On my morning walk, there’s a bright orange pillow on someone’s front porch and it has this saying on it:
“Think positively and positive things will happen.”
I whisper under my breath every time I walk past: “Think positively and bad things will still happen but it won’t be as devastating.”
I know. It’s not catchy. I’m working on it.
But that’s the thing. Just being hopeful doesn’t mean life suddenly gets sun-shiny. Thinking positively doesn’t make the crummy hard stuff go away.
I know people and have myself BEEN one of those people who have negative thoughts and can see negative things everywhere. It’s the old “self-fulfilling prophecy” thing. If I believe things are going to be terrible, I’ll SEE things as terrible - whether or not they are.
ON the other hand, if I believe for GOOD and choose to HOPE when times are tough, I’ll SEE the positives in the middle of the negatives and my guess is that hope will carry me through.
It’s as if our beliefs make us a bit blind. We see what we believe. We look for it. We nurture it.
We can’t control WHAT happens to us, but we can grow in what we believe they MEAN.
And honestly, what do you lose if you choose HOPE over PESSIMISM?
You just lose a bad mood and probably a couple of pounds because you won’t be craving that bedtime ice cream so bad every night.
Keep your hope eyes on. If you are super struggling with REAL difficulties in your life, it doesn’t mean you are failing. It doesn’t mean you’ve missed out or done something wrong.
Being a hope filled person doesn’t for one second help us avoid hard times- it simply helps us find reasons to keep going and make it through those hard times.
Wherever you are - full of hope, needing hope, blind to hope… I pray you find piles and piles of reasons to hope.