It was a novel concept for me to realize I can choose to hope in any circumstance that life throws at me, I mean any circumstance including the worst case scenarios. In this post I will describe three basic ways to adapt our responses so we can learn to choose hope in the darkest of moments. I can say this with confidence because I choose hope on a daily basis, and you can learn this as well.
Hope deferred can be a soul crushing experience. When we hope, we build our expectations. On the other hand, we often become discouraged and or despondent when our expectations are not met. I am not talking about the more mundane things like hoping that Mom makes my favorite dinner tonight. Rather, I am talking about the things that matter to us deeply such as hoping to carry a pregnancy after months of expensive infertility treatments or hoping that your brother-in-law survives late stage cancer that is eating away at his body.
Learning to hope is about our perspectives. What we believe drives how we experience life. We cannot control many circumstances in life. We cannot control other people. Have you ever tried to force someone to change themselves? You can exhaust yourself nagging them and they don’t change, you just run out of breath! However, you can learn to control your own thinking.
Step One
First, when I find my thoughts gravitating to hopelessness, my first step is to breathe. I take in a deep breath and exhale slowly as I let my heart rate slow down and give negativity a rest. As an example, at work today, the accrediting agency for our laboratory showed up for an inspection. Our company pays a large sum of money for the accreditation process. When the inspector started pulling up graphs and asked detailed and pointed questions to test my knowledge base, I started to sweat. I could answer most of her questions but not all of them.
Then, as old tapes of “you’re not good enough” and “you are stupid and ugly” played out in my head, I remembered to breathe. Just breathe. I realized that while I was embarrassed, I was going to be fine with my imperfection.
I could have easily stayed stuck in that state of feeling less than adequate, but after calming myself with deep breathing, I was able to change my perspective of the event. After all, I am a long time, hard working, and responsible employee. I will not lose my job for not knowing the answer to a highly technical question. The inspector simply identified an educational opportunity for myself and my co-workers.
Start With The Simple Things
You might be thinking that I have oversimplified the process and the example I gave was too easy to solve. You may have much bigger “fish to fry” in that you are looking to find hope in a much more complex situation. However, I used a simplified example because it takes practice over time to overcome years of conditioned negative responses.
We start with the simple issues and over time learn to apply those lessons to the more complicated challenges. If your ten year old child had just learned to keep him/herself afloat in your back yard pool would you immediately set them out to swim the English Channel? Of course not! If the goal was to swim the channel, you would set forth a training program and let your child strengthen and build their swimming skills.
Step Two
The second step to learning to hope is to start to adapt and adjust our thinking. Indeed, there are hundreds of examples I could use to demonstrate this concept. In my experience, if I try to change too much at one time, I set myself up to fail.
When my daughter was receiving vision therapy to help overcome a depth perception issue and to correct dyslexia, I learned that we can literally rewire the neural pathways in our brain. Some stroke victims and patients who have had a brain trauma have learned to walk and talk again after suffering severe paralysis. Is it possible to do this with our thoughts as well?
Absolutely! It takes practice to achieve these goals. Again, using swimming the English channel analogy, you start small and work your way to more challenging situations. It is a training process.
Step Three
The third step is to adapt your thinking, take the example of being cut off in traffic by another driver. What is your reaction? Do you get angry and curse the rude driver, honk your horn and shake your fist? Are you relieved that you narrowly avoided an accident?
I used to get angry and think the other driver was “out to get me”, until I was having a conversation with someone who said to me “how do you know the other driver was after you? Do you know them personally? Why would they be out to get you? Perhaps there is a family emergency and they were in a rush to get to the hospital, maybe they are going to be fired if they are late to work one more time. Is it worth all your energy to be so angry?”
Notice the technique my friend used? They questioned my reality and helped me think of other possibilities. Now, when I become aware of negative self talk, I start questioning the negativity. I separate my feelings from the facts.
Practice Helps
The other day a co-worker called me out on my negativity. It has been trained into me from a young age that “I am stupid”. I have spent most of my adult years fighting that negativity. My senior lab tech told me I did not have to use a certain chemical if my daily loading list did not call for it. I looked at him and said “I thought I needed that every time I calibrated, I’m so stupid” . He said, “No, you are not stupid! You just did not know”. I hope he raises his kids the way that he encourages his co-workers.
Although I don’t practice this adaptive thinking perfectly, I have practiced long enough to have reaped the rewards. These are the three techniques that I use as front line defense against hopelessness, first take a deep breath. Secondly, evaluate your beliefs about the event. Thirdly, practice thinking more positively. If you do this on a regular basis for simple challenges, you will gradually be able to apply these techniques to more challenging situations.
I will be adding to this topic over time. Try practicing these daily and let me know how well it works for you.
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