The Importance of Hope

Success differs from person to person, but whatever success looks like to you, it will take many efforts and attempts in order to get it right. Embrace the journey and work to maintain hope. Hope will take you all the way. Hope pushes you to look for solutions, encourages you to keep trying, and forces you to remember why you started the venture in the first place. You can more easily resolve your problems with love when you remember to have hope. Without hope, no one would ever try anything. Even when someone else is pushing us to do something, they have hope that we will succeed, or else they wouldn't bother pushing us forward. With hope, especially when we intentionally work to increase our hope, we continue working and ending up succeeding beyond our wildest dreams.

Working from a place of hope sets you up to look for the bright side, and you don't have to think as hard about looking for the bright side. Loving from a place of hope sets you up to give love more generously. Building from a place of hope enables you to be more considerate of who will be using it, and therefore, the quality increases. You have hope that people will actually use it, so you begin to think empathetically from the perspective of the consumer, reader, tenant, etc.

Hope transforms at the rate that you allow yourself to be hopeful, and I think this is the best time to explain that I am not saying to "hope for the best". Have you ever heard that phrase "hope for the best, prepare for the worst"? That is terrible mindset advice because you are putting yourself through an emotional rollercoaster. Take, for example, a job interview. In the best-case scenario, they hire you and give you a sign-on bonus. In this mindset, you are envisioning yourself cashing a check, let alone getting the job. Then, in order to prepare for the worst, you might envision not only getting rejected by this specific job opportunity but not finding a job in time and becoming a beggar on the street.

Do not hope for the best, prepare for the worst, because now your mind will be in the habit of envisioning extreme scenarios. Life is more in the middle, first of all, and secondly, it's an inefficient way to use your mental energy. A more efficient way is to detach from expectations and simply hope that you will resolve any obstacle in your path. A key element of this is to avoid putting emphasis, or emotional energy into one picture of success for yourself. Be flexible, maybe that dress looked good on the hangar, but it doesn't hug your curves just right. That doesn't mean stop shopping! Your best dress might be the green one instead of the traditional black one. ;)

Do hope that you have what it takes for every situation, even when that situation requires you to walk away and move on. As for unexpected hard times, accept them when they come, and maintain hope that you will resolve it. There is no need to think too proactively for hard times, because in my experience, you buy the flashlight and batteries for in case the power goes out, and when the storm comes, your power didn't go out, but you needed something else that you didn't get! So you're left with extra batteries, and still problem-solving as if you had never prepared for the storm.

The best emergency preparedness is actually maintaining good relationships with lots of people in your community during the good times. Be as self-sustaining as you can and lean on your community when your efforts had a blind-spot. Do not call one person every time something goes wrong, and do not call them immediately when you don't know what to do. Try to resolve it on your own with hope, first, and then reach out to lots of people without putting pressure on them to help. Then, have hope that someone will know how to solve whatever problem you're facing.

Remember, there is nothing new under the sun. Whatever problem you're facing, someone has gone through something similar, and the chances are good that you know someone who can help. And they had hope to get the information and wisdom that they have, too. For whatever success looks like to you, you have to have hope in order to get started, and once you figure out hope, it'll carry you all the way. <3