What’s the secret to happiness?
How can we stay happy when there’s too much change and uncertainty? Are there ways to bounce back and thrive if everyday life and work is getting us down? Do you want to keep growing as you get older? How can you dig into your fears about the future and become more resilient? In this website, Alan Heeks offers practical answers to all these questions and many more!
Alan’s unique approach involves understanding human nature, and learning from parallels in the natural world around us. For example, balancing our roots and fruits (resources and outputs) composting waste energy (such as stress), working with uncertainty instead of overriding it.
This website offers you a wide range of online resources, details of upcoming events with Alan Heeks, past issues and a free sign up for Alan’s e-newsletter on natural happiness and resilience, informative and entertaining blogs, and information on Alan’s books and projects.
Foresight: future flourishing through super-resilience:
The present is already so demanding that most of us don’t want to consider the future. But surely the rapid changes and rising pressures we face now are likely to continue, and increase? Alan has been researching and leading trainings in resilience for several years: the skills to grow through problems and keep thriving, not just cope and get by. Super-resilience means the new skills we may need to stay happy in spite of new and bigger challenges of the years ahead.Natural Happiness
The times we’re in are tough: it’s clear that we need new approaches and models to thrive in all this. Natural Happiness is a simple, practical approach which can help in your life and work, and for work teams and communities.
Natural Happiness will show you how to cultivate your own human nature, and tend yourself like a garden: deepen your roots, and grow fruitfully through all kinds of weather. Alan Heeks has created a unique model, the Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness to help you do just this. Organic gardening methods offer us many useful parallels for growing our own happiness, such as: If you’re overstretched, you need to nourish your roots or prune back your branches. ·
Alan’s new book: Not Fade Away- staying happy when you’re over 64
When you’re over 50, 60 or 70, you may have exciting new freedom and choices, but you may also be facing losses and uncertainty. As you reach mid-life and beyond, it’s a good time to take stock, clear away old issues, and make fresh choices that help you to enjoy the years ahead. Alan has been exploring these topics for several years, and can offer you a lot of useful resources, including his two books on the subject:- Not Fade Away: Staying Happy When You’re Over 64! Is for women and men age 60 plus, due for publication May 1, 2018.
- Out of the Woods, published 2013, is focussed on men beyond 50, but is useful for both sexes.
Upcoming events
We’d love you to join us on one of our events in the UK or abroad. We hold spaces to connect like-minded people and explore a range of different topics for personal development.Resources
In this section you’ll find a range of processes and resources I have created which can help you to grow your own natural happiness and resilience.Creative Ageing Blogs
Enjoying your elderhood
The term elder is used with various meanings: I’m using it to invite you to connect with the mature wisdom in yourself, and in our ancestors. Traditional tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, Celts, and Bedouin, had great wisdom, including the role of the...
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Not Fade Away Staying happy when you’re over 64! By Alan Heeks
THE BABY BOOMER GUIDE TO CREATIVE AGEING The late sixties and beyond are a landmark: a good time to choose what you want from the years ahead, and take stock of the story so far. This short, practical book offers you valuable guidance, new skills, and resources to...
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Even the old are prejudiced about ageing!
Most of us have prejudices, and most of us have them around old age, whatever age we are! It’s been shocking for me, as an expert on creative ageing, to admit this is true of me.
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How much could you discover in a Wiltshire wood in February?
The Hazel Hill Wood Volunteer Building week February 17th-23rd 2020 Are you seeking fresh inspiration, practical knowhow, interesting contacts or just some fun? You can find all these and more at Hazel Hill, a magical 70 acre woodland retreat center and educational...
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The Odyssey: a guide to mens’ long voyage to find themselves
I’ve been pondering mens’ life journeys for many years: not just my own, but other men I’ve witnessed in mens’ gatherings and ongoing groups. Re-reading Homer’s Odyssey, I realise how brilliantly relevant it is to all this. Words like archetypal and heroic get...
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Working with Nature in Mind
Reclaiming our mental health and well-being through systemic thinking and ecopsychology practice. Guest blog by Roger Duncan We are currently living in strange and unsettling times, where it seems that contemporary culture is sleepwalking into a spiralling series of...
read moreResilent Futures Blogs
Book Blog: The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken
This is how business can be the driver of positive climate change In my frequent episodes of anxiety about climate change, this is a favourite book I turn to for encouragement. Amazingly, it was published in 1993 even then, the climate crisis and the pivotal...
read moreCan elephants evolve?
Why reshaping the finance system is key to climate change. Since late 2018, my work has increasingly focused on climate adaptation: Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach has deepened my view of the crisis, but has also helped me to see ways I can respond...
read moreDeep Adaptation and climate change: 2020 plans
I’ve been closely involved with Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach since November 2018: it hasn’t all been easy. I’ve gained a lot: better information, a clearer framework for my ideas, and a network of colleagues. But I’ve also been living with weekly doses of...
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