RESILIENT FUTURES : HOW EXPLORING THE UPSIDES AND DOWNSIDES IN THE YEARS AHEAD CAN HELP US TO RAISE OUR RESILIENCE AND THRIVE

Many people find the pressures of daily life and work so intense that the outlook for the years ahead feels too much to consider. If you compare the challenges and uncertainty of today with five or ten years ago, surely it has increased, and will rise further? The aim of Alan’s Seeding our Future project is to help people, neighbourhoods and essential public services to recognise the gifts and problems of the next 10-20 years, and to learn to raise their resilience to continue thriving.

We are currently setting up several pilot projects to explore a range of resilience skills and processes, aiming to share these more widely after the pilot phase. For full information on the project see www.futurescanning.org.

Flourishing through change: Alan Heeks comments “I define resilience as the skills to bounce back, learn and grow through challenges so that we stay happy most of the time, and don’t just cope or survive. As daily life and work, plus the world in general, get more complex, crazy and uncertain, I see resilience as crucial to wellbeing.

Resilience has been a big focus of my work since 2012, and this has led me to be increasingly curious and concerned about the future outlook. It seems that most of us can only just cope with the present, and don’t want to contemplate what further challenges and upsides could be ahead of us. The climate crisis is just one of the major challenges where we need great courage and creativity to respond well. I’ve initiated the Seeding our Future project to explore the new or deeper skills we will need in the next 10-20 years to stay happy amid the changes ahead.

 

WANT TO KNOW MORE? See the project website

The project was initiated by Alan Heeks in 2017, building on his earlier research on resilience, and his work with Wisdom Tree. The project is operating in partnership with the Schumacher Institute, and is exploring collaboration with a number of other organisations. New approaches are very welcome.

Exploring Super Resilience

Alan describes how we all need resilience and learning from nature can help us.

Natural Happiness Blog

Resource Toolkit: Conflict Resolution Process

Many challenges involve conflict. This process is one I’ve used often myself, and have taught in training groups. You can use the gist in minor conflict, and the full process in major ones. Here we move on to human skills which can help you to compost difficult...

Resource Toolkit: Community Mapping Process

The four-stage approach I’ve set out below may look elaborate, and you could go through it more informally. Communities of various kinds are likely to become very important for all of us in the uncertain years ahead: the benefit of a thorough review is getting clarity...

Resource Toolkit: Embodiment, sound and movement

As you can imagine, these topics are hard to cover in a book. Many approaches of this kind are best experienced in sessions with a teacher, or at minimum from their videos. I’ve learned most in this area from Neil Douglas-Klotz: you’ll find a range of video and audio...

Resource Toolkit: Natural Communication

Natural Communication provides the skills to express yourself, hear others, have a fruitful conversation. These methods are part of my overall Natural Happiness model using gardening analogies. All this is closer to gardening than you might think: both need a dynamic...

Resource Toolkit – Change the Story

If you’re setting an intention for positive change, changing the story is an important part of shifting you or someone else out of a habitual response. One of my biggest insights since turning 60 has been the way repeating stories shape our lives. The older we get,...

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...

Not Fade Away: Staying happy when you’re over 64!

Not Fade Away Staying happy when you’re over 64! By Alan Heeks Due for publication May 1, 2018: AVAILABLE NOW  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...

Timeline insights

If turning seventy is a kind of watershed, looking back over your life and seeking the meaning is a Helpful step. It may give you a sense of where the plotline is, of what you’re still seeking, or of missing pieces in the picture, which become a goal to complete in...

Love me do: reinventing partnership in later years

Love can still be wonderful in our later years, but we have to let go of some baggage first – like all the simplistic ideals from the pop songs of our youth. We can’t expect our partner to look like a twenty-something film star, and we’re unlikely to find instant...

Please complete the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.