When you’re at the end of your rope, maybe it’s because of hope.

Hope: noun, verb.
• the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.
• a person or thing in which expectations are centered.
• a four letter word that doesn’t amount to much.

Every word you speak or think lands somewhere – it’s heard by you (and if not consciously, certainly by your unconscious mind), by the people around you, by the Dream Fairy, The Universe, The Powers That Be.

So what kind of message does the word “hope” send out? How is Life, or your boss, or your partner supposed to interpret “hope?” Hope doesn’t tell anybody where you really stand on an issue. It doesn’t holler, Go get ‘em! or declare I wholeheartedly believe! or I’ll do whatever it takes.

Hope hangs out on the sidelines…just, you know, hoping. While expectation, optimism, and pragmatism are on the field playing the sport of life. Full on.

Maybe hoping is for sissies.
And if that’s true, than intention and faith are for heroes.

What if you banned the word hope from your vocabulary? Try this hope-replacement exercise. How do you feel with each of these statements?:

• “I hope I’ll get the job.” BZZZZT! Reframe it.
• “I really want to get the job.” (“Point taken,” says the Universe.)
• “I’m praying to get that job.” (Prayer is an action too.)
• “I have done all that I can do to get the job.” (Yes! Stand tall.)
• “I will either get the job, or I won’t.” (Precisely. Now you can get on with your day.)
• “I expect to end up with a job that I love.” (Excellent! Open-ended and affirmative!)

Do a Hope List. What are you hoping for? Opportunity to knock? The outcome to be positive? The test results to be negative? Replace “hope” with action words, reality words, intentional, faith-bounding, wide-open, change-agent hero words.

There are too many variables out of our control, yet many variables firmly within our control. It’s foolish to plant big desires on the sands of hope. It’s amazing what happens when you decide to not lean on hope (tho’ you may go through withdrawals at first, not having hope as dream-filler can be profoundly uncomfortable.)

When you move beyond hope, you take responsibility. You face facts. You see solutions that you didn’t see before. You stand in the present.

Hope less. Realize more.

Editor’s Note: Danielle LaPorte is the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com, which has been called “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality.” She is the author of The Fire Starter Sessions: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs, an inspirational speaker, former think tank exec, and news show commentator. You can read all of Danielle’s EcoSalon guest articles here, and find her on Twitter @daniellelaporte.

Image: sleepyjeanie

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On letting go of your dreams.

Louise* and Lance* were best friends. Just friends, never so much as smooched. They were roommates, they got drunk at concerts together, they slept in the same tent, exchanged great Christmas presents. Lance dated other people. Louise was in love with Lance. Plain as day, we all could see it. Well, maybe someday Lance will get it.

Twelve years went by. New partners and holidays came and went. It was good n’ truly time for Louise to lay down the torch. She decided make a pitch. This is the crescendo of all romantic comedies where the protagonist decides to go for it:

It is 4 a.m. and we’ve all been dancing at a fabulous wedding. Louise and Lance are slow dancing as the DJ starts packing up. There is a small audience of us in the corner table balancing Stella bottles and wearing neckties around our heads. “Oh…my…I think she’s going for it,” one of the cast says. We lean in to gawk, trying to read their lips.

Sure enough, with heart in hand and Cabernet courage, Louise makes her overture. Do you think we could make a go of it? Lance listened. He’s a great guy. He listened softly. And softly he said: “If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now.”

Truth bomb. Gently dropped.

If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Even destiny has an expiry date. This is such primal wisdom. I’m all for relentless dreaming and fierce faith. But if you’re spending an overly long time trying to wish, hammer, hope, push and ploy things into form, maybe it’s time to point your dream in another direction. If a crop isn’t growing, the farmer doesn’t keep wasting water and fertilizer on it. He yanks it out, tills the soil and plants a whole new kind of seed.

Let ’em go. Kill the project. Shut down a division. And take that same longing for love, or creative fulfillment, or phat cash and face forward!

Here’s the key dance move:

Hold on to the core desire of the dream – that feeling you want to feel when the dream is realized, but shift to a wholly new target. Change directions and a new form of satisfaction could be right around the corner.

…just like it was for Louise. She got on with her life. And fell in love with someone who fell crazy in love with her – easy breezy and right away.

*names have been changed to protect the identity of the temporarily heartbroken.

Editor’s Note: Danielle LaPorte is the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com, which has been called “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality.” She is the author of The Fire Starter Sessions: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs, an inspirational speaker, former think tank exec, and news show commentator. You can read all of Danielle’s EcoSalon guest articles here, and find her on Twitter @daniellelaporte.

Image: Hamed Parham

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