ACTIVE HOPE
ACTIVE HOPE
Do you often find yourself beginning a sentence with the words 'I hope', as in “I hope I get the promotion …the new job …a pay rise …a new relationship”. Do you get the picture? We use the word 'hope' - do we use it correctly? What do we mean by hope? It is a wish not truly believed. It is an aspiration that one feels is somehow in the lap of fate and random chance -maybe it is, but I believe it is not when it is done with faith. Not religious faith rather personal faith, unshakable confidence that - it can really happen
This reflection is about hope. Hope fundamentally is a feeling that a desire will be fulfilled. This is its definition according to popular usage in dictionaries. Yet we frequently find ourselves using the words "I hope", when we don't expect the desire to be fulfilled at all! So you say, “I hope I get the job” when deep down inside you don't believe you will. “I hope I will not get sick” when again you just don’t know or believe that hoping really makes a difference.
I believe for hope to be truly effective it has to contain faith and a little bit of love. It has to endorse our deep heart-felt belief in the achievability of the success we seek so that hope is spoken of, as a feeling that all will be well.
When we lose hope we lose everything.
Hope is one of the most powerful forces in our lives because it enables us to stay positive, enables us to have faith and believe we are going to succeed. Hope does spring eternal for the optimistic person. They always believe tomorrow, and the day after it is going to work out. But the person without hope gives up. It is one of the saddest realities of our life that many people who have taken their own lives in tragic circumstances had reached a point of futility. Where nothing mattered, they had given up the hope that things could be better.
Hope is a powerful force, and we need to understand that we should engage hope in our lives with a positive belief that our desires and our goals will be fulfilled.
Without taking action our hope ends up becoming little more than wishfulness.
Active hope makes for success
I believe there is 'active' hope and 'inactive' hope. Inactive hope is when you use positive words, but in truth, you don't believe. You may say, “I hope I find a wonderful new job”, but you don’t really believe it is going to happen. In circumstances over which you have absolutely no control hoping for something to come true, borders on a miracle having to occur. Active hope, however, is when there is sufficient evidence in your belief that what you wish to happen will happen because you truly believe it is realistically possible.
Active hope is having a belief that your goals can realistically happen.
Active hope is when you determine to do something with the knowledge that it is possible. In addition to having hopes for ourselves, we can encourage the hopes and the aspirations of others. When someone tells you there's something they want to do or achieve in their lives, encourage them.
My only desire when I meet someone who tells me of their hopes and their aspirations is to increase their sense of hope, to increase their aspirations, and to turn them from being inactive to active. To move them on from talking towards doing.
All too often in our lives, we lose hope. I believe for many of us who are engaged in the current COVID-19 landscape, we've looked at this as something that we just hope we can get through do but we don't really know we can. I want you to take time today to think clearly about the joy you will feel in three months time, when life returns to a new normal we are well all on the road to recovery and understanding.
When you consider any challenges you face, please use active hope (where you choose to believe in a positive successful outcome and hold positive thoughts). When you do, it will build and increase that feeling that the outcome you seek can be realised.
