Wise elderly project Class: BEHAVIORAL FINANCE

The Wise Elder Project

(30 points)

This project is based upon John Izzo’s book, The Five Secrets You Must Discover before You Die. Izzo interviewed over 200 wise elders and extracted the five secrets from their stories. See last two pages of this packet for more information about John Izzo and the five secrets.

Your Task

Find a wise elder (age 60 or older) and interview them about their views of life and money. Then summarize what you learned in a paper. Pages 2 and 3 contain the questions to be asked. All interviews must be done face to face or on the phone—no email/text interviews.

Paper Due Date

Submit via Blackboard by 11:59 p.m. on November 8 (Thursday).

Paper Length

Title page plus between five full pages of text (at least 110 lines of text) and 8 full pages (176 lines of text).

Paper Format

Introduction (½ page to 1 page)

State problem you’re addressing and two reasons why it is important.

Body of Paper (minimum 3 pages)

Wise Elder’s Background (no more than ½ page)

a) Explain why you picked this elder.

b) Describe the elder’s background.

c) Were they as wise as you anticipated?

Favorite Story told by Wise Elder

Lessons Learned

Conclusion (minimum 1 page)

Recap what you did.

How did what they said compare to Izzo’s five secrets? Did they mention any of the

secrets implicitly or explicitly?

Offer at least three conclusions (one per paragraph).

Meaning Questions for your Wise Elders (from Izzo’s Five Secrets Book)

Ask all of meaning questions (1-10). It is your choice whether to ask the optional questions (11-14).

Meaning Questions (ask all of these questions)

1. Pretend that you are at a dinner party and everyone is sitting in a circle. The host invites each person to take just a few minutes to describe the life he or she has lived. If you were at the party and you wanted people to know as much about your life as possible in a few minutes, what would you say? Describe the life you have lived thus far

2. What has given brought you the greatest sense of meaning and purpose in life? Why does it matter that you were alive?

3. What has brought you the greatest happiness in life, the greatest joy moment to moment?

4. Tell me about the major “crossroads” moments in your life, times when you went in one direction or another and it made a large difference in terms of how your life turned out.

5. What is the best advice you ever got from someone about life? Did you take the advice? How have you used it during your life?

6. What do you wish you had learned sooner? If you could go back to when you were a young adult and have a conversation with yourself, and you knew that you would listen, what would you tell the younger person about life?

7. Fill in this sentence, I wish I had. . .

8. Now that you have lived most of your life, what are you certain or almost certain matters a great deal if a person wants to find happiness and live a fulfilling life?

9. Now that you have lived most of your life, what are you certain or almost certain does not matter very much in finding a happy life? What do you wish you had paid less attention to?

10. If you could give only one sentence of advice to those younger than you on finding a happy and meaningful life, what one sentence would you pass on?

Optional Questions

11. What role has spirituality played in your life?

12. What is the greatest fear at the end of life?

13. Now that you are older, how do you feel about your mortality, about death? Not death in the abstract but your death? Are you afraid of dying?

14. What roles have spirituality and religion played in your life? What have you concluded about God?

Money Questions for your Wise Elder

General Money Questions (ask at least 5)

1. What do you wish you had learned earlier about money?

2. What is the best money advice you have ever received?

3. Does money buy happiness?

4. How do you feel about giving money away?

5. Did money define you?

6. What is the best financial decision you have made?

7. What financial advice would you give yourself at age 18?

8. What philosophy informed your investments?

9. What is the best investment advice you have received?

10. What was your most devastating financial loss?

11. What was your best investment?

12. When did you start saving/investing?

13. How does charitable giving play into your life?

14. What does money mean to you?

15. Has money been a motivating factor in your life? If so, how?

Nuts and Bolts Money Questions (ask at least 3)

16. If you could go back, what would you do differently financially?

17. What would you have changed about your financial/investment strategy?

18. What have been your best approaches to saving money?

19. If you were my age and won the lottery, what would you do with the money?

20. What is the biggest regret you have with regard to your finances?

21. Would your life have been different if you had made twice as much money as you did?

22. What have you done about retirement and estate planning?

“The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die” on YouTube

1) Be true to yourself (don’t wait for a wakeup call). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8et6N1ek0U

2) Leave no regrets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO4AaHiRQOI

3) Become love (love is a choice). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfC2EPUNojI

4) Give more than you take. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWWnXJxHvL0

Part 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8et6N1ek0U

Part 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcZb-26EFjw

The 5 Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die

By Carolyn Anderson MD FRCSC

Best-selling author and renowned international speaker, John Izzo, has gathered an extensive collection of wisdom from over 18,000 years of experience. He interviewed over 200 people between the ages of 60 and 100 who were voted as the wisest people by their peers.

All this insight is gathered in an incredible book that highlights the five secrets to a happy and purpose filled life. Knowing how to use our one life to its fullest requires wisdom more than knowledge. Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would have preferred to talk. There is an intuitive connection between age and wisdom, yet sometimes age shows up without wisdom. For the individuals interviewed in this book, age was associated with immense wisdom and the common themes for a happy life were summarized in the 5 secrets.

5 Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die

1) Be True to Your Self

Wise people continually ask themselves whether they were living the life they wanted to live and truly following their hearts. As Socrates so brilliantly stated “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The message was to live your life with intention and ask yourself…Is my life focused on the things that really matter to ME? Am I the person I want to be in this world? Happy people know what makes them happy and they continue to make this a priority. I think a lot of people forget what makes them happy and they stop doing it. Take time to hear the small inner voice that tells you if you are missing the mark on your deepest desires.

