The 'purpose' pension

... and why working on yourself is a better investment than the stock market

I got my annual pension statement last week informing me that by the time I retire, I can expect it to pay me £2,800 a year. I’ve been freelance most of my life, I have four kids and I have rarely been able to afford meaningful pension contributions after rent / mortgages / bills / childcare etc. The only reason I have any pension at all is because for ten years at Unbound I had a high salary so I could afford to pay into one. It turns out I’m one of the lucky ones, according to research on unbiased.co.uk 17% of British people approaching retirement will have to rely on the state pension alone.

You would think this would make me very concerned about my future but I have never felt more positive about it. Why? Because for the last ten years, perhaps longer, I’ve been paying into a different kind of pension, a ‘purpose’ pension, if you will.

What’s a ‘purpose pension’? In simple terms a purpose pension is when you invest time and money doing things that fortify your sense of self worth to strengthen your mental and physical health. In short, ‘purpose’ pensions are what you invest in if you want to feel more comfortable in your own skin.

I think retirement for my generation (X and all those after us) is a myth anyway. I don’t expect to retire. I am working to align my ability to earn money with things I find meaningful and rewarding (writing and helping entrepreneurs) instead, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to stop doing those things. And what I’ve discovered is that the more I invest in my ‘purpose pension’ the happier I am and the more valuable my time seems to be to others. The biggest benefit of all though is I get this wellbeing dividend in real time. Investing in my purpose pension changes my world view right now rather than in some future point I may not even live to see (19% of UK men will die before retirement age).

If that sounds a little abstract, here are six examples of investments I have made in my ‘purpose pension’ over the last ten years;

1 - The Do Lectures. A three day event in West Wales where people who have done inspiring things come together. There are talks from people who are bringing about positive change (you can see my lecture from 2015 here), workshops and incredible music and food. When you enter, it’s as though you go through some kind of membrane that dissolves cynicism. It’s a life changing experience and one I treasure in my own development journey because of how different I felt about my life afterwards.

2 - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I had a flying phobia for twenty years and finally tackled it by doing a twelve month course in CBT. Not only did it allow me to understand and overcome my phobia, but it also taught me about neuro-plasticity, how the stories we tell ourselves about who we are actually become who we are in the way our brains are wired, and how we can change those stories and that wiring.

3 - Built a wooden surfboard with James Otter. The way you can tell if something has contributed to your purpose pension is if you know when you get home afterwards that your life has changed forever. The trick is noticing this has happened and realising you can deliberately do things that will bring about this kind of evolution whenever you need it. I now try and do something that will change my life forever at least once every three years. The first time I realised in real time I was doing one of those kinds of things was when I spent a week with James and built my surfboard. The thing about making something that exists in the world is that unlike other achievements in your life that you can belittle and trivialise in your mind on low and dark days, you can’t deny the existence of a beautiful wooden board on the wall of your kitchen (which is where mine is). I also wrote a book about the experience so it grew into a different creative project too.

4 - The Hoffman Process. This is a week long therapeutic retreat for people who are ‘serious about change’. It’s a big commitment but nothing I have done has contributed more to my purpose pension than Hoffman. I can’t go into details because it works better when you have no idea exactly what is going to happen but I recommend it.

5 - I left my ‘big job’ to prioritise creative fulfilment. This involved lots of preparation and organisation to save enough money and took years to actually do, but I left my job as CEO of Unbound to write a novel (and look after my youngest kids). I have written and edited fourteen books but I always aspired to writing fiction but never felt good enough to do it. The feeling I got when I finished the first draft is hard to put into words. I remember explaining to a friend that I could die happily after finishing it. That sounds very dramatic, but what I mean is that I have spent my whole life feeling that there was something I was supposed to do or a benchmark I was capable of reaching I had always fallen short of. When I finished that first draft of The Gatherers (the title of my novel that I’m now on draft six or seven of) I knew that I was finally doing the thing that mattered most to me. The thing I was ‘supposed to do’. It turned out to be the start of a much longer journey, but I know that when I die I will not feel any regret that this novel died inside me. I got it out of my head and it is the best thing I have ever created. It is why I am here. That gives me huge comfort and has become a springboard for improving other areas of my life.

6 - I went on a five day road trip to Scotland to find my ‘wild twin’. This is related to my novel and was inspired by this excellent book by Martin Shaw. I realised as I came to the sixth or seventh draft of my book I had to go to the places in the novel my characters would visit so I could soak up the tastes and smells and feelings of each place. The trip turned into something very different. It became a quest to find my wild twin - an ancient story says we are all born with one but that it escapes out into the wilderness when we are born. We then spend our adult lives trying to find and get our lost wild twin back. I will write more on this soon, but suffice to say I found my wild twin in a cave in Raasay and brought him back home.

Each of these things has cost money (the fifth one required time I would otherwise have spent earning) that I suppose I could have put into my pension, but all of them have paid an immediate and on going dividend that has transformed my life. After each experience I felt as though I had ‘stepped up’ emotionally, psychologically and wisdomologically (I made that last word up). All of them changed my perspective on what matters and enriched every subsequent day of my life. When I think back on each experience, the thing that terrifies me now is not how much money I could have saved into my pension if I had not done them, but on who I would be now in my bones if I hadn’t had those experiences! I know I would be more anxious, less fulfilled and living in darkness compared to how I now live - increasingly in the light. And because of each experience I look forward to my future with a sense of anticipation and excitement about what I will do and find out about myself and the world. I back myself to adapt and change as the rest of my life unfolds. As part of this process retirement, as a concept, increasingly makes no sense to me at all. Why would I ever want to retire from being creatively, emotionally and wisdomologically fulfilled? Surely you would only ever retire from not being yourself? I appreciate that for generations before us who had jobs for life and worked for 40 plus years in a single career the idea of retirement was very attractive but those days are long gone. And, frankly, who wants them back?

So I will pay into my financial pension if and when finances allow. But that means only after I’ve continued to make substantial investments into my purpose pension. The one that gives me the life I can never get back - right now.

Thanks for reading and, as always, let me know what you think.

Dan