Your Daily Dose of Hope

I went to a networking event last week and I had a great time. I know. That’s not something you usually hear when people talk about networking, right? So, what made this one different? Part of it was the people, of course. It was a small group of about 15 women, and everyone seemed genuinely interested in connecting. But I think the real difference was the intention behind the event. We were given time to speak for a few minutes with each person. Instead of awkwardly wandering around the room or feeling like people were trying to push their business cards on me, we simply talked. One short conversation at a time. We weren’t trying to learn everything about each other or decide immediately whether we could do business together. We were just making a connection. It reminded me that meeting new people doesn’t have to feel intimidating or transactional. You don’t need the perfect introduction. You don’t need to impress everyone in the room. You just need to be curious about the person in front of you. Ask a question. Listen to the answer. Share a little about yourself. Every new conversation holds a possibility, of a new friend, a new idea, a new opportunity or simply an enjoyable moment with someone you might never have met otherwise. My friend Jason is great at this and he has a resource you can grab for free at his website, coffeewithjason.com Business networking may not be something you need to do, but these ideas work anytime you want to meet new people. Maybe you want to volunteer or join a sports league or meet a few people you see every week at your yoga class. Sometimes hope begins by walking into a room and being willing to say hello. That’s how we build our hope habit, one hopeful connection at a time. https://coffeewithjason.com/start-here

Wanting to be in control sometimes gets a bad rap. For good reason. Think about it. When someone is being controlling it’s not a compliment. Often because we’re trying to control other people, or every circumstance. We’re trying to predict every outcome, or make sure nothing unexpected ever happens. None of that works because we can’t control any of that. But there is another kind of control that can be very hopeful. It’s the control we have over our own actions. Yes, we have 100% control over what we do. I know there are times when I don’t feel like I have a choice, but I do. Sometimes the choice is a hard one, or one that will require a sacrifice, but I do have options and the decision is mine to make. When we have a goal or something we really want, it’s easy to focus on everything that could get in our way. We think about other people’s decisions, unpredictable circumstances, or whether the final result will look the way we imagined. We think about how we can mitigate all those things. Except we can’t control any of that and it can make a goal feel impossible. What if we started with asking what part of this is directly within my control? Maybe you can’t control whether someone says yes, but you can make the invitation. I can’t control exactly how quickly our business grows, but I can contact one new person today. None of us can control every aspect of our health, but all of us can choose one way to care for yourself. When we identify what we can control, the goal can feel possible. Within reach. We don’t need control over the entire journey. We only need ownership of our next step. So let go of the outcome for a moment and bring your attention back to today. What is one action that belongs entirely to you? That’s the hopeful side of being in control.

There is always a reason NOT to do something. A reason to postpone or delay. We’re tired. We’re busy. The timing isn’t right. We need more information. Tomorrow looks like a much better day to begin. I’ve used all of these and more. And then there’s inertia. Once we’re comfortable where we are, even if where we are isn’t where we want to be, it can be difficult to get moving. I’ll admit that it’s often easier for me not to do the thing, especially when I’m not having one of those wonderful get-it-done days. You know those days. Everything seems to click. We make decisions, finish projects, and wonder why we don’t operate like this all the time. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to make those days more frequent. I don’t think the answer is waiting to feel motivated. It might be learning how to create a little momentum before we need it. We can choose the first step in advance. We can make it ridiculously easy to begin. We can put what we need where we’ll see it. We can decide that five minutes counts. The goal isn’t to become a productivity machine. It’s to make action a little easier than avoidance. There will always be a reason not to begin. But today, you only need one reason to take the next step. What do you want your reason to be?

One of our podcast clients is making a big change. She left her job. She wrote a book and is submitting it to publishers. And now she’s creating a course to help parents. She’s updating her website, making changes to her podcast, and building an entirely new chapter of her work based on everything she knows, what she’s learned and the things she knows will help others. What inspires me most about her story is that she doesn’t know exactly how any of it is going to turn out. There’s no guarantee that every idea will work. She doesn’t have every step mapped out or every question answered. But she’s all in. She’s moving forward with hope. I think we sometimes believe confident people have access to information the rest of us don’t. We imagine they’re taking action because they know it’s all going to work. They can somehow see the future. But it’s more likely that they don’t know any more than we do. They’ve simply decided that what they want to create is worth it. They are willing to take the next step and then the next one after that. Watching her has reminded me that hope doesn’t require a guarantee. It requires a willingness to believe that the next chapter is worth exploring. Maybe you’re considering a change of your own. You don’t need to know exactly where it will lead. You just need enough courage for the next decision, the next conversation, or the next small step. We can be uncertain and still be committed. We can be nervous and still be hopeful. And we can begin before we know how the story ends.

I’m taking a class about resilience, and so far, it has been fascinating. One of the first topics we explored was tenacity. I like to think of myself as a tenacious person. And sometimes I am. But if I’m being honest, there are also times when I give up pretty quickly. If something feels harder than I expected, takes too long, or doesn’t give me an immediate result, it’s easy for me to lose momentum. Sometimes I bail when I realize that I might need help or I don’t know exactly how things will turn out. Here’s something I’m learning about myself: focusing on the kind of person I want to be motivates me more than focusing on the task itself. “Finish this project” might not inspire me. But “be someone who follows through on what matters” feels different. Being a person who keeps the promises she makes, even the promises I make to myself? That is important to me. “Go exercise” can feel like another item on my list. But “be someone who takes care of her future self” is much more likely to motivate me. Of course, it’s much easier to understand these differences when I’m calmly thinking about it than when I’m in the moment and looking for a reason to quit or to not get started at all. That’s why it helps to identify our why before things get difficult. Why does this matter to you? Who are you becoming by continuing? Tenacity isn’t about stubbornly finishing everything we start. It’s about staying connected to the things that truly matter. Today, don’t focus only on crossing something off your list. Remember why you put it there in the first place.