2) Leave No Regrets

What we fear most is not having lived to the fullest extent possible, having to say “I wish I had”. We must live with courage, moving toward what we want rather than away from what we fear. At the end of our lives we will not regret risks that we took that did not work out the way we hoped. We only regret the risks we did not take. The message from all those interviewed was to take more risks. More risks of the heart and the risk to truly reach out for what you want in life. I think after we have lived a long life we begin to realize that there was much less to lose than we thought there was. Ask yourself what step would I take in my life right now if I were acting with courage not fear?

3) Become Love

The giving and receiving of love is a fundamental building block of a happy and purposeful life. Be a loving person. Love is a choice not just an emotion. Although we may not have the ability to “feel” love at will, we have the power at every moment to choose to become love. The power to choose to love transforms us.

4) Live the Moment

It all goes by so fast. We believe we have forever and we soon realize this is not so. To live in the moment means to be fully in every moment of our lives, to not judge our lives but to live fully. Wise people see each day as a great gift. Seneca, the Roman philosopher said that “we should count each day as a separate life” Each day is not a step on the way to a destination. It is the destination. Do not rush through moments of joy. Breathe them in. Experience them. Live fully.

5) Give More Than You Take

What matters most at the end of your life is what you leave behind. That something was different because you were here. The message is to leave the world better than you found it. It is those who give the most that find the greatest joy.

These 5 secrets are words of immense wisdom. They are beneficial to all of us no matter what age we are. John Izzo makes an interesting point in the conclusion… sometimes when he talks to people in their 40s or 50s they talk as if their life were over. But really they have only been an adult for 25 years. It is not very much time to figure life out. And if you live to be 90 or 100 you may have another entire adult lifetime or maybe two before you die. Don’t give up on yourself or life. It is never too late. Hold on, keep growing, you will find your dreams and make a difference while you are here. Armed with these 5 secrets we all have a much better chance of finding our dreams and impacting the world.

The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die

By Lionel Ketchian

What are the Five Secrets? The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, is the name of a great new book by John Izzo, Ph.D. The book begins with a premise that we might be better off learning those things that could help us live a better life, from older people who have lived that life. Dr. Izzo found about 200 people between the ages of 58-105 years old. He asks the question: "Would we learn some important things about living with purpose and finding deep happiness if we talked to those who had lived most of their lives already and had found happiness and meaning?" John found in his interviews that "all happy and wise people eventually discover and live these five secrets."

John distinguishes knowledge from wisdom in that there is a great deal of knowledge and more is being created all the time. Wisdom, is the ability to know what is important and what is not important. This is critical to finding real meaning in one's life. Dr. Izzo, holding advanced degrees in religion and psychology, said, "In my experience, the two things humans want most are to find happiness and meaning."

What are the secrets? I will tell you, but you still have to read the book to really learn and understand the secrets. "The first secret is: be true to yourself." John raises this thought: "The question that happy people ask is not whether they are focusing on what matters but whether they are focusing on what matters to them! The second secret is: leave no regrets." John uncovers an important directive for our happiness, when he reports the following: "Perhaps what often determines our happiness in life is the step we take after a setback."

"The third secret is: become love. When they spoke (to the 200 elders) of how important love was in their lives, they were defining love more as a choice than an emotion. The secret to a happy and purposeful life was to choose to be a loving person, to become love." John mentions the reason he feels this way is the following. "Although we have little control over whether we get love, we have almost complete control over whether we become love."

An interesting study of 100 of the happiest people by Marci Shimoff the author of the great new book, Happy for No Reason, 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out revealed a similar conclusion: Those 100 happy people were all loving people that felt a connection to others. These two studies and the interviews can teach us how important love can be for the happiness of the individual.

"The fourth secret is: live the moment. I have discovered that happy people know that we are more in control of our minds than most people realize. The fifth secret is: give more than you take." In his interviews, John learned this profound truth. The happiest people he interviewed were the least focused on themselves. Robert Louis Stevenson said, "To forget oneself is to be happy."

With great awareness, John advises us about: "Preparing to die well: happy people are not afraid to die." John says, "Unless we come to peace with death, not as some foreign invader but as a part of what it means to be human, only then can we find peace." John further advises us, "I also learned that until we accept that death is a part of life, we are not ready to embrace life."

I agree with John on the idea of accepting our death without fear. I have found that facing my own death with awareness has become a liberating thing for me. It has freed me from fear and uncertainty and brought me to live in the present moment with lasting happiness. It may be helpful to quote the words of Bertolt Brecht, who said: "Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life."

John wants you to "contemplate the five secrets." He says, "Try to resist the temptation to "judge" your life. Instead, ask: How can I embrace and live the five secrets more deeply?" John is very perceptive in advising us not to judge our life. Judging produces a negative state in us, and does nothing to change the things we want to change. I am so glad that John has written this wonderful book. I am grateful to John for raising our awareness of the important things we can learn before it is too late.

We do not need to acquire more knowledge; we need to master more wisdom. This way we can to live our lives with authenticity and power. John reveals this wisdom to us with great insights, and shows us lasting peace through his interviews with the elder individuals he spent time with to create this book. I recommend this book to you whole-heartedly. You can take my word for it, because being 62 years old and happy, I fall into the category this book was created from.

Now that I told you about this great book, I know you will be dying to read it. Buy it, borrow it, take it out of the library and read it. You will find that it offers you a great deal to live for. It will help you become a positive force in your own life and the lives of others.