The Road To Resilience: Hope

I always wonder why people waste their breath to complain when life gets difficult. Who ever said that life should be easy? When you live with a chronic illness an easy life is a distant memory. Challenge becomes the status quo and it’s when things go smoothly that you pinch yourself to make sure that you’re not dreaming.  However, being resilient means that you keep hope alive in the face of hardship. So how does one keep hope alive?
Hope is a belief in what is possible, that circumstances will turn out for the best. Hope allows you to take positive action on behalf of yourself and inspire others to do the same. Hope provides solace and comfort and inner strength.
When hope and hopelessness are battling in your mind there are things you can do to let hope win.
  • Remember times from the past when life looked bleak and beyond your expectation, they worked out anyway. Things do have a way of working out and it is important to remind yourself of this.
  • If you find yourself feeling hopeless, you are in an internal 911 situation. Take immediate steps to pinpoint exactly what is bothering you; usually once you do this you’ll find that you can work through it. When overwhelm about your situation sets in, break it down and take one step at a time to move through it.
  • Look to inspirational stories that will help you to remember that you aren’t in it alone. You’ll find them everywhere. One great book that has inspired me is Unbroken, by Laura Hilldebrand, a true story of a WWII POW.
  • Reach out to others. Bottling things inside is extremely unhealthy and a good way to get hopeless fast.
And remember what Oscar Wilde said, ” We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

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