Has despair become a regular specter in your life? Are you being haunted by negativity and paralyzed by a lack of motivation to reach your goals? Are you feeling like you’re never going to catch up, much less get ahead? Perhaps you are facing something you prayed you’d never have to and finding a way forward seems impossible.
What you need is hope so you can hang on through this rough time. Hope is the
expectation that good things can happen and then sets about to make sure they do. Hope is the motivation that puts you on the path toward turning your life around. To help you get started, below are five ways you can create a more hopeful life starting now.
1. Do a daily check-in. How are you feeling? If you’re not feeling hopeful, then it’s time to ask yourself why. Take the time to journal about your feelings and allow yourself to look deeply at what is causing your despair. After you’ve gotten your worries and fears on paper, decide on one thing can you do now to experience a glimmer of hope? Do it!
2. Positively deal with your health. The rules are simple. Eat right. Exercise. Sleep enough hours at night. When you’re not taking care of yourself, and you don’t feel well, it’s easy to fall into a spiral of depression and self-doubt. It’s when you feel great physically that hope thrives. What do you need to do to bring back hope then?
3. Know how to deal with stress. There are a lot of simple ways to process negative emotions. Exercise, meditation, or taking some special “you” time by having a massage or taking a bubble bath can do wonders to boost hopefulness.
4. Surround yourself with hope. Have positive people in your life. That may require you to say goodbye to some friends who bring you down, but it will be worth it. When you start focusing on all the good in your life, hope will naturally rebound. Because we are the combination of the five people we spend the most time with, it’s imperative we replace the sad-sacks in our lives with people who live life to the fullest.
5. Put the focus outside of yourself. Ask how you can instill hope in the world around you? Pay it forward. Give compliments. Perform random acts of kindness. By acting in a hopeful manner, you wind up giving hope to those around you, who in turn share that hope with the world around them. The best way to ensure hopefulness is to share it with others.