What maintains your hope?

I asked that same question.  After losing a cousin to suicide, and sitting with clients in overwhelm, I was personally running low on hope.

So I asked this question to friends…and this blog wrote itself.

“What maintains your hope?”…

• Nature and water are soothing and renewing
• Daily practice of gratitude
• Humor
• Love
• Kindness to others and self
• Music
• A good book
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Hugs, and cuddling with your dog (or cat, if they let you 😉)
• Baking/cooking
• Staying creative
• Volunteering
• Advocacy
• Connection with people
• Rest (fatigue and hope are incompatible!)

• Slowing your pace, taking your time, doing it right
• Children/Grandchildren
• Pixie dust 😉
• Chocolate, coffee, and wine
• Exhale and start each day new
• Prayers and faith
• “And if you lose your hope, call your sister, your brother, your parents, your friends. Look up to the sun or take some quite time away from your stress to just breathe, read, or listen to music.  But ultimately, hope comes from within.  Sometimes you just have to wake it up.” – Marci Walker

Perhaps not at all surprising, these comments align with wisdom traditions.  Truth is a lived experience and when wisdom and experience align, that’s self-corroborating truth.  Wisdom traditions cite the following as “healing salves.”

• Silence
• Exercise
• Breathwork
• Singing
• Dancing
• Laughter
• Good food
• Nature

Notice how these are all active things to do?  They are not merely concepts and ideas.  Hope isn’t the same as optimism.  It’s investing in action that reconnects to our inherent energy that believes the future will be better than the present and working to make it so.

Hope is within, but there are times when it feels like events in life bury it deep.  There are times when we stop working to make hope so.  These are times when it requires work to find the damn outlet…turning to someone who has a solid connection to hope and can help relight your flame.

May we all work for hope within ourselves and within others.