Living your 30 Year Bonus. Turning the idea of retirement on its head.

By James Cowley

Living your 30 year Bonus (e-Book and life analysis)

From around 50 onwards and well into our late 60’s a questions starts to haunt us. Is this the point of decline, or are we entering a new and positive third age of life

We are the first generation where most of us can live into our 80’s and probably well into our 90’s. We are part of a remarkable event- It has never happened before. We are creating history at this very moment - we have the ability to claim a 30-year bonus. This book for anyone over 45, based on the experiences of many others, helps you to carefully think through the life you want in the future.

But even though many of us feel young, we conceptualize age through a mental picture of our parents’ generation. We are heavily conditioned in our view of age. And due to this many of us will live the third phase of our life in a way that fits more with the past than with the new 90+ years of enjoyable life.

The more successful people have been in work, the more difficulty they often have in making a successful transition to this third age of life- the 30 year bonus which starts somewhere after mid life. Retirement for them is not what they expected. Being a senior is not quite enough.

I have listened to people for over 35 years talk about all manner of subjects and increasingly saw that some became “old” quickly; some stayed young and dynamic into their 90s’. What was the difference?

It’s all in how we look at life. And that requires us to rethink our conditioning about age and to start to claim and then live this 30-year or more bonus.

Some of you may have an ability to make this transition by just living it and doing little thinking. If you do – keep doing it. But for most of us, from what I have seen, this is a huge transition. If we don’t recognize it as such, we stand the chance of missing out on what it could be. And most of the transition is in our own thinking. Get that right and we have a better chance of this third phase being what we want it to be.

Proceeds of books after costs are donated to Medicins Sans Frontieres and future research projects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Cowley
• Release date: Sep 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311147981

James Cowley

Dr James Cowley C.Ed; B.A; M.Ed.; PhD; QPMR; CPM; FAMI; MRSAJames Cowley has worked across fields as diverse as health, education, innovation and business and in different parts of the world.His businesses and organizations have worked on many critical projects, products and services creating numerous jobs in high performance teams. He has been known for his pragmatic down to earth approach to helping people solve problems.He has kept in touch with people throughout his career by active involvement in research, listening directly to over 40,000 people talk about their lives, needs and experiences and also to numerous others via surveys and similar. As an external academic in his spare time he has also examined and supervised many Doctorates. He has a strong belief in rigorous but useable in the “real world” research.These days he continues to work on innovations and research themes which he believes impact us all with the aim of sharing this as widely as possible.

Book preview

Living your 30 Year Bonus

By Dr James Cowley

Copyright 2015 James Cowley

Smashwords Edition

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Nothing in this book should be taken as financial, health, social or similar advice. If you need such then you should consult the relevant professions.

www.30yearbonus.com

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIVING YOUR 30 YEAR BONUS

CHAPTER 1. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

CHAPTER 2. THE BARRIERS TO MAKING A DECISION

CHAPTER 3. WHERE SHALL WE LIVE? (FIRST TAKE STOCK)

CHAPTER 4. WHERE SHALL WE LIVE- (ITEMS TO CONSIDER)

CHAPTER 5. WHERE SHALL WE LIVE- OVERSEAS? THAT GREAT HOLIDAY PLACE?

CHAPTER 6. WHERE SHALL WE LIVE- PEOPLE, LIFESTYLE.

CHAPTER 7. SHOULD I CONTINUE TO WORK?

CHAPTER 8. WILL OUR RELATIONSHIP COPE WITH ENTERING THE THIRD AGE?

CHAPTER 9. FRIENDS

CHAPTER 10. TOWARDS A PORTFOLIO OF LIVING IN THE THIRD STAGE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 11. CHANGING YOUR MIND.

CHAPTER 12. SOME USEFUL CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Acknowledgements

I cannot start to thank the many people during my first and second age that trusted me enough to help me in life and in work. They are too many to name here individually.

I thank my mother and father and sister for the incredibly hard and challenging lives they had, yet they gave me a wonderful upbringing filled with those things that matter and with an optimism that went far beyond the rational. My life has been based on the values I learnt from them and the community I grew up in.

I thank my wife Annette and my children Emma and Paul and their families Angus, Ryan, Thomas and Sam for the richness of life and relationships and wisdom they have given to me over so many years.

To my many friends, many of whom are entering or in the third age, the thirty year bonus we have been privileged to receive, I thank you for your friendships.

