Alan Heeks

Not Fade Away: The Story Behind The Book

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Nov 212020

Alan Heeks shares the roots of his fresh approach to creative ageing…

I believe that shipwreck and re-invention are the healthy essence of the mid-life crisis, and I did mine pretty thoroughly. Two weeks before my 50th birthday, I moved out of my 27-year old marriage, leaving the family home and my two daughters. The following year brought depression, a cancer scare, and the loss of my main client for training work. It took me several years of turmoil to find myself again, but I had some rich adventures on the way, including blind dating, learning to cook, tantra groups, and a lot of solo time at Hazel Hill Wood, the retreat centre I have created.

I see the core of my writing as natural happiness: showing people how to cultivate their wellbeing and resilience through parallels with Nature. However, my second and third published books are both about creative ageing. This is clearly a major theme of interest for me, which started with the crisis I’ve just described. My first book, The Natural Advantage: Renewing Yourself, was published in 2000, when I was 52, and was one fruit of my mid-life crisis. It took another 10 years, until I was 62, for me to get some perspective on my own mid-life journey, and to start writing what became my second book, Out of the Woods: A Guide to Life for Men Beyond 50.

I wrote my second book specifically for men for three reasons: firstly, I believed that I understood their journey quite well, not only from my own experience, but from many years of involvement in men’s groups. Secondly, because I could see that men needed help more than women, as shown by the high rates of depression, addiction and other problems at this age. The third reason was that I was afraid that if I wrote a book on creative ageing for men and women, women would bite my head off and tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

In fact, my experience of researching and promoting Out of the Woods was that women understood the issues of creative ageing, and why men needed the book, far better than men did. I was emboldened to start running workshops for mixed groups on creative ageing, but with a female co-leader!

By the age of 67, I realised that I was hitting another stage in my own creative ageing process, with turning 70 now on the horizon: this felt seriously old, and I realised that I was not entirely walking my talk about the upsides of growing older.

It’s fair to say that the impetus for writing Not Fade Away was quite personal: I wanted to unpack and work through my fears of turning 70, and I was guessing that if this landmark was bothering me, it would also be bothering many other Baby Boomers. My research for the book, among women and men, suggests that many of the issues at this life stage are similar for both genders, whereas I saw more differences in the fifties. Not Fade Away aims to cover all the major issues around ageing for the Baby Boomer generation, with three major themes:

Value what you have

This is the focus of part 1 of the book, Finding your Gifts. Especially for people who are temperamentally anxious, like me, it’s easy to get preoccupied by worries about ageing. We need to make repeated, conscious choices to put more attention on the blessings of our life, and giving thanks for them. Doing this can really raise our morale, and make our experience of the average day a lot happier.

Be willing to face your fears

This is crucial in mid-life, around 50-60, but a fresh wave of issues is likely to hit us between 65 and 75. At this stage, we may have new challenges around health, money, partnership, plus elderly or dying parents, and facing the idea of our own mortality. Part 2 of my book, Digging the Challenges, offers various ways to do all this. I’ve seen many people at this age discover that it was taking more energy to suppress and deny the problems than to face them. Very often, there is useful wisdom in our fears if we can learn to talk with them, and there’s plenty of knowhow to help you

Take a fresh look

Over the past few years, I’ve been observing people who are in their seventies very closely. There seem to be two main patterns. Some people narrow down their life, deepen into old habits and beliefs, and just accept a steady loss of friends, work contacts and more. Others find the strength to re-invent themselves, and discover that the seventies can be a period of fresh growth, new friends, and great creativity. Part 3 of Not Fade Away, Fresh Maps, offers a range of new approaches which have helped me and others to do this. For example, one of these is Change the Story: recognise that recurring problems in our life often arise because we are repeating an old story from a painful childhood experience: if we can name the story, we can also name and consciously choose a more positive story to live by.

