Character Development: Hope

In this episode, we explore the strength of Hope, an expression of the virtue of Transcendence.

Hope is our capacity to imagine a meaningful future and believe that our actions can help move us toward it. It allows us to hold possibility alongside reality, helping us navigate setbacks, uncertainty, and challenges without losing sight of what matters most. Hope reminds us that our current circumstances are not the whole story and that growth, healing, and change remain possible even when the path forward is not yet clear.

Through reflection and affirmation, may we strengthen our ability to stay connected to possibility while remaining grounded in reality. May we remember that hope is not wishful thinking or the denial of difficulty, but the courage to keep moving toward what is meaningful, even when the outcome is uncertain.

Peace and blessings,

Hannah

Transcript

In a world that often focuses so much on what we lack, It's easy to overlook the incredible internal strengths that each of us possess. Grounded in ancient philosophy and modern science, This series invites you to reconnect with the innate strengths that make you who you are, Promoting balance and harmony in everyday life. Whether you're looking to boost your confidence, Overcome negative self-talk, Deepen your relationships, Or simply invite a greater sense of well-being, My hope is that this series offers a practical and uplifting path to personal growth. Okay, Hello beautiful people and welcome back to our character strengths affirmation series. Each session we explore one of the 24 character strengths identified by positive psychology. Strengths that fall under the virtues of courage, Humanity, Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, Or transcendence. These strengths are generally universal and they form the foundation of our best selves. Funny as I've been doing this series, I like, It's like the more you know, You realize the less you know. And the more I say like, These strengths are universal, I the potential for these strengths are universal. The potential for these strengths are I in my belief system, And I could I could go back on this in a few years, Who knows what life will do to me. But I think the potential for each of these lives within each of us. And the reason I say that is because it's about Cultivating it. It's not about finding it outside of yourself. It's already within us. We just have to refine and nurture and feed those parts of ourselves in a healthy way. Today we are continuing on our journey into the virtue of transcendence, Which is the family of strengths that connect us to something larger than ourselves. They help us find a sense of meaning and purpose, Awe and perspective. The transcendence strengths include appreciation of beauty and excellence, Gratitude, Humor, Spirituality, And today's strength, Which is hope. The framework that I use for this series is from the Values in Action Institute, Which is a research institute, Positive psych oriented, And they define hope as expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it. Now, In a minute I'm going to have some critiques of this definition, Full disclosure, But I first want to give credit where credit is due. I appreciate that this definition captures two very important parts of hope. First is that hope is future-oriented. It asks us to consider that tomorrow does not have to look exactly like today. Growth is possible, Change is possible, Movement is possible. Second is the idea that hope is active. It's not simply wishing for something or sitting back and waiting for life to improve. It's about participating in the possibility of a different future. In the research, Hope is often associated with perseverance and goal pursuit and resilience and well-being, Which makes sense to me. People who are hopeful. Tend to be better at finding pathways forward and continuing to take action even when obstacles arise. Now for me personally, In my personal life, In my work, In mental health, In counseling, In crisis, In my study even of just mindfulness, I have become less convinced that hope is about always expecting the quote-unquote best. Because first of all, Sometimes we don't know what the best outcome is. Second of all, Sometimes the thing we want isn't what we actually need. And third of all, Sometimes when we're in the middle. This one's very important. This one is going to be central to today's conversation. Sometimes when we're in the middle of grief or depression or burnout or anxiety or heartbreak or just deep, Profound and even existential uncertainty, Expecting the best can feel inaccessible. And unrealistic and even invalidating. I'm laughing because I'm having memories right now and I'm thinking about conversations with people and their most challenging moments. If I had been like, But the best is possible, They would have been like, Get out of here. Like, Get out of my face. Like, Stop it with that. That's not actually helping me. When life is hard, Which I would argue, Are the moments that we really need hope the most. We don't need to believe or oftentimes even want to believe that everything is going to be spectacular and amazing and sunshine