How to Stop Letting Anxiety and Negative Thoughts Ruin Your Life Pt. 13
In the thirteenth video of the series, I’m talking about how to find hope even when it seems tough and how to build your capacity to hold it every day.
If you’re interested in working with me in a consulting or coaching capacity, you can jump on my calendar at https://theharthabits.com/about
00:00 Intro
00:30 I called bullshit
01:57 TL/DW: Here’s the answer
03:16 Hope is a Thinking Process
03:49 1. Goals
04:34 2. Pathways
05:16 3. Agency
05:37 Internal Agency
06:58 External Agency
08:28 Wrap up
If anxiety and negative thinking has left you feeling hopeless, you are here on purpose, and I have a message especially for you.
I called bullshit
As I was developing The Hart Habits, I came across a verse that said, “Love always hopes,” but I had personally encountered many times where love, specifically, had left me feeling especially hopeless.
Before I dive into anything today, I want to address that if you are feeling hopeless, first off, I understand, I’ve been there before.
Secondly, you matter, that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m creating this video. Spirit wants you to know you matter and there is help available.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Number is 800-273-8255.
We want you here, I want you here and hopefully, today’s message will give you some specific steps to take to cultivate more hope in your life intentionally.
It’s a skill that you can actually learn, practice, and get better at.
But it turns out that hope, scientifically speaking, is also an outcome of practicing the nine other Hart Habits.
I didn’t know that when I started this process, but it seemed quite fitting that that’s how it worked out.
TL/DW: Here’s the answer
So, the habit is hope. It’s the 10th and final Hart Habit, and the mantra that goes with it is, “I maintain or find hope, even when it’s not easy.”
It’s easy to say, “Oh, just find hope, just hold onto hope.” And that’s all there is to it. But I know personally, I have been in places in my life where I could not have found hope if I wanted to. I did want to and I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I had to tap into practical tools that were going to be safe for me. Those tools were based on the system I created and that I’m here to share with you today.
Fortunately, they worked. They got me through those hopeless times and helped me get to the other side successfully.
That doesn’t mean that I never go through times of hopelessness, or anxiety, or overwhelming difficult thoughts.
However, it does mean I have tools to help me get through it and find hope again and to cultivate and build more hope in my life overall.
Hope is a Thinking Process
I talk this way because hope has been studied by scientists. They’ve studied what it is, how it works, and what it does for people.
What they found is that hope is a thinking process that contains a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency. That’s the technical terminology.
So, if it’s a thinking process, it’s something that we can apply for ourselves, right?
If we can think consciously or become conscious of our thoughts, we can apply any process we want to them.
This thinking process is a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency so, what does that mean for you?
1. Goals
Number one is goals. This refers back to Hart Habit number one, self, which is about knowing and understanding who you are, what matters to you, what your boundaries are, what your visions are.
It pulls in a little bit of number seven, record, where I’ve talked about putting your visions down in written, audible, art format, or any kind of format that you can figure out.
So, the first element of hope is to have goals of your own, to take the time to know yourself, and understand what is it you want.
If you’re finding yourself hopeless think about what it is you want? What are your goals?
2. Pathways
Number two is pathways and that refers to how you can access those goals or what the ways are for you to accomplish or manifest those goals.
What is unique about this part of the research is that it’s not based on pie in the sky dreaming and fantasy land.
It’s based on what are realistic pathways or the real ways that exist for you to manifest and accomplish those goals?
From a scientific perspective, it’s about facing the truth, which is Hart Habit number two, and facing the situation head-on, not blind, positive thinking.
3. Agency
The third part of the hope trilogy process is agency.
Agency refers to your actual ability to travel those pathways and accomplish those goals.
There are two parts I like to break that agency down into.
Internal Agency
The first is the internal part of our agency or our ability to accomplish them.
When I talk about our internal agency, I’m talking about our thoughts. Yes, we have physical agency as well, but that can vary dramatically for each of us. What doesn’t vary much is our ability to access our conscious thoughts, which is Hart Habit number four.
We often blame our ability to hope, or not, on outside circumstances like, “Oh, there’s this many people in a movement now so now I have hope, or not.”
But science shows that hope has to do with our thoughts and how we align them towards our goals and endure inevitable difficulties.
We just talked about enduring last week because it’s the ninth Hart Habit.
So, by consistently practicing The Hart Habits, you’ll find that you have the capacity to access hope because you’ve developed tools that allow you to tap into, your manifesting agency.
You’ll be able to ask and answer: “What is the goal? What is the realistic solution? What resources do I have around me? How can I move towards that goal even a little bit?”
External Agency
This is the final, most crucial piece of hope and the piece that differentiates it from the other Hart Habits and ties you in to the people around you. Up until now, most of what I’ve talked about has related to things we must do internally or with ourselves. But, hope describes how all of the habits tie us in to our community as well.
When I talk about pathways and agency, the piece that comes into play in “external agency” is your community or your connection to the outside world or the world outside your body.
It’s in connecting to our community that we find out where all the pathways are to accomplish or manifest our goals. We don’t have all the pathways within ourselves. We need supports, people, and resources in our community to help us understand and utilize those pathways.
As we understand what those pathways are, we can better understand our agency or ability to travel those pathways and accomplish those goals because now we understand what our team looks like as well.
I love Pamela Slim’s new book, “The Widest Net,” because in a wide net, we all catch plenty for all of us.
We have a great big net of people in life and as we connect to one another with more strength, our hope can rise and it’s easier for all of us to have hope because we can tap into other people when that’s what we need.
All the other Hart Habits play into this when you understand them. When we practice them regularly, we’re able to develop relationships where people have space to be themselves, we have space to be ourselves, and they are trusting and edifying relationships that build each of us as we enjoy them together.
Wrap up
When you’re struggling with the habit of hope, you’ll probably find yourself feeling really resigned to the circumstances around you, pessimistic, and worst-case scenario, hopeless.
If that’s the case, keep in mind, there is help. See below.
If you’re not quite there and you just want to work on developing this habit, these steps will help you, and implementing the whole Hart Habits will help you.
Next week, I’ll share a video that gives an overview of the Hart Habits framework. And I hope it’s helpful to you. I hope it is something that you’re able to use to increase hope in your life.
When you have practiced this habit consistently and begun to build this habit into your life, you’ll feel optimistically expectant, regardless of the circumstances.
You’ll be able to walk around knowing and understanding the truth and devastation of what we’re dealing with and still knowing that better things are coming and we will work together for our better good.
Until next week, if you have any thoughts, leave them below in a comment, like the video, subscribe to the channel. I love you.
Disclaimer –
This video is NOT sponsored. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Your clicks help support the channel and allow me to continue to make videos like this one. But don’t worry, It does not affect the price you pay. 😉 Thank you for your support.
QUESTION(s) OF THE DAY — What goals do you focus on that give you hope?
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