Tag: hope

Hope.

If-youre-reading-thisNothing stops you from pursuing your dreams like the weight of hopelessness. It’s so heavy, it makes it hard to get out of bed, or meet your friend for a tea, or even pick up the phone. Sometimes people write to me and they feel desperately alone and sad. They’ve given up on themselves, on other people, on life itself. Most of them include the same question, “What’s the point of it all?” When you’re feeling off-center, life can really take you for a spin.

So many experiences befall us as humans that are hard to bear, or even to understand. There’s no shortage of things that can happen to bring a person to this point; most of us will feel this to some degree at one time or another. After all, there are times things seem so absurd. Can there really be 108 million people in our country helping the weight-loss industry make $20 billion dollars a year, when a billion people on the planet are undernourished? Is it any wonder when we feed ourselves a steady diet of, “you’re not good enough”? Do you ever stop and think about the messages we’re bombarded with all day every day, even if you do your best to watch what you feed yourself? I’m not talking about just food. Even if you don’t watch television, standing on line at the checkout counter at your supermarket can be a depressing experience. Catching just one awful headline about someone screwing up their life can be enough to lower your own vibration, or catching a glimpse of someone’s glossy, “perfect” life can also make you feel badly about yourself if you’re feeling vulnerable. Social media can be amazing if you’re selective about what you like and what you read, but it can also make you feel like crap if you aren’t careful. There are all kinds of ways you might allow yourself to be pummeled by the idea that you suck, and that could suck the hope out of anyone. A deluge of that stuff, day after day, year after year takes its toll, especially if you’re going through challenging times.

Your personal history comes into play here as well. We all have pain, but some people have more than others. We all have healing to do, but if you’re coming out of abuse or neglect, it’s very likely you’ll have to do some work to unlearn the lies you may have come to believe, such as, you aren’t worthy of love, or you’re a mistake, or no one could ever love you. You might think people suck, or everyone cheats, or everyone leaves, or you can’t trust anyone. You might believe the idea that the trauma you’ve been through has rendered you broken and unlovable. Those are all lies. You might need some help to look at things in a different way if that’s what you’re grappling with; sometimes we’ve been in defense mode so long, we don’t know how to open anymore. Maybe something has happened that’s turned your world on its head — maybe you’ve lost your job, or you’ve been betrayed, or you’ve lost someone you don’t know how to live without. Any of these things can make a person feel hopeless, and doubt not just their ability to face reality as it is, but also to ever enjoy life again.

The tendency when we feel hopeless is to deny the experience, to numb out or run away, or push it down or sleep it off, or to throw ourselves into work or relationships with a kind of desperation. Please let someone or something save me from these awful feelings that make my heart hurt and my head explode. No one can save you, nor can you save anyone. Everyone has to save themselves, and that means everyone has to figure out how to open to the truth of their own experience. If you can’t sit with your deepest pain and lean into it, it will own you, and you’ll never know yourself, which is the loneliest feeling in the world. That’s a hope-killer, being a stranger to yourself. If you aren’t able to examine your feelings as they arise, you’ll never release the heat of them, you’ll never find the freedom to open to love, and that is also a hope-killer. Without hope and without love, life is dark and something to endure. When you take that route, it’s guaranteed suffering and isolation. Running from yourself is like running from your shadow. You’ll never get away, and you’ll never be able to stop and rest.

If you want to find your hope again, you’ll have to sit through the knifing pain, first, or the discomfort, rage, shame, guilt, fear, doubt, or grief of your current reality, or your long-ago past. Things that help: people in your life who love you, real moments with people you know, or absolute strangers, taking the time to breathe in and breathe out consciously, reading, writing, hiking, weeping, anything that brings you into your body, whether it’s yoga, or salsa dancing or swimming. Being kind to yourself, and remembering to turn your attention to anything good that is happening, that you do have, no matter how simple or small. The ability to watch the sunrise or sunset. Food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a place to call home, at least one person who knows you and accepts you as you are, who really gets you. (You can be that person for yourself). We all have work to do. Feed any tiny bit of gratitude you can, because hope lives there. Give it even the tiniest bit of foundation, and it will start to grow for you. Hope brings energy. When you have energy and just a sliver of hope, you’ll probably get out of bed, and maybe you’ll even make it to the shower. Perhaps you can look out the window and let in the light. Eventually, you’ll find you want to take that call, you want to meet for tea, you want to believe that people are good, and you are good, and life is good. Which is nice, because those are not lies. As long as you’re breathing, there’s still the hope of turning things around, and finding your way back to love; that’s your center.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3

The Best Day is Today

There are so many people out there who feel trapped by their choices or their lack of action thus far. People who look at their lives and think, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this all I am, and all I’m going to do with my life?” People living in quiet desperation, feeling scared and small and unseen, and like it’s too late.

