The Importance Of Hope In Life

When life is going smoothly and we 're getting our needs met, it 's easy to feel and be hopeful and optimistic. Hope, love, faith, optimism are all "easy" when life is "easy." The key is to find and sustain hope when life is presenting us with challenges, difficulties and obstacles. Where within yourself do find and access hope, when life is dishing out lemons? For that matter, what is hope? Webster defines hope as "wanting or wishing for something with confident expectation." To me, hope is about living with the anticipation of what can be, and someplace within you lies the belief that whatever it is you wish for or want, can be. To have hope is to have trust; trust in yourself that you are able to do what is necessary to "manifest" your hope;

What positive thoughts, activities, &/or behaviors have you taken for granted in easier times, that you now need to practice consciously and purposefully? Take a moment and think about this. Perhaps you pray, meditate, party with friends, go to a comedy club, exercise, work, etc. Even if you don 't feel the same sense of serenity and hopefulness that you felt before, NOW, when you feel scared, overwhelmed, hopeless, PRACTICE these connections, rituals and affirmations because they can sustain you while you wait for the crisis, or its aftermath to fade. Hope does emerge, as life goes on. Hope is ever alive and vibrant, waiting to be accessed, touched, embraced. No matter how overwhelmed, stressed, sad, scared you may feel, hope still resides within you. Remember the story of Pandora 's Box? After she let out all the pestilence, illness, heartache, devastation, negativity, etc. all that was left in the box once the lid was slammed shut was hope. Think about this for a moment. When we feel at our lowest, and the most empty, what 's left inside, even if we don 't connect to it right away? Hope! Remember the sayings: "hope springs eternal"; "where there 's life, there 's hope"; "The capacity for hope is one of the most significant facts of life-" Hope remains, patiently waiting for you to remember, that whatever is happening "has come to pass, it hasn 't come to stay". As you allow yourself to breathe into your fear, don 't run, don 't hide, don 't analyze, just breathe, slowly and deeply, and notice the shift that takes place within you. You 'll find that as your breathing gets slower and deeper, your heart rate starts to regulate and your thoughts start to quiet