What side of HOPE do you live on?

Hope is an interesting concept.

I’ll never forget when I worked at a group home with foster kids, young women who had all experienced trauma of some kind…

One of these girls sat down with me and expressed to me how she refuses to entertain hope, how it was the most dangerous thing there was, and of course, this only makes sense given her history.

Look up quotes on HOPE and you’ll see all kinds.

Hope is our saving grace.

Hope is evil.

Hope is anything in between.

Yikes.

But hope is a dangerous thing if that’s where you live.

ANY state of being is dangerous if it takes you out of the present moment, because the present moment is all you have.

Living each moment with positive expectancy is different that living in the future, married to hope  in a way that will prolong any kind of torment.

(Is your reality torment, by the way?)

Expectancy speeds progress. Therefore, live in a continual state of expectancy. No matter how much good you are experiencing today, expect greater good tomorrow. Expect to meet new friends. Expect to meet new and wonderful experiences. Try this magic of expectancy and you will soon discover a dramatic side to your work which gives full vent to constructive feeling.

– Ernest Holmes

We are constantly changing, it’s simply nature.

In a universe with limitless possibility, what you attend to is what will create your reality.

Yes, your reality is perception that depends upon your attention.

A little hope, then, can go a long way.

But you must not desperately cling to hope and wish away your current reality.

Instead, you must all dig deeper and embrace what you love about your reality today so as to usher in more of it, in greater amounts.

But going back to Nietzsche, is your present moment torment?

Is it hard to find what you love about your reality today?

There’s even more valuable information for you. You know clearly what you don’t want (this information can help you create what you DO want).

The mistake here that so many people make is that they turn away from their reality. They try to wish and hope it away, yet they don’t truly believe the hope they are clinging to. The positive expectancy is a lie they are telling themselves.

Whether it’s marriage that doesn’t seem to be working or a business that’s sucking the life from them, they turn their back.

Denial is a bitch.

When you cut yourself off from something, it becomes that much worse. But so many do it on autopilot, without even realizing.

The cure is always in your connection.

Sometimes we’d rather disconnect than be in touch with the pain that a disconnect often causes. Disconnecting serves us for the short term, but at our long term expense if we fail to re-connect.

Connect back to yourself in this moment, regardless of whether you experience torment, and allow the change that is inevitable to occur. Embody the positive expectation that incredible things are not only on your path ahead, and recognize that there are many right here in this moment.

Use hope as a scaffold to your faith when at times it might be tested, but never as an escape.

That’s the side of hope I aim to stay on, and I hope you do too!