Persistently Hopeful EP 416

0:00Welcome to your daily dose of hope. I'm Phyllis and I'm glad you're here. I think I've mentioned this before but I'm taking a class about resilience and it's really good. I'm learning a lot and really enjoying it. It's given me a lot to think about. This week, we talked about composure and health and how both affect our lives as a whole. Composure being like how you can handle yourself and manage yourself. Obviously health being all about wellness, both physically, mentally, emotionally, that sort of thing. The teacher instructor is Dr. Danita and she talked about some of these practices of composure. Obviously, there are things in life are going to happen and that are not ideal. Things that maybe are upsetting or really challenging. She was explaining and talking about ways to think about those things and one of the comments she made was being persistently hopeful. I really love that phrase because being persistently hopeful kind of lends itself to the opportunity

1:06but it doesn't mean ignoring what's difficult or pretending everything's going to work out or everything's going to go the way we want. It means we're going to just stay in the present moment and we're going to actively choose to be hopeful from the options available to us at that time because there are always other options. Often something happens that's unpredictable. We can often kind of assume the worst. I can start replaying every little thing that's gone wrong or sometimes I'm looking at the worst case scenario. But before going to that or pulling myself back from that, we can just maybe stop and think about what truly would be possible right now. Instead of worrying about something that hasn't happened or looking at the worst case scenario, why not just look at what could be possible. Sometimes the simplest thing is to just return to what's true right now in the moment. We can ask ourselves things like what can I do today to change the situation or what support is available

2:11to me, what possibilities still exist if something's happened that's not the way we want to go. Being persistent and being persistently hopeful, it's not passive. That's an active decision that we're going to make over and over. Maybe sometimes more than once in a day. So if your thoughts start pulling you towards fear and doom and gloom and you feel yourself thinking about worst case scenarios, try bringing yourself back to the moment and remind yourself you don't have to figure everything out right now the second. Just persistently choose the most helpful option available to you right now. That's how we can build our hope habit right being persistently hopeful every day. This podcast is part of the Sound Advice FM Network. Sound Advice FM. Women's Voices Amplified.