and daisies all the time. In those really challenging moments, We're just trying to believe that it might not always feel like this. One of the things that I've learned from working with people in moments of crisis is that hope often arrives much smaller than we think it should. It's not. Always about convincing someone that everything is going to work out. Because everything might not work out and somebody who has lived their life. Knowing that things do not always work out. Is not going to be available to that, Okay? Sometimes it's just, Hey, Maybe tomorrow will be a little bit easier. Maybe there's a conversation that I haven't had yet that if I have, Something could shift. Maybe there's a solution in this moment that I just can't see. Maybe I don't even need to decide the rest of my life from how I feel right now in this moment today. And to be honest, There have been moments in my own life, Of course, Where that was all I had access to as well. Not confidence, Not even optimism, Just the willingness to leave a crack in the door. Just enough room for the possibility that my current experience was not the final verdict on my future. When I'm in a session or on the phone with somebody and they're in that place of nothingness or just like terror, Just like being scared of being alive, That happens with trauma. With severe trauma, It's like your nervous system is trapped in a place of it being the worst thing that's ever happened to you, Just happening all the time. On the bus, You get a whiff of something, Bam, You're back. And. . . It's not rare. I'm really trying to be careful about how I talk about this because I'm really not trying to get shadow banned. But it's, It's not rare for people to get to a place where they would just rather not. Where they're like from where I'm standing, Looking at the future, I'm good. I'm good, I'll pass. And I can relate to that too. Like when I was coming out of whatever was my childhood, Coming out into the world, Like the limiting beliefs that I had, We only have access to a perspective of the world that we've been given access to. And if somebody's reality over such an extended period of time has been a really bad reality, Scary, Unsafe, A place where you don't like the world and you feel like the world doesn't like you back. How could you have access to hope? That's the question, How could you have access to hope? And that's the question that I have been wrestling with for years as I attempt to be present with people in those moments now. Because hope in those moments is not everything's going to be awesome. Because that's not fathomable. That's not fathomable. That's not relatable. That's not honest. Hope in those moments, For me. Has been deeply tied to humility. How can I have enough humility? To realize that right now. I'm seeing the future through the lens of how I feel in this moment. And because of how our, You know, There's so much about the brain that we don't understand, I want to be very clear about that. But we do currently have an understanding that neurons that fire together wire together, When you're in certain emotional states, You have better access to memories. That share that emotional state. And so your narrative of your life in those moments can be skewed, Seeing through the lens of how you feel in the moment. And that includes how we look at our past and how we relate to our past and therefore also how we perceive our future. In those moments, Hope is. I believe that there is a version of me that if I tend to myself and have faith in the process of tending to myself that I will have access to that sees things differently and sees myself differently and sees the world differently and my place in the world differently and what's possible for myself and for those in my life. And then from there, It's the other parts of the definition that they included. It's understanding that I'm going to have to be committed to working to achieve this. And that's that relationship to perseverance. On the reverse side of the humility, I think that it's also important that part of this be about taking pride in ourselves and in the work and appreciating the work that we've done to be able to keep going, Even when things get hard or bleak or scary. Valuing our own growth and being so committed to and focused on taking the curriculum of life. Hope for me has become about, There's always a more beautiful story that I can be writing about my life, And it's not one where nothing goes wrong. That's not a good story. That's just not a good story. Good stories are things where things happen. And you're like, What are they going to do? And I asked myself, Like, Okay, What, Like, Who do I want to be in this moment? And how do I actually feel? And what does that look like? Okay, I'm getting off. I'm totally off script. I'm totally I'm just talking. So just to summarize, To me, Hope is not about expecting the very best. It's about remaining open to the possibility you're going to hear that word a lot today to the the possibility that something can be different, Maybe not perfect. Maybe not easy. Maybe not even the outcome I originally imagined. But perhaps a little better. Than my current experience. Okay, Before