Hope adds to your leadership ability by giving you the confidence and curiousity to listen to all those around you. She adds to your passion and encourages you to make decisions (even when you don’t have all the information(you never have all the information)). Hope adds to your motivation by providing you a glimpse around the next corner.

She subtracts from your anxiety. She takes away your cynicism. Your despair is reduced and your self doubt diminishes.

Hope multiplies your influence. x^{2 strength}  by dividing your power with others. Your optimism becomes and exponential function for those around you. Her power acts as sine and cosine in your discernment and decision making.

She solves for x and a,b and c  in a quadratic formula 

She is the basis of string theory, quantum mechanics, art, music, poetry and all forms of invention and creativity. Hope is the foundation that supports love and nurture forgiveness.

Hope makes me better. She makes you remarkable. She can change everything and how we see it. Hope can be the metamorphosis.

As November ends, I encourage, entreat, and challemge you to continue to seek and embrace hope at every opportunity.

B

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. ~ Desmond Tutu

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.
~ Jonas Salk

You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.
~ Zig Ziglar

We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.
~ Norman Cousins

If you divide a sheet of paper into three columns and label the right “Preferred Future” and the left ” Current State” then the middle column is the list of actions that you need to begin/take to journey from left to right.

The act of creating this chart is itself, hopeful. It takes discipline, support and hope to create the first 5 action steps and accountability and encouragement to pick yourself up when you stumble. Hope helps reset the course and can bring the destination clearly into view if you accept her entreaties.

On the day after you have thought about being thankful (every day should have gratitude), today is the best day to undertake the simple three column exercise. Let me know what you discover either in comments here or bob@remarkablepeople.ca

 

B

Long title with a simple meaning – be grateful for something, someone, somewhere, sometime- be grateful today.

As our friends in the US celebrate Thanksgiving and I hope they open their hearts and are thankful I realize I truly have a bounty.

The short list that lifts my hope every day;

My beloved of 40 years, my kids and grandkids, my friends, my colleagues, my city, my country, my health, my work, my time in history, my faith, my opportunities, reading, books, travel, good healthy food, debate, laughter, smiles, challenges, curiousity, my country, my city, my colleagues, my friends, my kids and grandkids, my beloved of 40 years.

Everything I am is bookended by the people I have in my life.

 

Hope opens a window to other possibilities.  If I take a cynical view that what I/we have and what I/we do is the best that is possible in the situation or is good enough because of the circumstances then the window remains closed.

If I open the window and check the sky, something different, possibly better, likely more challenging might appear.

 

We have been spending $Billions on poverty alleviation ($40B according to the Welfare Council of Canada) and while we are helping people live better in their poverty, we seem to be managing our way into an habitual morass where there are more and more people dropping into the ‘system’ of poverty.

Let’s all open the hope window today and figure out how we begin solving this wickedly complex issue and then begin lifting people out of the mud, the mire and the muck that seems to be a unwanted and unexpected side effect of what we are currently doing.

 

Remarkable people have remarkable hope in themselves and those around them. They recognize that the combined efforts of many can make remarkable changes in our world. But they know that they have a role, you have a role, in contributing your gifts and strengths to the mix.

Every day we face choices and every choice has consequences. We can choose hope and make our choices with others in mind, sharing what we have/are to make people better and stronger.

Our ability to influence others comes from an understanding of who we are and where our passions and purpose lay. Take time today to ask ” What matters most to me?” and ” what is the first thing I can do to make a change?” It is unlikely that you will organically find purpose but with persistence and intention,  it will be revealed.

Make Today Remarkable, by sharing something,

 

B

 

Imagine a child on a stage, trembling a bit, getting ready for their first recital, their first concert, their first spelling bee. The spotlight is on them, maybe literally but surely figuratively. Hope springs from their chest and they give the performance of their lives (in their eyes and their parent’s eyes, if all is well in their world).

A long walk home, late, on a cold winter night. The wind blowing snow and reducing visibility. A street light shines through and marks your path. The lifting of uneasiness is a hope response to a narrow ray of light.

We have seen light at the end of the tunnel, keeping a candle lit, the light bulb went on, and hundreds on light/dark metaphors in literature, movies, sacred text. Hope can be the light of truth, the light of safety, the light of possibility.

Turn on your hope light and let it shine for others,

B

Hope provides a huge frame of possibilities. Hope provides an opportunity to do the work, with purpose. Today I learned a third lesson.

I set out this morning running west and pushed through the 12 minute “I don’t want to do this” mark and circle St Patrick’s Island three times and turned east. By  the time I hit my familiar Pearce Estates trails I was at 10k and just under an hour. Feeling hopeful (or more likely prideful), I picked up the pace just a stride or two. I was rolling along churning up kilometers. 13,15,17 and feeling great. I had refueled at 90 minutes with 1/2 a banana and a protein drink and reckoned I was on my way to 15 k in 3 hours, easily. Kilometer 18 rolled by and I was slowing, feeling lactic acid  my legs and realizing I only had a small amount of water left. At 2 hours I was 19.2k and at 20k my calves both cramped.

Under my normal modus operandi and with stubbornness and pride I would have just pushed on but hope said ” you have another day, you can run  again another day”. The lesson I learned, well two lessons are that hope allows me to see another opportunity sometime in the undefined future and hope requires that I do a better job preparing myself for what I should expect. She doesn’t ask me to be a fortune teller and prepare for the unexpected but requires that I am ready for what is easily predictable(like needing a second bottle of water).

I am taking credit for limping home with 20k and 2 hours 10 minutes under my belt and hopeful that 25k and 3 hours is in my future.

Make Today Remarkable, by testing hope,

B