I’ve been reading and listening to a few authors promoting the idea of becoming more others-focused as we age, and I am behind this thinking 100 percent.

The theme goes something like this: during the first half of life, our focus is on success and achievement and becoming great at something; during the second half of life, we should be figuring out how to take all that success and greatness and apply, transfer or impart it to younger people. That’s my boiling down of it. Basically it’s learning how to share, mentor, teach and inspire as we age — forgoing our primal urge to win and self-focus in the process. Not that you have to retire and hang it up and wither in a dusty corner somewhere. No, this thesis suggests you just turn down the volume on yourself and integrate more others-focusedness into everyday living and working.

I hope that kind of thinking resonates with you. If it does, I have some book suggestions for you that will take your brain to new levels of a-ha-ness. Your first stop should be Arthur Brooks’ bestseller, “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.” He’s even talked to Oprah about these topics, which means — to me — he is ON to something. This is basically his premise in the book: “Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age.” I really like that and hope to serve others with whatever wisdom I’ve managed to scrape together as I age.

Next, pick up another Brooks book — by another Brooks altogether. The bestselling New York Times columnist and author David Brooks, also writes about serving others more in our “second half” of life. Just last week, the New York Times published one of his columns called “Essential Skills for Being Human,” which is really a summed up version of his brand new book, “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” Like the “other” Brooks, Arthur, David Brooks is keen on unselfishness and how we can practice this through better listening and engaging. “

My view of wisdom has changed over the years I’ve been working on this project. I used to think the wise person was a lofty sage who doled out life-altering advice in the manner of Yoda or Dumbledore or Solomon. But now I think the wise person’s essential gift is tender receptivity.

The illuminators offer the privilege of witness. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations and episodes we tell and see us in a noble struggle. They see the way we’re navigating the dialectics of life — intimacy versus independence, control versus freedom — and understand that our current selves are just where we are right now on our long continuum of growth.”

David Brooks has written many other good books with a similar exploration of human connections in “Road to Character” and one I just bought yesterday, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.”

This thinking was further pummeled into my brain during my morning walk. I listened to Dan Harris interview New York Times bestselling author and National Humanities Medialist, Krista Tippett on his fabuloso podcast, “Ten Percent Happier” (the same name as his equally fabuloso book, which should be required reading for all of humanity IMHO). Tippett shared some really juicy nuggets in this interview, including defining a wise life as being distinct from a knowledgeable or accomplished life. Some of this was right in line with the concepts the Brookses have been discussing in their books.

All that to say — this many smart, well educated and deeply accomplished people can’t be wrong! What are you — we — doing to sharpen our others-focusness today?