Like so much of life, we follow the same models that aren't fit for the world we inhabit now.
Education, money, careers. The new way broke the old model.
Most people still think about “retirement” using a model that was built over a century ago.
A straight line.
Work for 40–50 years.
Then slow down as your health is declining.
But that model doesn’t match the world we live in anymore.
A few years ago I came across longevity researcher Ken Dychtwald’s idea of the cyclic lifespan, and it completely made me rethink about work, learning, purpose, and community.
I've referenced it a few times in our live calls and coaching with members. Because when we're looking to make change happen in life we need a pattern interrupt - "do the same thing as before get the same results"
It's also the reason I went on my own Life 2.0 journey. Because I realised I might not make it that far. More on the that below.
In today’s breakdown, I walk you through how the cyclic lifespan works — and why it’s a far better model for a world where we’re living longer, healthier, more capable, purposeful lives.
You’ll discover:
• Why the old linear model forces people to delay joy, travel, and reinvention
• How the cyclic model creates multiple “mini-retirements” across your entire life
• Why peak health should include time for leisure, not just work
• How education, work, family, and community naturally repeat in cycles
• Why intergenerational communities outperform traditional retirement villages
• How the longevity bonus can be used at 25, 45, 65 — not only at the end of life
Back in 1900, the average lifespan was 32 years.
Today it’s around 71 years.
We’ve gained almost four extra decades (adding more years, every year we manage to stay alive) - a longevity bonus - yet we’re still following a blueprint designed for people who rarely made it to 40.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Check the image - this is the way we have been taught life is, and how most live it.
A single block of work dominating 40+ years, followed by a narrow window of rest. Where family fades around us. The notion of an actual retirement fund existed but, the our standard of health meant we may not have stood to enjoy it for long.
But now, with improving healthcare some people can expect to live a lot longer. Add the 'Longevity Bonus' to their lifeplan which can look like this:
That's up to an extra 30% of life to live beyond the old mode of retirement. Which when you chop it back into the rest of life, could look like this:
So what would you do if a new model could exist? Re-allocating the new time you have might look like this:
The point is, you get to choose. To re-educate yourself, learn new skills, apply them, maybe to new work that is more meaningful and purposeful, so that you get to choose how to spend your time and your money on the leisure that means so much more.
And your family? Well they too will be with you for longer in this new paradigm of the cyclic lifeplan.
So how to be able to apply it when we have industrial age thinking in the digital and exponential age?
Take another look at the new paradigm above. It's not linear anymore.
Just like so much of what we talk about in Sovereign Soul, from financial, cultural, technological, human, and emotional - It's cyclical.
Once we begin to think of our life as a set of cycles, with ever more wisdom, experience, and clarity gained with each turn, we can dump the linear paradigm that has held us all in place for SO long.
It becomes a new cycle with potential to learn, relearn, apply, work/volunteer, reflect and rest. Explore new pursuits, and start the process again.
Projects.
I've been of the firm belief that this how we should view life now - as a series of projects - so much so that I apply this thinking to the curriculum of the school I built here in Bali
And in this exponential age where access to wealth and technology means we will likely have to completely rethink what it means to be human (very soon) - diving into projects that means something to us, that connect us to our purpose and passions - will be more important and available to us than ever.
I am of the hope that we may even return to the notion of 'elder wisdom' for older people in our society, or the very real possibility that growing old 'disgracefully' becomes the norm, because now, you can.
“For those in reasonably good shape and with reasonable means, I believe they will have access to longevity escape velocity by the end of 2030.” Peter Diamandis
So live in good shape for another 4 years and you gain another year for every one you've been alive already.
This shift doesn’t just change how we plan our own lives — it changes how we design them.
As a community we'll be bringing this into our life design thinking for 2026 as we update our Thrive25 Lifestyle Investor Year Planner (we think we'll call it Fix26).
Because if you can bank on living longer, you'd better have the bank balance to make it worthwhile.
So come with us on the next 12 months of Sovereign Soul - we take topics like this and make them tangible, applicable and put our members at the forefront of thinking with action.
Life is just on the other side of the choices you are not making..