Having hope is an inside job that requires practice. . .

Do you want to increase your own hope?  Try these suggestions.  They are guaranteed to work.  Or your money back!!

(Get a small notebook that you can carry with you everywhere and be ready to use it)

1. Begin noting how others on your path demonstrate their hope. Do this for a month.

2. Keep track of the times you extended love/hope to someone else over a seven day period. What effect does this extension have on you?

3. Practicing gratitude cultivates hope and a changed heart. At the end of each day for thirty days, write about your experiences. What changes in yourself do you see?

4. List the times you know, without a doubt, that God was present in your life. This will help you continue on your “hope-filled” journey. And keep watching for Him!

5. Our interactions with others are always intentional. Write about some of these that the passage of time has revealed to you even though you didn’t see “their value” at the time. This revelation insures us that our journey is divine and hopeful.

6. Choosing to be peaceful rather than argumentative is an act of letting go. Can you recall some of these times of late? How does this action give you hope?

7. Deciding to refrain from reacting, smiling instead, changes the dynamic of any situation and hope is born within us. Practice that “action” and then write about how it felt.

8. We are never given more than we can handle. Share some examples of how your personal life has been a testament of this.

9. See only the good in others for the next seven days. Write down what you saw and how this exercise changed your heart. What long term value do you see in this exercise?

10. Hope is contagious. When you perceive it in others, how are you affected? Keep track of this experience for a few days. Share what you observe with a sponsee or another friend in order to “extend” hope even further.

11. Think about your relationship to your quieter inner voice. The cultivation of that relationship would cultivate more hope too. What are your plans in this regard?

12. Accepting others as they are is the surest way to peace. It guarantees being more hopeful too because the decision needs to be made only once. Who do you need to work harder to accept?