MONDAY—FIND WHERE HOPE LIVES IN YOUR BODY

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is the day for you to clearly find where hope lives in your body!

Find a place where you can sit uninterrupted for a while. Take a few deep breaths and then as vividly as you can, recall and then “relive” a situation where things did not look good and you were driven by fear. (Pick a moderate fear scenario, not a terrifying one!) What did you feel and where did you feel it?

Now think of another challenging situation where you were hope-filled. What were the sensations in your body?

Write down the differences between the two memories as clearly, and as descriptively, as you can. Describe the physical sensations; what your feelings were; where you felt them; what they were like; how you behaved, and how others responded to you.

How connected did you feel to God or the spiritual realms in both conditions? Write down anything that you can think of that was different between the two situations.

Once you are conscious of the differences, you can be more aware of the polarity—hope or fear—from which you are operating at any time. And if you find yourself at the fear and darkness end, move towards hope and light.

This reminds me of the brightness or contrast bar in a computer. As we move the cursor towards one end of the bar, the screen image and all we see lightens or darkens. As we slide up and down the hope/fear continuum, our whole world lightens as we move to hope, and darkens the closer we travel to fear.

Write notes to yourself at home and at work that say “Hope!”, to remind you to choose hope and faith, and not fear or hopelessness. Put one on your desk or in your drawer as a reminder. Perhaps a little one on your mobile phone! Or put one on the wall of your bedroom so it’s the first thing you see in the mornings.

These notes may sound silly but they work as symbols to remind us that we can choose hope any time we have the courage and will to do it.

Go to bed recreating that feeling of hope inside you.

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