we dive into the conversation about the importance of balance, I want to take a moment to just talk about what hope actually looks like in daily life. Because so much of the time. I think we think of hope as this like grand feeling and experience that's this deep sense of optimism and confidence and inspiration and really I think most of the time it's surprisingly ordinary. It's applying for a job even though you might not get it. It's making an appointment that you've been putting off. It's maybe even signing up for therapy because who knows, Maybe support could actually be supportive. It's trying a different approach when the old one isn't working. It's continuing to invest in a relationship, A goal, Or some sort of healing practice that hasn't fully unfolded yet. You haven't seen all of the benefits of it immediately. And still thinking, If I invest in this, There will be some sort of payoff. It's saving money for a trip, Going back to school, Learning a new skill. It's making plans for a future that doesn't exist yet. Sometimes hope is planting a garden. I'm going to work with that. I love that metaphor because when you plant a garden, You're making a promise to a future you. You're putting a tiny seed into the ground, Knowing there will be days when nothing appears to be happening. And yet you still water it. You still tend to it, You still protect it. Not because you have certainty that it will grow exactly the way that you imagined, But because you believe it's worth participating in the possibility that it might. Hope asks the same thing of us, To keep showing up for the life we're growing, Even when we can't see the fruits of our labors yet. What all of these examples have in common is that they require us to act before we have certainty. They ask us to participate in a future that we cannot see. Sometimes hope feels inspiring, But a lot of times it feels more like persistence. It feels more like sending the email. Or having the conversation or taking the next step and showing up again. Just like tending a garden, We don't get to see the growth immediately. But we keep watering anyway. And in that way, Like any of the character strengths, Hope isn't just something that we feel, It's something that we have to practice. Something that's been on my mind as I've been going through these character strengths is why hope isn't in the courage character strength. To me, Honestly, There was a part of me that was like, Listen, If zest is in courage, Like the courage to care, Isn't there courage to hope? After all, Hope is certainly a huge part of what allows for us to tap into our perseverance, Which is in the courage virtue. It helps us keep going. But I think that that's only part of the story. Courage is about what we do in the face of fear. Hope is about how we relate to the unknown. It stretches our perspective beyond what we can immediately see. Beyond today's emotions, Beyond today's circumstances, Beyond today's certainty. That is transcendence. It's the ability to recognize that our current experience, While completely real, Again may not be the whole story. In her poem entitled Hope, Rosemary Watola Tromer wrote, Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so that we when anxious can follow it. Hope's Secret. It doesn't know the destination. It knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other. Seamus Heaney said, Hope is not optimism, Which expects things to turn out well. But something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. I love this distinction because optimism predicts an outcome. Hope participates in one. Optimism says, I think everything's going to be OK. Hope says, I don't know what's going to happen. But I'm willing to keep showing up. I'll read one more poem here. And I will say that this one is more on the spiritual side. So I don't know if it'll land for you if you don't resonate with that. But it's by Henry Nguyen. And it's also called Hope. He writes, Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in darkness. Hope is knowing that there is love. It is trust in tomorrow. It is falling asleep and waking up when the sun rises. In the midst of a gale sea, It is to discover land. In the eye of another, It is to see that he understands you. As long as there is still hope, There will also be prayer. And God will be holding you in his hands. Okie dokie, Let's move into the dialogue about the importance of balance when it comes to strengths. As with all character strengths, Hope exists on a spectrum. I use Aristotle's golden mean, Which is the idea that virtue exists in balance to two vices, That of underuse and that of overuse. When hope is underused, We can become hopeless, You know, Which is to say we become disconnected from possibility. There's that word again. The future becomes fixed. The present begins to feel permanent. It starts to feel like our past puts the limit on our potential. Underuse of hope is where instead of imagining what could be, We become trapped by what has been or what currently is. As I've been doing, I've organized underuse and overuse into a range of archetypes or manifestations. These are like informed by the research, But I made them up. So you can take them for