If when you read the book you see yourselves, please do not be offended because none of the examples are you ! In writing I have specifically made sure I have not written about you (as I don’t want to be exiled!). This work is actually built on 40 years of listening to a huge number of people through research (much face to face) and 20 years of studying through the same way, the realities of people entering the third age.

After direct costs, a sizeable proportion of the proceeds go to Medicins Sans Frontieres- the bravest people who enter war and disease zones often before anyone else gets there. MSF teams, often at huge personal cost, help those who may not even get a chance of a first or second 30 years of life. The remainder goes into a fund for the next research project/book.

About the author:

Dr James Cowley ([e-mail]) has had an amazing career achieving in 3 different fields and in different countries. His work has allowed him to listen to people across a huge spectrum of the population for 5 decades in many countries. And he draws from that in providing insights into how we can use better this great bonus of 30 years.

Living Your 30 Year Bonus

At this very moment you are rewriting the history of the human race.

For a long time the majority of humans lived until they were in their 40’s.

Then came an explosion in health and medicine, food availability and standards, hygiene, and safety and the expectation of the majority of us was for a life of about 70 years. This was the old three score and 10

There were outliers (people who are outside of averages) who lived longer. The few who lived into their eighties and nineties or even past one hundred were in the minority. But we all knew people who did, and most of us hoped for as many years as we could get.

In the last two decades we have noticed a lot more people living a lot longer.

Suddenly the human race has entered a new period where we have a 30 year bonus. Most of us should expect to get to 90 and many of us past 100. We just have never been here before so we are presented with a dilemma. Talk to most people past 55 and they are working through this dilemma.

* * * * * * * * *

Think about that. We have NEVER EVER had most people living through their 60s to 90’s. This is a third of life extra-yet our whole society is orientated towards the first and second thirty years. This is a revolution as big as anything in the history of the Human Race. And we are coping with the change because the overriding conditioning we all are under is the idea of gradually slowing to a full stop.

This book is not about just getting older. It’s about rethinking how we see it all and seizing the 30 year bonus.

* * * * * * * * *

The dilemma is:

Are we going to wait out just a much longer period of 30 years and age in the same way that many of our grandparents did? Is it just a long period of waiting at heaven’s door?

Or are we going to confront the fact that 30 years is a very very long time and we should now create, in this generation, what this bonus period of life actually means.

THINK exercise 1: Where are you in your thinking? Have you even started to think about this? Is the period past work just a thing that is somewhere out there? Or do you long for it? What will you do in it?

Now before you move on….remember the experience of people going into this 30-year bonus. Its not just about flowing into a period of life that is different….it’s about working out what you want it to be. This requires thinking. So…these THINK questions are essential to the process of the thinking required. Get a nice book; take yourself off. Write the answers down so you can reflect back on them later. Many people just skip over this because it’s easier to read on than to think! If you want to get to grips with the 30-year bonus you are offered then don’t read on until you have thought about each of these THINK questions. Some will make you very uneasy. But over the course of these chapters you will start to see a clearer picture of how you want to live your 30-year bonus. Its worth putting the thinking into this…if not you might just hardly notice the bonus years when they could have been your best period of life.

* * * * * * * * *

Listening to many people going through this, the same issues come up. Interestingly successful people seem to have often even bigger problems making the transition.

This book is simply for those who are brave enough to claim their Bonus. It is based on research and listening to many brave people who are rewriting history. But if we can think this through and make these years as meaningful as the years from 0-30 or 31-60 we will truly use our bonus rather than wasting it.

What we do is not just for our benefit but it benefits every single generation that comes after us. How we create the 30-year bonus will be the future that many generations will inherit.

What age is this relevant to?

If you are 50-65, then without a doubt you will be experiencing some of the questions that we will work through.

Many people have not confronted the questions even by 65…. yet you could have another 25 years of active life ahead…so its never too late.

And we suspect that the earlier one starts to think of life as 3 ages—0- around 30; 30 to around 55-65; 55 to 90 plus, the more likely it is that you have a chance of really claiming your 30 year bonus-so thinking about these things in ones 40’s can have a big impact on how you think about ageing.

The book uses a number of terms for this stage of life. Some terms including retirement and post work have far too many connotations to them to set us free to create the life we want. I use the term the 30 year bonus to describe this extra long period of life most of us will be granted. Sometimes I use the term the third age as its become widely used to describe the age that follows the second age! The first age is growing up and training and getting established. Probably up to about 25-35 depending on when we lived. The second age reaches from 30+ to 55 for most of us, for some longer. It’s the age of creating oneself, families, big decisions and changes often in life, work or other development. The third age starts usually as people reconsider full time work and know there will be a time they decrease work considerably or fully. The fourth age is most likely where we need to be cared for by someone else. Or as we see many many people enter it, its possible it may split into a fourth age, where we coast in a way not seen before, and then a fifth age of being cared for. We are still writing this story.