The thing is, as long as you’re breathing, it is never too late. You may look in your rear-view mirror and recognize some forks in the road that make you wish you could go back and make the other choice, but you can only be where you are, and other people can only be where they are. If you went back, and everyone was working with those same tools they had then, you’d almost certainly end up heading the way you went, and arriving where you are. There is pain on the path, that’s simply how it is. Sometimes we create more pain for ourselves because of our choices, and of course that can be hard to face. We either grow from the pain and allow it to soften us, or we run from it and allow it to harden us. I highly recommend softening. There’s no point berating yourself or hating yourself, and there’s nothing that will make you feel more miserable or alone if you do.

You start again, and you start now, that’s all. You take what you now know, and you use the tools you now have, and you plant yourself a tree. It doesn’t matter if you’re only going to live long enough to see a tiny green leaf pop through; that’s good enough. In fact, just sticking your hands in the dirt is enough because in order to plant anything that will grow, you have to be working with love and focus and a willingness to be present, to give and to nurture. While I’m talking about a tree here, it could be anything. Maybe you feel totally stuck in your job, but this is how you pay your bills, and yes, it’s awful, but you’re sixty and there’s no point trying anything new now. You can retire in five years and enjoy life then. In the meantime you can live for those two weeks of vacation time. I got an email from a man who feels that way just a few days ago. Doesn’t that sound depressing? What if you don’t make it five years? I mean, I hope you make it another forty, but I’m just saying, what if you don’t? Am I suggesting you turn in your resignation and join the Peace Corps? No, because your entire family would probably come after me, but I think you have to find something that fulfills you every single day. Something you can feed, because as you feed that something that makes you feel a sense of purpose and meaning, you’ll find you’re also feeding that love within you. I don’t think it matters much if you get one day of that, or two weeks, or twenty years. Obviously the more, the better, but something is better than nothing. Dying with the feeling that you never lived is a tragedy. Coming to the end of your life with the knowledge that too many things have been left undone and unsaid must feel torturously bad, and we don’t have an expiration date stamped on our a$$es, so who’s to say when any of us are coming to the end of our lives? If you’re ninety-seven, I’d say you probably want to get your affairs in order and make sure the people you love know you love them, and then I’ll hope for ten more good years for you, but I don’t think it makes sense to wait until we’re ninety-seven.

If you feel stuck in a relationship, start with communication. So many people live in fear of saying what’s true for them; the consequences seem too big and there’s a lack of faith that something new could emerge. Maybe you’ve resigned yourself to “how things are”, but nothing living stays the same. If “how things are” feels really bad to you, open your mind to the idea that honesty is always liberating, and “how things are” could change. You can’t change other people, but sometimes if you change, it creates an effect that might surprise you. I get a lot of emails from people talking about their partners. If only they would be different, everything would be great. This person does this or that, or doesn’t do this or that. You can’t touch any of that stuff. You may have communicated how you feel, and been clear about what you want, but sometimes showing someone is a lot more powerful. You be loving and kind and thoughtful. You do something surprising and romantic for no reason even if you don’t feel like it. Do it as an experiment if you must. Make a special dinner, or plan a date night and get a sitter and surprise your partner. Do something different and see what happens. If you’ve tried all that, and you’ve tried communicating and you’re still in trouble, then you’re going to have to have a more challenging conversation, that maybe starts with, “I’m in pain,” and you go from there. But nothing can grow in an environment that lacks hope. One day of living with your heart wide open is better than zero days. You may have to go through a considerable amount of pain to start living a life that feels good to you, but that’s better than a lifetime of despair.

Start today if you need to. Pick something, anything that will make you feel a little sense of hope or excitement. Volunteering is always good. Giving of yourself is the fastest way to feel fulfilled. If that doesn’t speak to you, sign up for a cooking class, or take yourself out for a nice meal. Shake things up. Clearly, I’m not talking to people who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads right now. That’s a whole other set of circumstances. Short of that, find a way to start planting your tree today. Anything will do. Trees that are planted with hope and love and a little bit of trust blossom more quickly than you might think. Don’t wait.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.