Cultivating Hope is an inside job but our friends can help. . .

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  What an appropriate day for me to talk about hope and how it can be cultivated.  I spent many St. Patty’s Days in the bars drinking green beer or martinis with their green olives.  That was a time in my life that I was very short on hope and didn’t even realize that’s what was missing.  I was miserable, for sure, especially when sober, but couldn’t put a name on the misery.  However, I was convinced that if only others would change, I’d be just fine.  That’s what sent me off to my first 12 step meeting, in fact.

Alas, that wasn’t the purpose of the group, they told me.  Fortunately I stuck around and the hope others had for their own journeys modeled for me a very different way to live, one I was eventually willing to adopt for myself.

It’s been nearly 35 years since that first meeting back in Minneapolis and I am no longer bereft of hope.   On the contrary, I am filled to over-flowing with hope.  I awake with it and I have learned that if I pass it on to others as the day unfolds, I will go to bed with it too.  And the next day will repeat this pattern.

To know that hopelessness is a thing of the past, an experience that will never haunt me again, is such a gift.  We do get to be who we want to be.  We can think how and what we want to.  We can cultivate the belief that we are where we need to be with the companions who need us as we them.  I am guided by simple ideas, now.  They keep me peaceful and willing to serve as a way shower to others.  My “inside work” is the best example I can ever give to another.  That’s the only reason we journey together.

I invite you to read the interview of my book on Cultivating Hope.  Clink on the link below and see if it’s a book you’d like to add to your library.  All I know is what has been passed on to me from others like you.  Passing it on is what I do best.

http://themusebookreviews.blogspot.com/2010/03/cultivating-hope-reviewed-by-irene-s.html