Occasionally I also refer to this as the third stage of life. (Based on the third age etc.)

Is it just reading?

There is reading in each episode. But its not fluffed out pages with filler. All of us have read those that are so dense in text that it is hard to find the real content we need to think about. This book is based on a lot of research over fifteen years listening to people as they go through this new transition.

The readings introduce you to one of the many themes that we have to think about if we are going to make the next 30 years fulfilling. Most of us push these to the back of our minds, yet if we confront them we can design the life we want.

Many sections have some things to think about. I would recommend you don’t just gloss over these exercises. They will help you work out what you want. You see ageing is not just about the body. It’s about our minds and how we see ageing. We are conditioned to see ageing in a particular way- yet the reality is that we are in a period of history where this conditioning does not work positively for us-because age has changed. I cannot stress this need to think about each exercise too much. It’s equal in importance to the content of the book. I have used them myself, and with many others and they help people to move forwards.

We sometimes have that tendency to just want to read answers. So much of our work life is about doing this- finding the answer to a question that someone has written about or more often now made a short video about.

However stop and think. This is about how you approach your 30-year bonus. You cannot undo the conditioning of maybe 50 years just by quick reading. It comes through carefully thinking about yourself and what you want in this bonus period of life.

* * * * * * * * *

I often remind people of all ages

"The way we perceive anyone older than ourselves…is in fact our own personal prison or heaven in the future- we become as we age, all the things we perceive are related to being older!" It’s the only area of prejudice where we actually become what we are prejudiced against!

Dr James Cowley. O&M Conference Sydney Australia 2004

* * * * * * * * *

All around us people have views of age. I find many younger business professionals will often write off people over a certain age. They are not in the attractive/exciting market segments; they are just extensions of what their parents are; they are not about the future. So read on with an open mind. And let the thinking exercises challenge you and the way you see age.

So…read and then take the questions and sit down and think them through. Some people find its worthwhile creating a notebook and writing each question and then ones thoughts. Slowly over the episodes of this course you will build up your own views on claiming the 30-year bonus. In fact you will find that you can go back and rework them, as you realise some of the views are not relevant to the next phase.

However, don’t think that just by reading you will create your future- the thinking is central to it.

In addition there is a blog where you can discuss various questions with others going through the same. You will soon see that we are all facing the similar perplexing questions. And we want to create the future.

You will find the discussions at: www.30yearbonus.com

Chapter 1. Should I stay or should I go?

The big question starts to enter our minds more regularly. At first it’s just a question that pops in there. But then we start to find that it comes up in our thinking more and more regularly. Some of us will resist the question, hanging in there as long as we can, because that is what we consider to be life. Not an unusual conclusion because we have been living a life of pressure trying to balance work and life for so long, that we cannot imagine anything different.

There are others who will just be relieved. The feeling sweeps over us that it would be nice to have a life separate from the pressures of work.

And for others there is trepidation. On one hand a desire for something different; on the other hand a lot of fear about what may be lost and what would fill up each day in the future.

It seems that the worst course of action is to ignore that little voice in our brain asking the question. That means when the time comes, we are unprepared and any adjustment or transition starts only at that point. The best approach seems to be to start planning as early as possible, so that the transition becomes easier and remains positive.

Many people experience these questions for a long period of time. The question intensifies as one is coming up to traditional retirement, but they are questions which keep on recurring through the first 10 or 15 years once one has passed the major career period of life.

We are trapped in our minds thinking in terms of retirement, but in fact this is a seriously out-dated concept. It indicates a sort of stop date rather than a transition. When you are listening to people who have successfully claimed their 30-year bonus they have seen it not as a stopping but as a transition to the next stage; not as a slowing down, but a better use of time and energy; not as becoming unemployed, but as finding a better way to use time.

The term retirement now hardly means what it used to mean and maybe it is an obsolete term for many. Perhaps the transition point is just the point where we stop working our last period of full time work; or perhaps it’s the point where we say we have reached the level in our full time career where we are ready to step back a bit in both hours of work and in reclaiming our lives.

Now this could refer to other periods of our life also-and that’s perhaps a good way to see