Where is Your Hope?
I have a question for you…”Where is your hope?” Is it in a person, situation, or circumstance? Life as we have come to know it has drastically changed. The ways in which we earn a living, feed our families, and interact with others are completely different from what we have grown accustomed to. The landscape of our lives has changed so much, that it’s even altered our hope. Many religious people are no longer able to congregate and now they are disconnected from fellow parishioners and spiritual leaders.
Those of us who would normally travel to a physical job is now limited to checking in with our supervisors via an online virtual meeting. Reaching out to God, friends, and family or our neighbors have been the way in which we have placed our hope and received help in times of need. In this current day and time, when the problems of life show up at your door, where do you place your hope? It’s vitally important to understand what hope is and to ensure that we have our hope placed in a way that benefits our lives.
Hope Redefined
Let’s talk about hope for a moment. Oftentimes when you hear the word hope, it’s usually a substitution for the word wish. Phrases like…”I hope it will rain today?” or “I hope I’m able to meet my needs this month”...are usually indicative of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking can put you in an optimistic mood and maybe even get your spirits up a bit, however, when it comes to manifesting the things you desire, you will need more than a wish, you will need a fixed mindset that believes in the possibility of your desire being manifested.
Manifestation Requires Absolute Belief and Confidence
Have you ever heard the term, “have faith?” When you learn to work with universal laws and principles, you will discover the astonishing power of faith and belief. In order to manifest anything with the help of a source, you need to have belief. When you believe something, you are absolutely convinced of its reality, its ability, and likelihood of affecting an area of your life. Belief is mentally accepting the reality of something. In terms of what we are discussing, it’s having absolute faith and belief in the desires that you hold in your heart becoming a reality. In order to hold in your hand what you see in your mind’s eye, you will need to harness the power of hope.
The Greek word hope is “Elpis”, which refers to having joy and confident expectation. Think of this for a moment. When you are expecting something good to happen, how does it affect you? You may put a smile on your face. You may get feelings and emotions of joy as you anticipate the situation. You may schedule your life and plans in order to make room for it and you will talk about it all the time. Even if the situation is 2 months from now, if you think about it now, it fills your heart with happiness and joy because you know it’s on the way to you. That is what true hope is…the joyous, confident expectation of something.
When it comes to where you are in your life right now, what are you expecting? What are you anticipating in your thoughts? What is your current emotional disposition? Are you expecting something great or are you expecting life to take a turn for the worse? I’m here to share with you that no matter where you find yourself in life this moment, having true hope can make it better!
How To Embody Hope
Now that you know what hope is, let’s examine a way to build hope while strengthening your belief towards what you desire to manifest. I’d like you to imagine you are waiting at an airport terminal for someone you love to arrive. You’ve made it to the airport early and checked the flight information to ensure that you are at the right gate and now you are just waiting for their arrival. Now, think of the airport as your life and the loved one as the realization of a goal, dream, or desire. Here’s a good way to create expectation:
- See it from a Distance – If this were your loved one coming soon on a flight, you may have stopped for flowers, bought coffee or a small gift in anticipation of seeing them. You have imagined how tightly you will hug them as well as what you will say when you see them. In your mind’s eye, envision what your realized dream looks like, feels like and smells like. How is your life impacted by having this desire? Spend time seeing this as your current reality.
- Become Fully Persuaded of It’s Reality – When you are at the airport, you have many signs that indicate accurate, up to date flight information so that you can plan accordingly for departures and arrivals. You must fill your life with signs, symbols and the like in an effort to remind yourself that what you desire can be manifested in your life. To develop this expectation, surround yourself with things that remind you of what you desire. Read stories of others who have accomplished the same dream. This will become an anchor in your mind and begin to make the desire very real to you. You move from believing in it’s possibility to knowing that it can be your reality.
- Embrace It – When you embrace, you open up your heart, arms and attitude towards receiving something. Being in a mindset of receiving with an open heart will generate emotions of joy and ecstasy when you think of what you desire. It will steer your focus and set your attitude so that you can firmly be established in your hope. This attitude will keep you focused when the situations of life arise and try to persuade you that nothing is going to change in your life. Embrace its possibility and you will see it in reality!
- Align Your Words – When you believe or expect the possibility of something, your words usually align with it. For example, if you believe that you are overweight, you will commonly refer to yourself as fat, lazy or even unmotivated. None of these things may be 100% true, but because you believe you are fat, you will talk about yourself in light of what being fat means to you. Begin to change your vocabulary. Think of what your life will be like when you have received the gift of your manifested desire. Speak of your life in terms of how thankful, happy, joyous etc.… you are because you have manifested _______________(fill in the blank)! What you say to yourself and what you say aloud is a representation of what you believe in your heart. If your words aren’t in alignment, check what’s in your heart and adjust accordingly.
What To Expect
When you are using the power of confident expectation, aka hope…a key thing to remember is to focus on what you are expecting and not the time in which it should arrive. I have fallen into this trap many times in my life when I’ve been working on manifesting. I would get in my mind what I desire, do all the things to build up my expectancy but then, if it doesn’t show up by the end of the week, I lose hope. I get discouraged, throw my hands up, and walk away. Once I learned that I was limiting the universe by expecting the manifestation to come a certain way, I shifted in my beliefs and started to see results. The universe is infinite, interconnected, and works within the best seasons of our lives. When we understand that our job is to focus on the reality of our dreams rather than how they will occur, we set ourselves up for success. Always remember that the universe isn’t limited and doesn’t run according to your schedule.
Now that you have a better understanding of what hope is and how to use it, begin to stretch out your neck in anticipation and expectation of something amazing coming into your life today!
About The Author
Melvin D Nix is a spiritual teacher, author, and motivational speaker. He currently hosts a weekly broadcast called “Putting On The Pneu You” (pronounced New You) where he teaches how to apply universal spiritual concepts and principles in an easy to understand format so anyone can apply them and see tangible results in their daily lives. PneuYou.com
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