportunity it opens.

 “You don’t need to change jobs or careers,” he insists. “But you can think of it as moving from your cowboy curve onto your coach curve, where you’re now incredibly good at helping other people do amazing things.

 If you’re a start-up entrepreneur when you’re 30, you can be a venture capitalist when you’re 60. If you’re a star litigator at 35, you can be a managing partner at 65,” he says. “In every profession, there’s a version of it—helping other people to become better at what they do—and it’s really rewarding.”