No matter what you are struggling with in your life, whether it be a difficult relationship, painful diagnosis, or just general disenchantment with where you are at, allowing hope in will brighten your experience of life.
This may seem easier said than done, but here are six reasons that you can (and should) feel hope in your life every single day.
1. You have hope anyway (or you wouldn't still be here).
Even the most pessimistic person has a tiny sprout of hope inside of them, or they wouldn't keep going on. The key is recognizing the natural existence of hope, and not resisting it. Rather allowing hope to grow and thrive within you is choosing to pull from the brighter side of the spectrum of human emotion.
This causes upward spirals instead of downward spirals of emotion and thought. Over time, this different momentum can shift the entire balance of your life.
2. Hope inspires forward action instead of stagnation.
Without hope, you will accept limitations (which may actually be false) and sit in suffering. But by allowing yourself to hope that you can somehow lift yourself to a higher place (even if you can't fix what is wrong), you will find yourself taking all kinds of forward moving action, instead of remaining powerless and stagnant in the darkness of suffering.
3. Hope actually costs you NOTHING.
Often we are afraid to believe things can improve because it logically seems "smarter" to doubt. Worst case scenario, you will spend your entire life believing in a brighter day. At the very end, would you rather have spent your entire life believing you had some control over the state of your existence and going on all of the adventures and down all the paths that belief led you to, or would you rather have spent your entire life without all of that color? I personally will not feel foolish for this in my dying moments, I will feel proud. A life of hope is a life well spent.
4. Hope is contagious.
The most powerful way to change the world around you is to change yourself. We are all teachers without trying to be- your state sends a message out to everyone you interact with. It either inspires or discourages, adds brightness or darkness.
5. Hope contributes to a stable type of self-esteem.
When I was younger, I either loved or hated myself based on my ability to conform to the standards of what society told me was love-worthy. Now, I love myself because of aspects of myself that I have intentionally cultivated. My ability to find some kind of hope in any situation is something that I love about myself that can't fade with age, nor can anyone take it from me.
6. Hope can help you discover a deeper truth.
There are several diagnosis that I was given years ago that were implied permanent states of suffering. Because I allowed myself to have hope, I decided to relentlessly test those limitations. I have learned that there are messages in our pain that can help our soul to grow in ways not possible had we not encountered suffering.
Retaining my hope turned me into a seeker, which became my way of life. Obviously, there are illnesses that cannot be cured by hope, but it is a way to remain powerful no matter what you are going through, by believing that you can make something positive out of your struggles.
So keep actively cultivating hope: the belief in a brighter day, and over time you just may find you have lived your way right into it.
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