I’m glad to say that writing the book has helped me to move through my fears of turning 70, and I’ve had enthusiastic feedback from pilot readers. I hope that this book will help people of any age, from young adults through to the over-seventies. For example, the book explores what the 1960’s were about, and how all of us can draw on the youthful idealism, sisterhood and brotherhood of those times.

How NOT to have a midlife crisis

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Nov 212020

Therapy: the book by David Lodge

The ‘hero’ of this book is Tubby Passmore, 58: balding, bulging, and thoroughly lost. Although he’s outwardly successful – well-off, modestly well-known as scriptwriter for a top sitcom, with a steady if dull marriage, Tubby is depressed and confused.

Through the book, we piece together his life story, and share his angst and his varied attempts to resolve it, which include various therapies. This guy would benefit hugely from Out of the Woods, if he could only find the will to read it.

This story illustrates many of the features of a classic midlife crisis. In his lostness, Tubby becomes deeply self-obsessed, and this proves the last straw for his wife of thirty years, who demands a separation and insists it’s too late for mediation.

I believe the root of the midlife crisis is spiritual, and Tubby’s case supports this. Despite being resolutely ‘anti-religious’ since childhood, his first girlfriend is a devout Catholic, and he joins the RC youth club to be with her. Near the end of the book, he ends up in Santiago de Compostela, and is clearly touched by it. And his obsession with Kierkegaard brings out the paradox of desiring the spiritual but rejecting the religious.

The first one-third of the book is slow-moving and a bit two-dimensional, but it gathers pace and substance as it goes on. The section with first-person accounts from the other key characters in the story is superb, and this could be a good tool for anyone wanting to understand their crisis (and its effect on others) more deeply.

Likewise, Tubby’s return to memories of his adolescence is a rich episode which rang true for me. Part of the healing that can emerge from a midlife crisis is revisiting, reliving, re-framing one’s formative years.

Another feature of the male midlife crisis which Tubby exemplifies is the bizarre things that happen when the immature, often sex-driven impulses of an adolescent are paired with the resources and contacts of a midlife man. Few teenagers can afford a London pad, a flashy car, or flights to LA to pursue a sexual fantasy, but some midlife men like Tubby can, and the results are often embarrassing.

So, it’s an entertaining, touching, and instructive read. But if you’re choosing one book about midlife crisis, Out of the Woods is the more practically useful!

A view from age 74: Giles

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Nov 212020

Advice to those in their sixties:

Delegate to others more than you think you can safely do! You can’t do it safely. How did you learn? Don’t delay this!
Get out into nature and meditate, pray, ask questions of yourself – your god or whatever you call that thing.
Recognise crises as invitations to break through old patterns, beliefs and views. They are milestones to be celebrated and a good crisis should never be wasted. You now have the wisdom to deal with any chance or any shit that comes your way.
Let go of stuff you are holding onto. For each self-imposed manacle released, there will be a boon.

How did I feel approaching 70:

Getting a hit of my teenage thoughts about the absolute improbability of being around in 2012, more the century and the year than the idea of being 70.

I had been retired for a year, but had planned that as a gradual process over 6 years, so it was not the dramatic cross-roads many experience. On the other hand, I have been just as busy in the 4 years since, but the nature of my busyness has been increasingly moving away from the preoccupations of the previous 30 years of “work life” and been more mellow than busyness.

A fuller appreciation of my partner of 42 years and my 5 sons, through calmer listening, not acting or speaking out every urge or thought I have. For me a key challenge has been to let go of having to be useful. Another has been to avoid having an unrealistic agenda of things to do – most of them are unnecessary, can be given to others or massively simplified.

What has helped my transition to the seventies

Talking to young people about absolutely anything they are interested in.
Putting heart before head to a greater extent in deciding what to do this minute, this hour, this year or for years ahead. This is truly liberating, often adventurous and always energising.
My sons – vitality, different takes on life, their love
My wife – her changing wishes as to how our partnership works as each of us accept and pursue personal change, whether physical, mental, emotional or, combining all, spiritual
Staying happy in your 70’s:

*It’s the people and the truth and love you bring to dealing to them ALL that count, not your or their appearance, behaviours, plans, status, achievements &c.

