What’s the connection between hope, happiness, and therapy? I’m Melanie, the Santa Fe Therapist. Hope seems like a small thing sometimes. And yet, it’s a powerful ingredient in health and happiness.
The building blocks of happiness include feeling a solid sense of purpose and meaning in our choices. Without meaning, our lives are, well … meaningless. So what’s the point, your mind will ask. And it’s too easy to begin answering, “Nothing.”
When you live inside the hope, as writer Barbara Kingsolver puts it, solutions, ideas and possibilities start showing their magnificent little faces.
Spiritual teachers of all persuasions, writers and artists and scientists and philosophers all talk about hope. At least a couple of them must be onto something, don’t ya think?
And yes, there’s a lot of scientific validity in research data that also “prove” its importance. But right now, I’m leaning into the poetry of possibilities, rather than the science-y perspective.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about hope and happiness lately … what it means, and why and how to intentionally cultivate it. Coming up soon is the 4-week online expressive writing workshop I’ve created for you, called Exploring Hope. I’d really love to have you with us. Click here for all the details.
It turns out that stepping inside hope, even for a little minute, can begin a profound process of transformation with long-lasting positive changes.
With that, I’ll leave you with a few things about hope that I found for you to think about as you move through your day.
- “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” – Anne Lamott
- “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
- “You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.” – Michelle Obama
- “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” – Barbara Kingsolver
- “Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” – Emily Dickinson
Please, send me an email — melanie@melanieharth.com — if you’d like to set up a free 15-minute phone consultation. You don’t have to suffer alone anymore.
