Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay. – Maya AngelouHope is directly related to our sense of possibility. The greater our perception of possibilities, the greater our hope. The most constricted view of possibility, of course, is hopelessness or despair.Hope is not the same as happiness or optimism. It is what we feel when we think that life is worth living, that our work is worth doing.
Hope is what we have when we have a positive relationship with God. It is the deepest of the three emotions. Happiness and optimism cannot exist without hope, but hope can exist without happiness or optimism.
Hope Answers The Question, “Why Bother?”
Doctors know that hope affects our ability to heal. Hopeful patients have higher levels of dopamine, endorphins and other neurochemicals which promote wellbeing and the energy for living. Hope is our energy, our fuel for living, so people will go to great lengths to protect it.
Hope Answers The Question, “Why Bother?”
Doctors know that hope affects our ability to heal. Hopeful patients have higher levels of dopamine, endorphins and other neurochemicals which promote wellbeing and the energy for living. Hope is our energy, our fuel for living, so people will go to great lengths to protect it.
Without it you lack energy to engage with life. Hope is so essential that a negative childhood can reduce the brain’s ability to create dopamine which may lead to addiction because drugs increase dopamine levels in people who do not have the ability to create it naturally.
Why Does Hope Make Such A Difference?
When you size up your hope you are essentially taking an existential account of where you are. It is an assessment of your ability to survive now and into the future. Your assessment tells you where to put your energies and your time. Hope is a serious emotion.
Hope has to be real. It has to be based on something tangible. You can fake optimism and pretend to be happy but deep down inside, you know whether or not you have hope. Hope recognizes your interdependency with your family, culture, society and your environment. So a genius in a war torn country probably is less hopeful that an average person in a peaceful place.
When hope is damaged it affects more than one person. When real hope is denied it is hard to replace. When a person has lost hope it can be hard to find motivation again. The most important impact we have on each other is through how we affect each other’s hopes.
When hope exists you engage with God more.
You give more of yourself to what you do – as does everyone else around you. Hope engages your creativity and your problem solving skills. It is a factor in your ability to appreciate yourself and others and your ability to be grateful for your life. Hope has a roll up your sleeves and get to work quickly. It gets its hands dirty in the business of creating a better life. It values all of the details, skills and challenges that go into creating our world.
Hope requires a willingness to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t so it cannot see failure, only steps on a learning path. It does not fall for false optimism or empty promises. Living hopefully simply means taking care of your contribution and supporting the positive evolution of human life. It’s motto is “Progress, not perfection.”
Hope is grounded in present reality. It does not sugar coat. It thinks enough of your creativity to present you with real problems. Hope is serious about life. It is our link to each other, the past and the future. It enables you to respect the efforts of your history makers even as you decide not to repeat their mistakes. It respects the needs of other living creatures and future needs as well. It is “something larger than yourself” that you are a part of.
Living a hopeful life is to recognize that everything and everyone matters. That includes you since you are part of the hopefulness in the world. Taking care of yourself matters. The quality of the work you do matters. It matters how you are treated and how you treat others.
Hope requires a willingness to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t so it cannot see failure, only steps on a learning path. It does not fall for false optimism or empty promises. Living hopefully simply means taking care of your contribution and supporting the positive evolution of human life. It’s motto is “Progress, not perfection.”
Hope is grounded in present reality. It does not sugar coat. It thinks enough of your creativity to present you with real problems. Hope is serious about life. It is our link to each other, the past and the future. It enables you to respect the efforts of your history makers even as you decide not to repeat their mistakes. It respects the needs of other living creatures and future needs as well. It is “something larger than yourself” that you are a part of.
Living a hopeful life is to recognize that everything and everyone matters. That includes you since you are part of the hopefulness in the world. Taking care of yourself matters. The quality of the work you do matters. It matters how you are treated and how you treat others.
In order to be an effective part of a hopeful world there are certain things that you need to do regularly:
Take Good Care Of Your Health
Create hopeful relationships. Learn to forgive.
Help others see the best in themselves, notice their desire to make meaningful contributions and help them find their path to becoming hope makers for themselves and others. The easiest way to control others is to destroy people’s hope. Divide and conquer is an old social control mechanism.
Take Good Care Of Your Health
Create hopeful relationships. Learn to forgive.
Help others see the best in themselves, notice their desire to make meaningful contributions and help them find their path to becoming hope makers for themselves and others. The easiest way to control others is to destroy people’s hope. Divide and conquer is an old social control mechanism.
It creates fear instead of hope. So when there is a level playing field, barriers are brought down, hopefulness is inevitably increased by reducing obstacles to it. Look for ways to make hopefulness tangible. Don’t let it be just something for the future. Hope is all of the little things you do each day to make your life better. Everything you do contributes to hopeful living or takes away from it.
Hope implies a certain amount of perseverance — i.e., believing that a positive outcome is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary. Life is about how you choose to react to things and what you decide to focus on. When you focus on the negative, you get negative. Like attracts like. And, when you focus on the positive, you reap positivity.
Sometimes, in order to avoid losing hope, it takes a reassessment of the situation. Although we might think we wanted a certain thing in life, if something prevents us from getting it, we tend to react in one of two ways. Either we give up and throw our hands in the air in silent resignation or we push through the hurt and the pain until we get what we want.
Hope implies a certain amount of perseverance — i.e., believing that a positive outcome is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary. Life is about how you choose to react to things and what you decide to focus on. When you focus on the negative, you get negative. Like attracts like. And, when you focus on the positive, you reap positivity.
Sometimes, in order to avoid losing hope, it takes a reassessment of the situation. Although we might think we wanted a certain thing in life, if something prevents us from getting it, we tend to react in one of two ways. Either we give up and throw our hands in the air in silent resignation or we push through the hurt and the pain until we get what we want.
However, not all of us can keep up the good fight all the time, and it’s easy to get discouraged. We need to see if that’s something we really wanted that badly in life. Because, when we set goals or we have some hope or dream that we’re driving towards, we have to ensure that we addressed the three W’s of goal setting: What, Why, and When.
If we didn’t have a strong enough reason why we wanted to achieve something, then we might have subconsciously given up on that goal long before we consciously realized it. Sometimes, failure is necessary in order to open ourselves up to something even greater. So, be sure to look at the situation from a different light. You might end up seeing something you didn’t see before, even if it hurts right now.
If you surround yourself with people invested in creating a hopeful world with you, then you are fortunate. However, not everyone will necessarily have a hopeful outlook. You can still support hope in someone else’s life whether they are able to value it or not. Helping to restore hope when it has been lost is a noble thing to do.
In the human race each one of us is a small mirror of talents, love and joy that we have to offer each other to create our world. So hope is energy – your positive energy, your talents, value and your soul. It is the lifeblood of the human race.
The easiest way to support a hopeful world is to support hope in others.
If you surround yourself with people invested in creating a hopeful world with you, then you are fortunate. However, not everyone will necessarily have a hopeful outlook. You can still support hope in someone else’s life whether they are able to value it or not. Helping to restore hope when it has been lost is a noble thing to do.
In the human race each one of us is a small mirror of talents, love and joy that we have to offer each other to create our world. So hope is energy – your positive energy, your talents, value and your soul. It is the lifeblood of the human race.
The easiest way to support a hopeful world is to support hope in others.