what you will. Better yet, Come up with your own and let us know about them. Okay, The first archetype is the protector. This is not allowing ourselves to hope because you just can't bear the pain of disappointment. This could look like refusing to get excited about opportunities, Expecting the worst to avoid being surprised, Downplaying what you really want, Keeping dreams at arm's length. Listen, Sometimes pessimism is just hope wearing armor. And I want to honor that. You know, This pattern rarely develops out of nowhere. It often develops after we've cared deeply or trusted deeply and then been deeply disappointed. Our minds begin to make a bargain. If I don't let myself hope. I won't be hurt again. So we lower our expectations. We stop talking about what we really want. We tell ourselves that we don't really care that much anyway. Not because we've actually stopped longing for something, But because longing has become too expensive. The risk too great. And for a while, That strategy might make sense. It may protect you. You may be, You know, Really reorienting your values because of your given circumstances, Less on hope and more on pragmatism. But I will tell you that in the long run, Hope is more pragmatic. Let me make a case for it. It's not because hope guarantees a better outcome. It doesn't guarantee that. I can't guarantee that. But what I can tell you is that hope keeps us engaged with life. It keeps us moving toward something, Something to participate in, Something to persevere for. The next archetype in underuse is what I'm calling the storm walker. I'm going to be so for real with you. I struggled with it. There are many metaphors I was coming up with in my head to explain this one, But storm walker just sounded really cool to me. So I went with that. This is essentially where emotional exhaustion or grief or chronic stress or overwhelm make it difficult to see beyond what is immediately in front of us. It's essentially where it feels like the world has become so immediate that you simply can't mentally invest in anything beyond what's right in front of you. This could look like saying, I just need to get through this week. Struggling to make plans beyond the immediate future. Setting aside goals or dreams or interests because survival feels more urgent. Or feeling too overwhelmed to imagine new possibilities or directions. If you imagine that you're caught in heavy rain, Strong winds, Thick clouds, Your attention naturally narrows. You stop looking miles down the road. You focus on the next few steps, The nearest source of shelter, The immediate problem in front of you. The storm limits what we can see. This is how hope works. Sometimes there is simply too much happening at once. Too many things demanding our attention, Responsibilities, Too much uncertainty, And the storm of our current circumstances begins to obscure the horizon. If you've been keeping up with this series, You already know probably where I'm going with this. Barbara Fredrickson's Broaden and Build Theory. One of the things her research suggests is that positive emotional states tend to broaden our awareness. We become more creative, More flexible, More open to new ideas and new possibilities. We notice resources and relationships and opportunities and pathways that we might otherwise overlook. Good luck. But when we're under chronic stress or exhaustion or overwhelm, The opposite can happen. Our focus narrows. It's not because we're necessarily doing something wrong. It's because our minds and our bodies are trying to help us survive. And survival asks different questions than hope. Survival is asking, What do I need to do right now? Hope is asking what else might be possible. The challenge is that when we're caught in the middle of a storm. Survival is often the only thing that we can see. All of our attention goes towards keeping our footing, Staying dry, And making it through the next stretch of road. And sometimes that's exactly what we need to do. But it helps to remember that surviving the storm and imagining a future beyond it are not competing goals. Hope isn't found by forcing ourselves to see a horizon that is obscured. Sometimes it's found by taking care of ourselves well enough that eventually we can lift our eyes and look for it again. The third archetype that I was able to identify for underuse is the hardened realist. This is viewing hope as naive or unrealistic or immature. It could look like dismissing optimism as ignorance, Focusing exclusively on obstacles and limitations, Assuming that people rarely change or that things rarely change. This archetype often develops as a response to real experience. Maybe you've been hurt. Maybe you've been disappointed. Maybe you've seen enough setbacks to become skeptical. The challenge is that over time, Realism can become this certainty. We begin confusing what has been with what's definitely going to happen. Our past starts writing the script for our future. Viktor Frankl offers a really important challenge to this. Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist. He was a Holocaust survivor, And he's the founder of Logotherapy, Which is a form of psychotherapy centered on meaning and developing meaning. You. He experienced suffering on a scale that most of us can hardly imagine. He endured concentration camps, Lost much of his family, And witnessed countless people around him lose hope altogether. If anyone had earned a right to become cynical, It's him. It's those who are in situations that are bad, And there's no sign that it's going to get better. And that's not just in that circumstance. I think that there are lots of people for many different reasons who find themselves in those situations. And yet. One of the ideas that became central to his work. Comes from Frederick Nietzsche, Who wrote, He who has a why to live. Can bear almost any how. Notice he doesn't say he who knows what's going to happen. Or he who expects the best. It says he who has a why. He was a reason to keep participating, A reason to keep showing up. A reason to keep taking the next step. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, The way that Viktor Frankl puts it is, Everything can be taken from a man, But one thing, The last of the human freedoms, To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, To choose one's own way. He wasn't arguing that suffering isn't real or that we can bypass it. He wasn't asking people to deny their reality. If anything, He was asking them to face reality fully. But he recognized that realism alone is not enough to sustain a human life. We need meaning. We need purpose. We need something to orient ourselves towards, And that's something that we have to find and choose within ourselves. Like that? That is what gives me hope is knowing that I have been in situations where I had no reason to think it was going to get better. I had no reason to think it was going to get better. And I knew I was in it for a little while. And yet. . . I got to choose the person that I wanted to be in that situation. I could not have hope in something outside of me. I had to find hope in myself. It's not a denial of reality. It's a refusal to let reality as it exists today, Become the final word on who we're going to be. The common thread of all of these archetypes is that of contraction. It's a narrowing of perspective, It's a shrinking of possibility. The future starts to become less like an open landscape and more like a hallway with no exits. And again, I think that that's why hope requires so much humility. It asks us to admit that we may not be seeing the whole picture, That there may still be paths that we haven't walked or conversations that we haven't had or people we haven't met or strengths we haven't discovered or versions of ourselves that we have yet to tap into. On the other side of the spectrum of hope. Let's be honest, We can overuse it. It can become untethered from reality. Instead of helping us navigate uncertainty, It can become a way of bypassing it or controlling it or escaping it. The first manifestation of this that I wanted to talk about is the premature optimist. This is the part of us, The archetype, That reaches for positive conclusions before the current circumstances, Before the present reality, Either yours or somebody else's, Has been fully acknowledged. And preferably not even just acknowledged but held space for. And I realize, I realize that me saying that makes me sound like such a mental health professional. Anyway, So this one can look like immediately searching for the lesson in a painful experience. Saying everything happens for a reason. Focusing on what might work out before recognizing what's not working right now. Or rushing towards reassurance when uncertainty is all that we really have right now. I see this a lot interpersonally where someone will be going through something, They're grieving, They're scared, They're overwhelmed and we want to help. So we start looking for solutions or seeking the lesson of it all or the silver lining or the bright side. We want to remind them that they'll get through this. That something good could come from this. And that's sweet, You know, Like we're just trying to connect with them and we care about them. We love them. We want them to have hope. But we have to get the timing of it right. You know, Sometimes we're trying to help before we've actually just been fully present with someone as they are in the moment. Before we've simply sat with them in what hurts. There are moments when the most healing thing isn't finding meanings, Having someone say, Yeah, This is hard. And I'm with you in it. The invitation is to allow hope and honesty to arrive together, To give both of them a seat at the table where one says, This hurts, And I'm going to feel it and digest that. And the other voice says, Something meaningful can still emerge from this. Both have a right to share their voice. But in our truest moments of consideration, Who are we going to let speak first? Another archetype would be the idealizer. This is becoming attached to a particular future. It could look like believing happiness exists on the other side of one specific outcome. Romanticizing future relationships, Careers, Or versions of yourself. Feeling disappointed by reality because it doesn't match the vision. Or struggling to create what is while longing for what could be. And this is a really innocent