A view from age 71: Gay

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Nov 212020

Staying happy in your seventies

Be proactive in caring for mind, body and soul. For me this begins with daily yoga and meditation practice. Be ever open to new experiences and ideas. Keep the brain working in whatever way is best for you. (I learn the words to happy/positive songs and sing them out loud to myself during the first few challenging hours of the day.) Keep a relationship with nature, even if it is only a plant in a pot. Cultivate gratitude for all the blessings in your life.

How has turning 70 been?

Turning 70 was fine. I couldn’t believe it in a way – I kept having to redo the maths to convince myself this huge number related to me. I really like being an ‘elder’! The tricky one for me was turning 50 – neither one thing or the other.

What has helped?

Being the oldest in this cohousing community. Giving myself permission to grow old disgracefully when I choose, and gracefully when I want. Giving myself a 70th birthday present of a tattoo, and having red and purple highlights in my hair. Being made to feel very special on the day by my co-housing neighbours with bubbly and presents and then sharing a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with another friend celebrating 50 years.

Any advice to those approaching 70

Spend as much time as possible with people younger than yourself. Honour what you can do rather than worrying about what you can’t. Laugh as much as possible, particularly at yourself. Have a party and celebrate. Learn something creative and non-physical. I never picked up a paintbrush till I was around 60 and it is now the greatest joy in my life.

A view from age 56: Jane Sanders

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Nov 212020

Two score and ten – fifty years and growing

It is said that you know you are getting old when doctors and policemen look impossibly young. I had this experience about a year ago when I encountered an orthopaedic consultant who told me bluntly that ‘at my age’ they would not want to offer me surgery to repair a broken knee ligament. That was my first experience of feeling consigned to the ‘too old for..’ club and it was abit of a shock at the time though thanks to Alexander Technique and Pilates I am doing fine. It got me thinking though about our cultures attitude to aging – about the whole concept of ‘too old for’, about how we have de-valued elders and suchlike.

My Armenian great grandfather Aram Assadour Altounyan swore by yogurt eating and daily cold showers – and lived into his late 90’s, still working as a surgeon in Syria. A family story is that at 93 he operated on his wife – hands still skilful and steady. That’s more of a ‘work till you drop’ approach. Not sure I want to emulate him (especially the cold showers!) but can’t help admiring his tenacity.

In my twenties I remember happening across a talk being given by an indigenous elder woman who spoke eloquently about how differently age is viewed in her tribe. She said that the way they see it, your life’s work does not start until you are 50 because – until then you are just recovering from your birth and early childhood.

Her words have stayed with me and now in my 50’s I feel like I am inhabiting two stories – the one she described and – less comfortably – our cultures’ story about aging where our 50’s can often be seen as that final stretch on the journey towards retirement.

I am not sure I want to work like my great grandfather- till I drop – but I can’t at this stage imagine retiring. I’d like to find a middle way. I recognise the need to change gear – to re-calibrate what’s important, to savour life and to discern wisely how to use my energy and time in a different way to how I was in my twenties, thirties and forties.

I feel like I need new role models for how to do this next bit and for me David Bowie showed me something important about not being afraid to experiment and try new creative directions right up until the end . He said ‘’I think ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been. I’ll go with that and see where it takes me!

Jane Sanders is co-leading the Fruits of Maturity weekend with Alan Heeks at Hazel Hill Wood, June 2-4.

A Realistic and Positive Book on Ageing: Also helpful for the ‘young-old’

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Nov 202020

The warmth of the heart prevents your body from rusting: Marie de Hennezel.

