Hope – the mantra of doubt? Hope not!

Now, seems as good a time as any to talk about hope.

I like the idea of hope. It’s partly why I am a leadership coach: “Hope is knowing people, like kites, are made to be lifted up”.

I will even admit that I once named a car Hope…(Hope was subsequently abandoned in some little French village…..but let’s not go into that).

So you can imagine how deflated I felt when listening to Conversations with Avant-Garde Sages, John Troy in his mesmerising southern US drawl announces ….hope “is the mantra of doubt”.

What?!

Challenge my worldview…but no, not the one of hope!

His interviewee Brian Adler goes on to say: “Basically the only difference between hope and fear is that in hope you think it’s going to get better, and in fear you think it’s not. But in both cases you’re thinking there’s a problem with the way it is right now.”

OK, I can experience moments of presence and indeed many of my postings are about mindfulness.  And I can see their point about having unconditional acceptance to what is happening in the now. But now?!  I am by no means there in my spiritual evolution: my attachment to the profoundness and mysteriousness of hope remains.

Soulful and more practical..

So I lean towards the wise words of Tara Brach, who draws on Buddhist and positive psychology.  Yes, there is a shadow side of hope, coming from a sense of lack. One which is grasping and from our fragile ego. We can feel it in our bodies, as our small tense self.  And then there is a more evolved soulful expression. One that senses possibility and potential. Which we dynamically engage with. Hope is not a spectator sport.

“the acorn longs to become an oak and the oakness is already there.  If we tap into our oakness, we tap into what we want to manifest, that helps it to manifest”.  (Tara Brach)

My friend Tiziana Pallotta has developed an online psychotherapy course of 7 modules.  Her first module? Hope. In all her experience as a body psychotherapist and psychologist, it is the starting point. A door into something changing for the better.  Like Václav Havel said, hope is always there.  It is a dimension of our soul.

And right this moment, I will take comfort as other leaders do when I pass it on, from the insightful and practical thought of the Stockdale Paradox, made famous by Jim Collins.

The ability to confront the brutal facts of one’s current reality, whatever they are… with the unwavering faith that you will prevail.