In our own lives and in the lives of those around us, it is everywhere: suffering, sadness, anger, hunger, heartbreak, hatred, destruction, disappointment. Sometimes it all seems hopeless. In the face of all of this pain, can we really be hopeful? The answer is: yes, we can. And we must! It is my hope that these tips will help you to be hopeful.
Instructions
1. Commit. Hope is not something that blooms in a person's heart and mind accidentally. A hopeful outlook on life requires daily devotion, attention, action and hard work. You cannot cultivate hope without commitment.
2. Embrace hopelessness. "What?" you're asking. "You just said to commit to cultivating hope. This doesn't make sense." You're right. It doesn't make sense. It's a contradiction. Life is full of things that don't make sense, full of contradictions. You cannot have hope without hopelessness, and the truth is, no matter how devoted, hardworking and hopeful you are, life will not go the way you want it to all of the time. Part of being hopeful is letting go of your attachment to specific outcomes and accepting that sometimes, certain situations are hopeless. You won't get everything you hope for. You might not even get 1 percent of what you hope for. Once you embrace this idea, you are free to get on with being hopeful about what you really can control, namely your perspective.
3. Get grateful with a gratitude journal. Every day, write down five things for which you are grateful. They can be very simple things. It doesn't matter what you write on your list just as long as you actually make your list--every day! This may seem like an overly simple exercise, but it is an extremely powerful tool for improving the quality of your thoughts and the quality of your life.
4. Discipline your mind. We tend to think that we have little or no control over our thoughts, as if thoughts, free-thinking, free-moving individuals who come and go from our minds as they please. It's as if thoughts visit our minds like unpredictable, overbearing guests, holding us captive until they decide to part and leave us to pick up their mess. This is not the case. Your thoughts are yours, and if you want your thoughts to be positive, you must discipline your mind. Think of another way: good parents don't let their children eat candy all day, stay up all night or skip school whenever they feel like staying home, nor do good pet owners allow their dogs to jump on strangers, eat from the table or wreck havoc on the neighbor's yard. Your mind requires the same discipline and boundaries. To allow your mind to run wild with hopeless thoughts is like letting your child or puppy run free without rules. When a hopeless thought arrives, notice and observe it, but do not grab onto it or associate with it as though that thought encompasses the totality of your being. Just because you have a hopeless thought, doesn't mean you are a hopeless human being. Once you detach from that hopeless thought, what can you do to shift it to one of hope?
5. Take a spiritual journey. At the foundation of many religious traditions and spiritual practices are existential questions such as: "Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? How am I best to live in the world?" Wrestling with these questions might not always make us feel hopeful, but it will help us to realize that we--as individual human beings--are just one small part of a very big, mysterious, inexplicable universe. There are forces at play in our lives that we cannot see or comprehend. I have found that recognizing my own smallness and humbling myself through spiritual practice has liberated me to feel more hopeful by trusting in a divine order that is way beyond my individual drama taking place here in this material world.
6. Help others. Volunteer your time to plant trees in your city, clean your grandmother's garage or teach underprivileged children build bicycles. Helping others will give you a larger perspective on the human condition, and as is the case with developing a spiritual practice, helping others helps you to feel connected to a something bigger than yourself. It also helps you feel hopeful simply because you are taking action. Taking action with the purpose of helping others nearly always leads to more hope for everybody involved.
7. Surround yourself with hopeful people. It's simple but true; thoughts and attitudes are contagious. The more hopeful the people around you are, the more hopeful you will be.
8. Trust that everything will be fine. It won't be painless. It won't be easy. It will be far, far, far, far from perfect. That is just how it is. But it is going to be just fine. You are doing fine. We will all be fine.
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