Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left or hurt or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
Louis Erdrich
Got Hope?
If you answered no or maybe to that question, it is understandable. There are plenty of things in this world right now to rob us of hope, but we can’t let that happen. We need hope if we are going to create a better future. If your hope is nonexistent or isn’t as strong as you would like it to be, I want to help you reclaim and grow it, so you can experience the benefits of it and help create a better tomorrow.
Hope is simple, but it is not easy. But there are things you can do to be more hopeful, since it is a mindset and not a feeling. Also, there are very real benefits to being hopeful, all of which you deserve. Hope requires intention, practice and action though, otherwise it is hard to hold onto and turns into wishful thinking.
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If you want something you’ve never had, you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.
Unknown
Hope is about taking action toward something that is meaningful to you
The world needs your hope and the good that you can do. If you are struggling with being hopeful, I want to help you change that. If you are not sure, review the questions below and see if you answer yes to any of them.
Do you struggle to set goals or lack enthusiasm for your goals?
Are the pathways to your goals unclear or not leading you to where you want to go?
Do you feel stuck?
Does the amount of mental energy you have to pursue your goals feel nonexistent or hard to sustain?
Does the current state of the world make you feel like there is nothing you can do to make things better?
Do you feel like you have little or no control over your life?
Are you going through a difficult personal or professional transition that is making you feel depleted?
At times, do you lack confidence in your ability to achieve your goals?
Are you feeling stressed, anxious and or burnt out?
If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, you are probably experiencing a low sense of hope. But it doesn’t have to be that way, even when life is difficult. I want to work with you to become more hopeful. Research shows that hope is nurtured by our connectedness to others, so let’s connect!
Shame, fear, exhaustion, illness, day-to-day frustrations and disappointments and a steady stream of negative thoughts can diminish or rob us of hope.
To increase your hope, I will meet you where you are and together we will:
Measure your current level of hope (yes, hope is measurable.)
Understand where you have been, where you are, where you want to go and why.
Identify and or review goals to make sure they are desirable, realistic and achievable.
Identify and or review the pathways to those goals to make sure they make sense and discuss the external and internal barriers that may prevent you from making progress and achieving your goals.
Better understand the mental energy you have to pursue your goals and identify ways to increase and sustain it.
Create a plan for tracking progress.
Make sure you have the necessary resources to pursue the pathways to your goals.
Recognize and better understand thought patterns, emotions and behaviors that deplete you of hope and start to develop new thought patterns and habits that help increase and sustain hope.
Understand what success looks like to you.
Whether we work together for a short or long time, by the time we are done working together, I want you to have:
Greater belief in yourself and your ability to set and achieve your goals.
Desirable, achievable and realistic goals.
Pathways to your goals along with an understanding of potential obstacles.
The mental energy to pursue your goals and practices for sustaining it, especially in the face of obstacles and emotional triggers.
Actions you can take to increase your hope.
A better understanding of what you can and cannot control, especially as it relates to your pathways and goals.
An understanding of the importance of taking care of yourself and plans for how you will do that.
A desire to do good and spread hope.
Let’s work together to uncover, reconnect to and grow the hope that already exists within you.
Even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward.
Victor Kiam
Why Hope?
Hope is a superpower that too many of us don’t understand and underutilize. Our capacity to hope is one of the single biggest predictors of well being. Research suggests people living with high levels of hope have fewer chronic health issues and better mental health. They also have a strong social support network and tend to live longer. Hope has been shown to be an excellent coping strategy against burning out.
Everything starts with hope. Hope makes the impossible possible and changes wishes into reality.
Hope consists of goals, pathways to our goals and the mental energy energy we need to pursue them. Hope provides a framework that allows us to break down even the most complex goals into manageable and doable steps to achieve them. It requires us to have awareness of and tend to the mental and physical energy we have to pursue our goals.
Hope requires us to take action now to create a better future.
Why Work With Me?
I have a card on my desk that says There Is Always A Way to remind me that no matter how hard things may seem, there is always a path forward to something better. I want you to believe that, too.
For a long time, I had an uneasy relationship with hope. But through studying the science of hope for the last two plus years, nurturing the hope of others, allowing others to nurture my hope and developing practices that help me sustain hope, I understand its importance. This has helped me recognize emotions, change behaviors, activities and thought patterns that used to drain me of hope and given me more energy and confidence to do good and create a better future while getting through big and small challenges along the way.
In the last couple of years, I was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer, unexpectedly let go from a job and pivoted to a whole new career path. Hope got me through all of it, and it continues to be a choice I make every day. I’ve learned to remain hopeful even when my emotions and life’s events try to convince me not to be.
I worked in leadership development for 20 years, and I have coached and supported hundreds of people in being more hopeful and make progress toward and or achieve their goals. I’ve learned that when you focus on hope, leadership happens. My approach is to serve as a guide and create space for reflection and exploration. I listen carefully, ask questions, am empathetic and resourceful and can say difficult things in a way people can hear them. I also am very curious and love supporting the success of others.
In addition to working in leadership development, I worked in operations, project management and content and program development. I now want to focus on what I love doing most - helping individuals and groups be more hopeful and supporting them in making the world a better place. I guess you can call me a hope dealer or perhaps a hope personal trainer.
Values
I believe hope is about aligning your head, heart and gut, so you can go and do what you are meant to do. To this work I bring a belief in and commitment to:
Honesty
Kindness
Curiosity
Empathy
Self care and having something to look forward to each day.
You being the expert on where you want to go and what you want to do.
Fees
I wish I could do this for free, but I can’t. To learn more about fees, please contact me at ruthlesslyhopeful@gmail.com
Contact
As Petula Clark sang, call me. Or let’s start with an email at ruthlesslyhopeful@gmail.com if you have questions or want to discuss working together.
My journey to becoming Andy, Sam and Ellie’s mom.