manifestation, I think, Of overuse of hope. We imagine where we thought we'd be by now, The career we'd have, The relationship we'd be in, The family we might build. The version of ourselves we expected to become. And when life unfolds differently. It's easy to begin measuring our present reality against an imagined future that never actually existed, At least not in this part of the space-time continuum. Sometimes we become so attached to the life we expected that we miss the life that's actually unfolding. This shows up in our relationships all the time. There can be this unspoken belief that one day everything will finally click. One day they'll change, One day I'll change, One day I'll be healed enough, Or learned enough, Or grown enough, Or communicative enough, And then the relationship will finally become what it's supposed to be. And of course, We want to have growth in our relationships, That matters, But there comes a point. We're holding out hope for the relationship or for somebody else, Or even for ourselves in a way that's unrealistic, Can turn into pressure. Hoping that somebody becomes something as a condition for loving them isn't really hope and it's not really love, It's expectation. It's asking a reality to become something else before we're really willing to fully meet it where it's at right now. Healthy hope allows us to want things, To dream, To envision possibilities for ourself and our relationships and our futures, But it holds those visions lightly. It leaves room for surprise. It leaves room for change. It leaves room for life to unfold differently than we ever could have imagined. Sometimes the problem isn't that our hopes are too big. It's that they're too specific. We become attached to one particular path and lose sight of the many others that may also lead somewhere meaningful, Somewhere beautiful. The challenge comes when our imagined future becomes more compelling than the life we're actually living. Hope invites us to stay connected to what? To possibility. There it is again, To possibility. While also being realistic and honest about how things are in this moment. The next archetype is the head-in-the-clouds dreamer. This is falling in love with possibility and losing touch with the process. This could look like. Imagining the outcome more than engaging the work required to get there. Making plans that never become commitments. Talking about future goals more than building the habits that would support them. And you know what? Dreaming feels good. Imagining possibilities is exciting. If your future version of yourself looks clear and compelling and inspiring, Hold on to that. The challenge is that we tend to romanticize the destination and underestimate the journey. We want the healthy relationship, But not necessarily the difficult conversations. We want the degree, But not always the studying. We want the business, But not the years of uncertainty. We want the healing, But not the grief. We want the confidence, But not the repeated practice that builds it. In other words, We become attached to the reward. While overlooking the process that would actually produce it. Hope becomes most powerful when it moves from imagination into behavior. When we can find small ways to integrate what we want into our life now. Because the future isn't built by what we dream about, It's built by what we repeatedly do. I want you to have your dreams. And I want you to be able to do that from a place of knowing. We have to embrace the challenge. And therefore the discipline. That pursuing those dreams is going to demand and that we want it to demand because that's what makes it sweet when we get there. That's what makes those moments so emotional and so special and so sacred is knowing that we earned it. And it's scary. It's scary sometimes to imagine the work that may go into achieving all that we feel called to achieve. Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid activist. He was a political prisoner and later president who spent 27 years imprisoned for resisting racial segregation. Which is to say, I think he was qualified to speak on topics such as these. He said, May your choices reflect your hopes, Not your fears. Which is not to say don't be scared. Do it scared. I'm scared. I'm scared all the time. But I'm more scared. Of the idea of nobody doing the thing that I feel like should be done. I'm more scared of a life where I didn't chase it, I didn't pursue it, I didn't try, I didn't fight for it. I didn't do the work on myself so that I could make it happen. I'm more scared of that. And I let that give me strength to be hopeful in the moment to say, I'm going to try it and we're just going to see what happens. Balanced hope is grounded. It allows us to stay rooted in reality while remaining open to what? To possibility. It sounds like this is where I am. And this may not be the end of the story. It doesn't deny what's difficult. It doesn't rush towards certainty. Instead, It holds both reality and possibility. It holds both truth and imagination. It holds both acceptance and movement. Practicing hope is about taking one small step towards something that matters. Even if that's just taking care of yourself in this moment. It's staying connected to your values, Even when your motivation is low. Expanding your perspective beyond the present moment. Remembering times when you have made it through uncertainty before. And sometimes hope is about letting support in when hope feels difficult to access on your own. It's about allowing hope to feel realistic and grounded and imperfect. And if hope feels far away, That's okay. Sometimes hope doesn't arrive as spontaneous inspiration. Sometimes it arrives as persistence. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed or sending the email or making the appointment or taking the next breath. We'll finish out this section with a line that I found on the internet. I don't know who to cite for this, But I'm going to read it and just know that I didn't write this. It says, For another go. Before we move into the affirmations, We'll pause for a brief blessing. May we be blessed with the willingness to remain open to possibility. Even when the path ahead feels uncertain. May we be blessed with the humility to recognize that today's perspective is not the whole picture. May we find the strength to keep showing up for what matters to us. Even when the path ahead is unclear. May we remain connected to meaning and possibility and the people who support us along the way. May we remember that growth often happens long before we can see results, And may hope remind us that our story is still being written. I will read each statement twice, Pausing in between to give you a chance to repeat them out loud to yourself, And I do recommend saying them out loud. The statements that are easy to embrace, Savor them, Appreciate them, Stand like a mountain in their truth. And then the statements that feel not so good, That feel uncomfortable or foreign. Go ahead and say them anyway. This is where we are doing the work, Rewiring those neural networks. This is also where we gain insight into unhealed wounds, Limiting beliefs, And ingrained biases and judgments toward ourselves or toward a particular way of being. It's great material for journaling or discussing with a counselor or trusted friend, Maybe even someone doing the series with you. Whether you're just waking up. Walking your dog, On your commute, Or getting ready for bed. I hope these affirmations serve your deepest, Greatest, Highest self. And with that, Let's get started. I am hopeful. I am hopeful. I remain open to possibility. I remain open to possibility. I trust that change is possible. I trust that change is possible. I allow myself to imagine new possibilities. I allow myself to imagine new possibilities. I remain grounded as I move forward. I remain grounded as I move forward. I take one step at a time toward what matters to me. I take one step at a time toward what matters to me. I participate in creating the future I hope for. I participate in creating the future I hope for. I stay connected to what gives my life meaning. I stay connected to what gives my life meaning. I trust my ability to navigate uncertainty. I trust my ability to navigate uncertainty. I welcome growth, Even when it unfolds slowly. I welcome growth, Even when it unfolds slowly I honor where I am while remaining open to where I'm going. I honor where I am while remaining open to where I'm going. I continue showing up for what matters to me. I continue showing up for what matters to me. I trust that small steps create meaningful change over time. I trust that small steps create meaningful change over time. I remain connected to my values, Even when the path is unclear. I remain connected to my values, Even when the path is unclear. I welcome curiosity, Creativity, And possibility. I welcome curiosity, Creativity, And possibility. I trust that today's reality is part of a larger story. I trust that today's reality is part of a larger story. I allow hope to coexist with honesty. I allow hope to coexist with honesty. I participate in creating a future that reflects my values. I participate in creating a future that reflects my values. I welcome new ways of becoming. I welcome new ways of becoming. I choose to write a more beautiful story for my life. I choose to write a more beautiful story for my life. I trust that each step I take becomes a part of that story. I trust that each step I take becomes a part of that beautiful story. As always, Thank you so much for being here, For your presence, And for your willingness to meet yourself where you're at. I continue to humble myself and meet myself where I'm at as I do these, And it's such a blessing. Even though I'm alone as I record these, I really do feel like I'm connected to the people who listen, So it means a lot to me. May we continue to participate in practices like these so that we can be better for ourselves, More in alignment with our sense of meaning and purpose, Better for the people we love, The people we work with, The people we meet in coffee shops and in bookstores, And even for our more difficult relationships, Whether that is to people or to parts of our life. In doing so, We get to contribute to the betterment of humanity as a whole and the planet at large. Please go forth with peace and many blessings and I will see you next time.