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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Memorable moments of hope in the midst of disaster.

Amidst the horror and heartbreak of the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami, some heartwarming stories have emerged of loyalty, love, and bravery. We saw it after 9/11, after Hurricane Katrina, after the 2005 tsunami, after the earthquake in Haiti, and we see it here. Despite the devastation, these people (and animals) remind us that heroism is not dead, love is a powerful motivator, hope is still alive, and people can be compassionate toward strangers.

• Teacher saves 42 students in 8 minutes
  Robert Bailey heard a tremendous cracking noise and instinctively herded all 42 of his students to safety on a nearby hill before their school was destroyed.
• Man swims through debris to find wife and mother
  Hideaki Akaiwa rushed home after the quake to find his neighborhood flooded. He donned scuba gear and swam to his house where his wife was trapped. He rescued her but his mother was not there. Four days later, he waded through neck-deep water and found her trapped on the second story of another house.
• Man walks 20 hours to find girlfriend
  After the quake, teacher Zack Branham was anxious for news of his girlfriend who lived on a coastal town four miles away. It took him 20 hours to make his way down blocked roads to her town, slip past authorities, and check several locations before finally finding her safe.
• Exchange student finds out family is alive over YouTube
  UC-Riverside student Akiko Kosako was unable to communicate with her family in Japan after the quake. After several days, a friend alerted her to a YouTube video showing her older sister holding up a sign that said they were all safe.
• CNN reunites son with Michigan family
  Soledad O’Brien reunited Paul Fales with his parents in Michigan over the phone on the air.
• Dog guards injured friend
  Seeing this dog stand by his friend despite all the chaos is like a scene out of a Disney movie. But not hokey.
• Anonymous donors are heroes, too
  Jon Friedman makes a good point. Celebrity donors publicly giving millions of dollars are a tremendous help, but isn’t true generosity the kind that you do without fanfare, without an expectation of thanks, and when you don’t have much, if anything to spare? Each time someone donates even $10 that they could really use in these hard economic times, they are an unsung hero. If you want to release your inner hero, see Stephanie Roger’s piece on 11 Ways You Can Help From Your House.

Image: Jesslee Cuizon

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I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

These words, well known to most Australians, were penned over a century ago by poet Dorothea Mackellar at age 19. These days there is a scientific explanation for Australia’s infamous “droughts and flooding rains”.

It’s called the El Niño-La Niña effect – a weather phenomenon that affects other Pacific rim countries as well. El Niño brings the dry, hot weather and La Niña brings the rain – and plenty of it. It’s nothing new though scientists warn that climate change is likely to bring more extremes, making heat and droughts and floods more prevalent and more severe.

In December I moved back to Australia after nearly seven years living abroad, first in London and then San Francisco. For the past few weeks I’ve been glued to the 24-hour news channel watching the Queensland flood crisis unfold, and then further flooding in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. While I’m safe and dry in Sydney, like many Australians, I have family and friends in Queensland. Thankfully they are all fine but thousands of others were not as lucky. We are use to “flooding rains” every so often, but the flood crisis in Queensland has been truly epic.

Three-quarters of Queensland has been declared a flood disaster zone. That is no small area – Queensland has a land mass twice the size of Texas or five times the size of the United Kingdom. Throughout the state, entire townships have been wiped out as rivers burst their banks or torrential downpours brought flash floods. In the south-eastern corner, the central business district and many suburbs of Brisbane – home to two million people – were submerged last week in the city’s worst flood since the 1970s.

Queensland grows a lot of Australia’s food but much of the produce was washed away where it lay in the fields, or sat rotting on stranded trucks. The cleanup, described by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh as of “post-war proportions”, will cost billions and economists are saying the destruction of farms and mines and tourist facilities could wipe one full percentage point off the national GDP.

The environmental cost is also huge. Large numbers of wild animals lost their lives in the floods. The floods carried away precious top soil and mixed it up with human debris and toxic chemicals, which has been dumped into waterways flowing to the southern states or out to sea. Much of it has blanketed the delicate eco-system of Great Barrier Reef, threatening the health of the coral reefs and other marine life. To prevent future floods, the state government is considering building more levees and dams to protect townships in flood zones.

Yet as bad as it’s been, I’ve never felt more proud to be an Australian. The human response has been fantastic. As I watched footage of people huddling on the roofs of their houses or clustered in evacuation centers, I recalled scenes from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Queensland floods were collectively bigger but in contrast to the New Orleans experience, government has played its part perfectly.

The response of the emergency services was highly effective and citizens were kept informed with clear, up-to-date information. Bligh, the state premier, gave televised press conferences every two hours for days and was on top of her game. She didn’t give the fine-sounding motherhood statements so beloved by politicians, instead delivering hard details about what had happened, what was happening and what was likely to happen. She did so without notes and usually without referring questions to the State Emergency Service or the police because she knew what was going on. The federal government also stepped in early, contributing Australian defense personnel to the crisis management and clean-up effort, and Prime Minister Julia Gillard announcing emergency welfare payments to people and businesses affected by the floods.

What impressed me most was the community spirit. We didn’t see scenes of looting but instead footage of people helping one another. Strangers came together to help move property to higher ground before it was claimed by flood waters. They turned out in their hundreds to stack sandbags in front of homes and shops in an effort to stave off the floodwaters. Our former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, himself a Brisbane-ite, mucked in just like everyone else, wading through muddy flood waters with residents’ suitcases on his head.

It’s not all rosy, of course. The determination to rebuild towns on flood plains is misguided. We’re still clearing forest and mangroves. And the long history of flooding means that no one wants to look seriously about what climate scientists are telling us about our future. There were howls of outrage when Greens leader Bob Brown sensibly suggested some of the taxes on the super-profits of the mining industry be diverted to a fund to deal with future natural disasters. Despite all this, I feel that the Australian spirit rose to the occasion beautifully.

The outpouring of concern and offers of help from around the world has been moving. But the fact is that Australia is a first-world country with a well-prepared emergency response system and enough wealth to help our citizens cope with their losses and rebuild essential infrastructure. As terrible as the floods have been, it’s impressive that our death toll stands at just 20 people. (Of course my heart goes out to the families of those 20 people but it could have been so much worse). There’s no false pride when we say we can look after our own.

It’s Brazil that needs your help right now.

Image: Kingbob86, NASA Goddard Photo and Video

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