This is the best book on ageing I have read: well-informed, realistic, as well as warm-hearted and inspiring. Marie is one of the leading French experts on ageing: she has been studying this field for years, and draws on some excellent role models and teachers. Here are a few quotes from her to set the scene:

“Old age is neither a complete disaster nor a golden age”.

“If you are not prepared for growing old…you risk going through hell”.

“When I met some radiant elderly people…I realised that their radiance was very much the fruit of deliberate clear-headed hard work.” This requires “bidding farewell to one’s youth and meditating upon one’s impending death”.

From this book, I learned a valuable distinction between the ‘young-old’ and the ‘old-old’: the young-old are typically aged 50 – 75, and still in good health. The old-old are typically in their late 70s or 80s, and are facing health decline, infirmity, and often dependency. She quotes a brilliant comment from another French expert, Olivier de Ladoucette: “people don’t perceive growing old as a progressive process, but as something that ‘attacks’ you around the age of seventy-five or eighty. Between fifty and seventy-five, we don’t know what is going on”. He also says “people are afraid of growing old because they cannot bear the way other people will see them…an ugly, useless burden on society”.

These comments have finally helped me to understand why so many of the young-old are in vehement denial about ageing, and don’t want to face the topic at all. As this book explains, the young-old feel frightened and vulnerable about becoming old-old, because they see that as an entirely negative stage of life, where they will be entirely powerless.

The second great gift of this book is a soundly-based case that late old age can be a positive completion of life, even if one is dependent and infirm. This is not naive optimism, and doesn’t deny the pain and loss of late old age: her positive view is well-supported by case histories, research and more. Marie says:

“The second half of life has a spiritual goal. It is characterised by the process of individuation.” “…realising one’s true nature…” “old age is not a shipwreck, but … a form of growth … The true meaning of old age is not performance, but maturity”.

Much of the book offers specific support for this view. Here are some of the key points:

Dependency: part of the gift of ageing can be “accepting our helplessness”, embracing “the freedom of allowing things to happen…putting oneself in the hands of the universe”.
Care provision: Marie is passionate about improving general standards of care, and cites “inspiring examples of how good it is in places.” She advocates training for carers which sustains the human connection with clients: for example by eye contact, conversation and touch.
Alzheimer’s and Dementia: These are two of the most terrifying conditions for the young-old: she quotes several experts who believe such conditions are a constructive response to unresolved difficulties in one’s life. If we can “…face up to our regrets and our remorse”, maybe in our fifties or sixties, this may change our risk of such ailments.
Solitude and the Inner Self: Old age can be a lonely time, but this is a great chance to learn to enjoy solitude and deepen the inner life: she has a lovely quote from one friend: “I am discovering the great value of motionless journeys”.
Positive relationships: some old people are isolated because they have a negative, complaining view of life, and a demanding approach to those around them. “The idea is not to expect too much of others, but simply to be receptive”.

The book quotes some inspiringly practical advice from another French expert, Robert Misrahi: “Elderly people risk living their death, not their life. But old age can be a time for “rebirth”. This needs re-education: creativity, joy, and serenity in the face of death” …He advocates helping the elderly to “travel mentally, to think through their lives, listen to music, read, write, contemplate, explore works of art, walk or meditate.” And “rediscover…the ability to be enchanted and amazed… We should rejoice that we are still alive, and not lament the fact that we are approaching death”. As he points out, by growing into old age like this, we are offering a real gift of wisdom to older generations.

I hope that this short piece gives you a sense of the wisdom, encouragement and practical clarity which this book offers. I urge you to read it in full!

Vita Sackville-West on Triumphant Elderhood: All Passion Spent

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Nov 202020

If Vita Sackville-West is known at all these days, it is as a landscape gardener, Bloomsbury bohemian, or as the role model for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. In fact, she is a superb novelist too: perceptive, witty and elegant. The central figure of her novel All Passion Spent is an 88-year-old widow, whose last years prove a triumphant liberation from all the limits life had placed on her.

