The Hunger to Grow: How to Enjoy the Dessert Years of Your Life

By Peter Nicholls

Are you hungry to grow in a new direction that you would love to go? You are not alone. The Hunger to Grow dismisses the idea that we grow only through our work and our working years. It’s time to retire the word “retired”. Now it’s, “What’s for dessert? I’m still hungry!”
Our dessert years begin when we start thinking about what we want in the second half of our lives. What we used to call a midlife crisis is just the realisation that we want to turn the rest of our lives into the ‘yummy years’, to allow our true passions to flow in search of new possibilities, new directions and new challenges.
Now in his seventies Peter Nicholls, Australia's People Gardener, is living proof of this book's powerful message. The Hunger to Grow will guide you through the transition from doing what you have to do to doing what you love to do. It will put you in the driver’s seat of your future, empowering you to travel along the road of life your heart wants you to take.
The Hunger to Grow is the book of your future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DoctorZed Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994554222

Peter Nicholls

Peter Nicholls is the author of Enjoy Being You, Enjoy Being Proud of Who You Are, and The Hunger to Grow. He is living his encore life after leaving full-time work. Aside from his passion for helping people enjoy being their true selves, Peter sings weekly in two choirs, plays golf with like-minded friends, and is actively involved in his local church, including convening a monthly house group. Peter lives in Adelaide and believes it is the best place in the world. He has two children and six grandchildren, all of whom he adores. Like many families today, they are spread far and wide, enjoying living their own best lives. Peter does, however, get to regularly enjoy relaxing at his daughter and son-in-law’s 30-acre farm in the glorious Adelaide Hills

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Preface

The whole of your life from birth to death – not just your working career life – is a continuum of progress, growth and self-actualisation. It is what nature always intended of you. But ever since the work ethic came into vogue at least a couple of hundred years ago, we have had drummed into us the belief that life, growth and development starts and ends with our working careers. Respected dictionaries still define ‘retire’ with terms like withdraw (from life?), retreat (into your shell?), stop (living?), and go back (to the past?).

One of the refreshing advances in 21st century society is that we have at last swept away these negative and limiting perspectives on when and how our lives grow, flourish and blossom. In my lifestyle mentoring business I searched for a new more positive phrase and came up with what’s for dessert? I’ve finished the main course and I’m still hungry. This phrase says it all.

Even that expression may just be a sign of the times. Baby boomers may well be the last generation to experience life in the traditional three stages – preparation for your working life - your working life and then a life after your working years. It happens already with eating – we no longer limit ourselves to a sitting of entrée, main course and dessert. We eat what we like when we like. Our perception of our traditional journey through life is going the same way with people deciding when and for how long they will work and in whatever order suits their thinking. We are beginning to live life on our own terms. No longer is life centred on work, though of course work still serves a vital role in giving structured economic and social value to our lives and the community that our work serves.

What do you want to do in your dessert years? What will be the unique ingredients in your recipe? You certainly want it to taste great, contains large dollops of passion, full of rich experiences, keeps you healthy and, best of all, satisfies your hunger to keep on moving forward, growing in mind, body and spirit, enjoyed to the last drop.

We live in a rapidly-changing, highly mobile society where individual creativity, innovation, challenge and the desire to keep moving forward is becoming the norm. Age means little now in our natural desire to unleash our talents, passions and potential. Structured work is only one way to achieve this. We are increasingly realizing that work goals limit us to the demands and expectations of bosses and clients. Life after the end of our working career frees us to express ourselves in our ways for our reasons and for our own unique personal sense of satisfaction.

The dessert years however are less about a period of time in your life. More they are about a change in your attitude towards what, for you, life is all about. The dessert years begin when you start thinking about (and gradually act on) a transition in your life’s priorities from doing what you have to do (supported by what you love to do) to doing what you love to do (supported by what you have to do). For most of us that transition begins to take place long before any thought of quitting paid employment. Usually it starts somewhere between the ages of forty-five to fifty-five.

SETTING THE STAGE

Imagine you are attending a live theatre performance divided into three Acts. It is interval, following the conclusion of the second Act and you are reflecting on the show so far. You feel that Acts One and Two have been powerful and thought-provoking. You are wondering what surprises the rest of the show might bring.

But this show is unique. There is only one performance…it is a play written by you and you are writing the script as the performance happens in real time…the actors are on stage waiting for their lines. There is no rehearsal and there is only performance – this is opening night and closing night all in one. And no one yet knows – not even you, the playwright – what the ending will be. And the final twist? You are the lead actor, the star of the show.

The play is called Your Life.

Act One embraced the early years of your life – the years that prepared you for work. The content of Act Two has been your working life. Act Three is yet to come and you wonder what surprises it has in store for you. Act Three may well be a long one. It’s up to you to make it memorable for you and for those who love you. You will want to feel that, at the end of Your Life, the rest of the cast and the audience alike will give you a standing ovation, acknowledging that you have given a performance they will never forget.

You have of course written many sub-plots along the way – getting a job, getting married, having children, retiring from competitive sport, adjusting to the kids leaving home, to name but a few. So in one sense the prospect of giving up fulltime work is just another sub-plot that you will have managed to live and grow through, just as you did through all the previous life changes. This one might seem different because work has been the centre of your life for so many years. Your job has defined who you are – in your eyes and in the eyes of everybody else in your life – at work, home and even at play.

Many people can’t wait to retire. You may perhaps have seen work as of little more value than enabling you to pay the bills. A few good things have happened and there were times when you really enjoyed it, but by and large you find work to be a necessity rather than a joy. On the other hand you may have embraced work as a key part of your personal life evolution, to the point that you don’t want to quit. This is especially the case if you have built up your own business and see it as your primary driver for living. You can’t envisage a life that doesn’t involve a working career.

I have mentioned two scenarios. Your experience might be somewhere in between.

Whatever you feel about work you will have done some financial planning for your later years. We all spend considerable time and money to make sure we have financial security during our dessert years. It’s just as important to develop your own self-investment plan. A self-investment plan is exactly what it says – investing in your own interests, talents, abilities, passions and dreams – deciding what you actually want to do with your time in the next phase of your life. Statistically speaking, we can look forward to living a lot longer than people did in past generations. In the times of the 19th century Industrial Revolution, management felt you had lived most of your life by the age of 65 and likely to die by age 70. There was little point to planning a full and meaningful life after your working years then. Now you might even live as long yet as your working life so far. That’s a long time if you are thinking of spending your dessert years basically sitting in your rocking chair watching the world go by.

Whatever your feelings are about this final stage of your life, fear can be a big factor in your thinking. Not just fear of not having enough money to enjoy your dessert years but also the fear of a life without work. Will you have interests that motivate you in the way your career work has done over the years? You will need to make some long-term lifestyle decisions in a fast-moving, rapidly-changing era where it is hard to predict what the world will be like next week or next year, let alone over the rest of your life. Will you just keep going the way you are for