Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead
Alan Heeks 
There must be some kind of way outta hereSaid the joker to the thiefThere’s too much confusionI can’t get no relief In this time of big troubles, it’s easy to feel hopeless. And if you’re an anxious type, like me, you’ll always find plenty to unsettle you. Yet the wellbeing experts tell us that some … Read more
A bigger view of our possible future… Alan Heeks writes: Palden is an old friend, who plays a Merlin-like role in my life, popping up periodically with cryptic insights. He’s a deep thinker out of the box, a seer and astrologer, who usually offers a radically different point of view There is no rational basis … Read more
Back in 2018, the sense of urgency about the climate crisis rose sharply, helped by several key voices, including Greta Thunberg, and Jem Bendell. Jem uses the term Deep Adaptation as a focus for facing and adapting to the major climate and related challenges of the coming years, to emphasise that we need to find … Read more
If you want to understand how our future could unravel… I highly recommend this book: it will give you a clear sense of why societies might well collapse, what that could look like, and to some extent how we could prepare for this, or adapt if it happens. Originally written in French, the book has an engaging tone of voice, despite … Read more
I’m writing this in April 2022: we’re into the third year of the covid time, and over 70% of us in the UK have had covid at least once. This is the biggest global pandemic since 1918… so what can we learn from it? Probably all of us have had many conversations where someone tells … Read more
I’m a big fan of Bob Doppelt’s book, Transformational Resilience, which sees individual and collective trauma as one of the biggest, most pervasive issues of our times. Doppelt defines trauma as “an experience (that) seriously undermines or shatters at least some, if not all, of an individual’s core assumptions and beliefs.” He adds “climate disruption … Read more
Powerful insights from a woodland intensive You may think it’s obvious that doctors have feelings, like anyone else. What I’ve learned from leading resilience programmes with doctors is that it’s far trickier. Most doctors like to believe they’re superhuman, at least at work. And what’s worse, most of us as patients want them to be … Read more
I’ve just had a rare visit to London, and one of my treats was a classical music concert in St Martin in the Fields, the beautiful old church on Trafalgar Square. Right across the road, in the big central area, was a vigil and protest for Ukraine, which is happening nightly. It was moving to … Read more
To change the future we need to change the present, but to do that we need to have the right conversations. That’s exactly what Alan Heeks and Pamela Candea understand when they work with local people using Future Conversations. Recently, Pamela worked with people from the Uist community, using Future Conversations to help outline a … Read more
In the past two years, the world has been rocked by three huge events: covid, the rapid acceleration of the climate crisis, and now by Ukraine. Most of us did not see any of this coming: a few people did, and the ones I know are telling us to brace for more major shocks ahead. … Read more