Wendy Hiller as Lady Slane in the BBC adaptation of All Passion Spent

The story begins just after the death of Lady Slane’s husband, Lord Slane, a dry but distinguished figure, who in his time has been Viceroy of India and Prime Minister. Their children are mostly a ghastly crew, in their sixties, who assume that Mother will now live with each of them in return for rent.

To their amazement, Mother, who they see as an unworldly simpleton, takes a stand, and tells them she intends to move out to Hampstead. The children grudgingly offer to bring her grandchildren and great-grandchildren all the way to Hampstead to visit her, but she replies: “I am going to become completely self-indulgent. I am going to wallow in old age. No grandchildren. They are too young. Not one of them has reached 45. No great-grandchildren either; that would be worse. I want no strenuous young people… for it would only remind me of the terrible effort the poor creatures will have to make before they reach the end of their lives in safety. I prefer to forget about them. I want no one about me except those who are nearer to their death than to their birth.”

As the book unfolds, we come to realise that Lady Slane is an artist at heart, whose adult life has been completely dictated by her duties as a wife and mother. Now, at 88, she creates the life she wants, helped by some delightful elderly gentlemen, and by her wonderful French maid, Genoux, whose mangled mix of English and French is a total delight.

An important part of this golden phase is making sense of the past: “And what, precisely, had been herself, she wondered – an old woman looking back on the girl she once had been? This wondering was the softest, most wistful, of occupations; yet it was not melancholy; it was, rather, the last, supreme luxury; a luxury she had waited all her life to indulge. There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full. She had, after all, nothing else to do. For the first time in her life – no, for the first time since her marriage – she had nothing else to do. She could lie back against death and examine life.”

Part of this review is a deep pondering over the question of happiness, and what this really means. “Had she been happy? That was a strange clicking word to have coined – meaning something definite to the whole English-speaking race… But one was happy at one moment, unhappy two minutes later… So what did it mean?… It seemed merely as though someone were asking a question about someone that was not herself, clothing the question in a word that bore no relation to the shifting, elusive iridescent play of life; trying to do something impossible, in fact, like compressing the waters of a lake into a tight, hard ball. Life was that lake, though Lady Slane, sitting under the warm south wall amid the smell of the peaches; a lake offering its even surface to many reflections, gilded by the sun, silvered by the moon, darkened by a cloud, roughened by a ripple; but level always, a plane, keeping its bounds, not to be rolled up into a tight, hard ball, small enough to be held in the hand, which was what people were trying to do when they asked if one’s life had been happy or unhappy.”

The book evokes beautifully the state of old age, in ways that echo my own experience with the very old. For example, the interplay between past and present: “Lady Slane sat down on a bench and rested. Little boys were flying kites; they ran dragging the string across the turf, till like an ungainly bird the kite rose trailing its untidy tail across the sky. Lady Slane remembered other little boys flying kites in China. Her foreign memories and her English present played at chasse-croise often now in her mind, mingling and superimposing, making her wonder sometimes whether her memory were not becoming a little confused, so immediate and simultaneous did both impressions appear. Was she on a hillside near Pekin with Henry, a groom walking their horses up and down at a respectful distance; or was she alone, old, and dressed in black, resting on a bench on Hampstead Heath?”

The book also shows us the narrowing of focus, the physical discomforts of old age, in a positive light: “Her body had, in fact, become her companion, a constant resource and preoccupation; all the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfilment of the tyranny they had always threatened. Yet it was, rather than otherwise, an agreeable and interesting tyranny… And all these parts of the body became intensely personal: my back, my tooth, my finger, my toe… Of such small things was her life now made… All tiny things, contemptibly tiny things, ennobled only by their vast background, the background of Death.”

I can highly recommend this book as a delightful read, and an encouraging picture of how to find your freedom and fulfilment near the end of life.

