HOPE is a State of Connection and Not a Strategy to Wait and See

One of the primary outcomes of sheltering at home and working virtually is something I keep hearing from my clients and a theme that comes up in other conversations. The lack of fulfilling engagements and connection with people in your day-to-day life is taking a toll on many of us. The symptom that is prevalent is a loss of hope. Hope that things are really ok and that you are ok and that someday life will move beyond the COVID pandemic. Feeling hopeless and not knowing what the post COVID era will really look like. How much of this current reality will really stick and be the new normal? And to speak the unspeakable, how America will ever heal the gaping rift that we are living in.

Missing the Connection

For example, if you don’t go to your gym or your yoga studio you may miss connecting with your fellow yoginis and workout buddies. Even if you don’t normally share a long conversation there is something about sharing an experience with another human being that is not the same as doing it by yourself virtually from the comfort of your own home. Yes, you can practice virtual yoga in your pj’s 5 minutes after rolling out of bed AND you may miss the collective breath or OM that is a shared vibration of connection; union or unity with another soul.

Pre-COVID I had a steady stream of traveling houseguests coming and going from my home. I never really felt alone or lonely and had just the right balance of sharing my morning coffee with someone as enjoying my morning cup in solitude. People are hardly traveling in recent months and we are all turning into homebodies.

I hear the theme that things aren’t so bad but somehow feel a little flat. The fulfillment factor may be lacking in your life even though you are staying busy and trying to create a reality that feels “normal” all things considered with all the changes and challenges we have faced since early in 2020. Collectively, we have all risen to the demand that the COVID pandemic presented, to be safe, to be responsible and to show a little common sense if we choose to go into public places.

Since the shutdown started during the pandemic, there have been some alarming statics coming out with the increase in substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence. Community Mental Health demands have significantly increased. You may not be one of these alarming statistics, but we all have had our moments riding the mental-emotional roller coaster during these past months.

Cultivating Hope

What we all crave is a feeling of connection. What we need is a feeling of hope. We experience hope when we feel connection to something greater than ourselves. Any time you connect to a greater purpose or a greater calling or a greater being, such as we feel when we experience a Spiritual connection; we cultivate hope. Anytime we disconnect from our faith or trust in something greater we lose hope and risk despair and hopelessness.

Hope is not a strategy but cultivating connections and plugging into your personal sense of Spirit or something greater than yourself, will support more Hopefulness. Feeling hopeful is a key component of resiliency and secret to keeping a positive attitude. When we feel hopeful, we can tap into courage and confidence to meet life’s difficulties.

You likely don’t live on an island or within a silo. To cultivate more hope, you can reach out and connect with those who are within your own resource circle of friends and family. Even a phone call, or a visit standing in the yard with your mask on, is and action to reach out for conversation or connection. Sending a distant person who you care about a text with a couple of emoji’s to simply make the connection. Taking time to pray, or make a spiritual connection in nature, so you can lean into Spirit or the divine (something greater than yourself).

Hope is not a passive emotion that happens to you, but an active state that you cultivate through connection and faith that you are never truly alone if all forms of all things share an interconnection of life within the stream of livingness. Will you step into the stream or stand on the bank and watch life go past? Hope is a state of connection that you cultivate and not a strategy to wait and see what will happen.