Good Morning, God
This is a photo of an almost full moon. I chose the Moon instead of the Sun as an image in order to indicate the weakness of my image of hope. My view of hope was of a given. . . probably given by a willful fairy . . . maybe mostly at my christening. It is taking Brene Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart to jolt me into a New View of Hope — an enlarged view.
She says that “Hope is a way of thinking — a cognitive process.” A WHAT? If that is so, then Hope is something we humans can develop! It isn’t fixed. It is a “Growth” application, so to speak.
Brene goes on to quote researcher C. R. Snyder saying that Hope is made up of a “trilogy of Goals, Pathways, and Agency.”
We have goals — we know where we want to go
We can see pathways toward our goals
We believe in ourselves — we can do this!
But even though “we need hope like we need air” — we cannot give it to someone. “Hope is a function of struggle — we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times but through adversity and discomfort.”
So, God, I am sitting here amazed at this brand new understanding of hope — a brand new and vastly encouraging view of hope.
And as I sit here — pondering how I might strengthen my Hope App — I think of Nick Winter and his spiral of success. In his book, The Motivation Hacker he talks about how he built habits by starting very small — and slowly building a spiral of success. YES! That feels like the way I want to begin.
Story teller,
A Moment with God 
Leave a Reply