Age is just a number: Charles Eugster

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Nov 202020

Re-inventing your health in later life

Charles Eugster is a pioneer in health regimes for people over 65, and well beyond. He has won medals for rowing and sprinting in his eighties and nineties! However, his book offers a lot of help for oldies less fanatically fit then he is.

Charles is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine: when in his eighties he started research and personal experiments with ways to rebuild his health and fitness. His approach has three key elements: work, nutrition, and exercise. This book is relevant for anyone age 55 and over: Charles says that decisions from this age on regarding his three key elements have a big impact on the rest of our lives.

Keeping active, physically and mentally, is a crucial part of creative ageing, so he advocates continuing to work till well past statutory retirement age. He acknowledges that it’s harder to find employment when you’re older, but points out that in the US, there are twice as many tech startup founders over 50 as under 25.

The most original and informative parts of this book are about exercise. Loss of muscle mass, or sarcopenia, begins around 30, so by age 60 you’ll typically have lost 15% of your muscle mass. However, Charles’ training with expert coaches has shown how one can regenerate muscle mass even at advanced ages. Key to this is doing resistance strength work, not just aerobic exercise.

This book has a detailed guide to exercises you can do for yourself at home or outdoors, and advice on possibly using a gym. However, he recommends consulting a doctor, and recognises that few professionals in gyms know much about exercise for the over-sixties.

There’s also a chapter on nutrition and diet. Charles’ own life story is woven through the book, and makes entertaining reading. If anyone can encourage you out of your comfy armchair, he can!

Featured image: Charles Eugster running at the Alexandra Stadium

Life Threatening Crises for Friends

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Nov 202020

Alan writes about his experiences of friends suffering from life threatening illness.

In the past few months, the wives of two close friends have had late diagnoses of advanced cancer which could be fatal. The husband of another friend has had a stroke. At the Summer School I go to each year, two couples from last year are now singles, having lost their spouse to cancer.

These are relatively young people in their fifties and sixties, with a history of good health and lifestyle.

I feel deeply upset and shaky in the face of all this. The presence of death feels big and close. The distress of the healthy partner is almost unbearable for me: I feel powerless to comfort them or alleviate the situation.

I’ve read some good books and articles about dying, I know some of the good approaches. But it would feel false, almost insulting, to try quoting things to these close friends of mine who are in such pain. And whilst most of my blog postings try to offer constructive tips to you, the reader, that feels a bit too neat this time.

The word compassion literally means, ‘to feel with’. My impression is that when I feel distress along with my friend’s, it does give him or her some comfort and support. The desire in me to say something which would magically heal his or her pain, or make his or her partner well, I need to realise is a poignantly young, child part of me, who also needs my compassion – but the child’s desire is impossible, is best let go.

My friend’s pain, his or her partner’s illness, are true. The fear in me is a child’s sense of inadequacy because I can’t make it all OK. As I try to find my clear, loving adult and spiritual centre, I know I don’t have to make it all right. Nor do I have to offer clarity in a time of overwhelming uncertainties. All I need to do is be present in a loving way.

In my own life, I have lived through enough crises and anguish to have faith – a sense that what’s happening is the right thing, and eventually I may understand why. Currently, my partner Linda and I are trying to live each day as if it’s our last: this is helping us to enjoy each other and all our blessings more deeply. It’s not stirring up fears of death.

In a strange way, it seems to me that the distress of close friends is harder to bear than my own.

Here’s the letter I sent to one close friend:

Dear Steve

I feel gutted by the news about Sarah’s illness. I hope that you can both feel my love and prayers, and those of the many friends around you, and the support of the angels and spirits who I believe are with us all.

This must be heart-breaking, and I hope you can open into whatever are the blessings of the crisis – they must be there. My guess is that it’s a time to drop whatever ideas you had about the future, and just feel fully the love between you now.

If I can help in any way, physically or emotionally, please let me know.

With much love to you both,

Alan

Fresh adventures for creative ageing

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Nov 202020

Discover yourself and have some fun as you grow older.

Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re likely to be more happy and resilient if you open up to fresh adventures.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of Alan’s new book, Not Fade Away: Staying happy when you’re over 64!…

Born to be wild: Fresh Adventures

I don’t mean the kind of teenage lads’ adventure where you nearly kill yourself. This is about trying something new, being someone new, having the courage to explore the unknown, both in yourself and around you. It’s by exploring the new, even if it feels a bit risky, that you’ll find fresh talents in yourself, make new friends, discover more insights.

Bucket lists seem popular these days: forty things to do before you die. They often include exotic physical adventures like sky-diving in Patagonia. I don’t advocate this kind of jaunt: it’s a lot of money, a massive carbon footprint, and is it really helping you grow?

There three types of adventure explored in this chapter: inner, outer, and social. Here are a couple of ways you can check out the kind of adventures that suit you:

Do you have a sense of who you’d like to become, how you’d like to develop in the next few years?
Is there a long-standing hope or dream from your youth that you might fulfil now?
Do you have an interest or talent that you’ve never used, which you might develop at last?
Can you identify an activity, person or place that you’re a bit nervous about, but might be a fruitful adventure for you?

Adventures can have all kinds of aims. They can be about clearing old fears, resolving a conflict, or putting you in touch with a whole new side of yourself. Many of the chapters in Parts 2 and 3 of this book could show you the opening to your next adventure.

Inner Adventures

I’m using this term to mean ways you can explore new aspects of yourself, discover new strengths, and work on parts of yourself that you find difficult. These kind of adventures won’t cost money, and you can do them almost anywhere.

If you were preparing for a physical adventure, like a mountain trek, you’d prepare: you’d get the right maps and gear, you’d get fit, you’d have a plan of how to get to your destination, and back again. All of this has parallels for inner adventures: they need planning, provisions, and fitness too.

For inner adventures, this means starting with small, easy goals, and then building up. Here are a few examples to show you what an inner adventure might look like:

Try some music, books, or a movie, that’s unlike any you’ve tried before. Maybe pick a category at random, like steam punk…

Remember that the nature of true adventures is that you can’t control them, they’ll take you somewhere different, you can’t be sure of the outcomes. So let go of any expectations about where you get to with all of this!

Outer adventures

These can include physical activities from the gentlest, like water colours or origami, to the most strenuous. Try to be clear why you’re choosing something: be wary if it’s just about impressing people, copying others, ticking a box.

The most satisfying outer adventures are probably those which stretch you gently, and in several ways: not just physical fitness, but also emotional resilience, mental skills and awareness. Getting out in Nature can offer all this, and is a classic way to get new insights and direction when you need them.

There are plenty of physical adventures which are flamboyant, brief and expensive, like bungee jumping. You may get more out of quieter, slower, less expensive activities, such as walking or cycling on a pilgrimage route, or doing a vision quest.

Alan with the Conservation Volunteer Group at Hazel Hill Wood.

Social adventures

As we get older, there’s a risk that we have fewer friends and personal connections. This may be because people die, fall out with each other, move away, or just simply through retirement. The skills of making and mending friendships become very important in later life, and that’s partly what social adventures are about. If you’re shy and quiet, you need such adventures even more.

Here are some ideas for social adventures:

Try joining one or two new groups. Pick ones where their focus interests you, but deliberately stretch yourself, see if you can make some new contacts, even if it all feels stressful. The book by Dale Carnegie in Resources may help.
Experiment with turning an acquaintance into a friendship. For example, invite someone you know a bit to join you for a walk or some other outing. Remember, it’s an adventure: don’t reproach yourself if they turn down the invitation, or your outing feels a bit flat.

Many social adventures are a chance to refine your communication skills (expressing yourself and listening), and your emotional intelligence (empathy and intuition). Some of the Resources for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 can help with this.

See more of Alan’s book Not Fade Away: Staying happy when you’re over 64!

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