Over the last few weeks I have been really challenging myself and my coaching clients around the use of the word “hope.” On the surface this word seems good. What else is there if I don’t have hope? Hope is innately positive, isn’t it? Isn’t the world a terribly dark place without hope? In my recent explorations it seems as though hope may in fact rely on and be generated from that dark place. What is interesting to me is that hope seems to leave space for us to carry our doubts. There is a pushiness about hope that might sound something like, “the only thing we can do is hope” or “what else do we have if we don’t have hope.” Notice the scarcity feeling underlying these two phrases?
Hope is reminding me of the word “try.” On the surface “try” sounds like you're going to give it a good go and make those possibilities happen. However, try is far sneakier than that. What “try” really does is give us a tiny little “out” so we don’t have to commit 100% to the thing we’re wanting or that thing we’re needing to do. If we’ve tried just a little bit we can say, “Well, at least I tried.” This phrase is a decrepit platform for jumping into giving up entirely.
So, if not “hope” and if not “try”, then what? Let me answer this question with a story.
One of dearest friends received a traumatic brain injury about a year and a half ago. Her recovery has truly been hell. It has included months trapped in a tiny dark room with noise cancelling headphones because light and sound caused her pain. She went from being the loudest, most outgoing, people-oriented person I knew to not being able to read, go grocery shopping on her own, or drive. Laughing caused her pain. My friend is an extraordinarily resilient and resourceful person and recently she has made some major progress in healing. I asked her what she thought was different. She responded with two things. The first is that she has a functional neurology team that is invested and cares deeply about her healing and the second was that she has stopped hoping she will get better and that she now knows in the depths of her soul that she will heal and that her future is bright. You’ll notice she did not say she just needed to try and heal more. Y’all, the word you are looking for is “trust.” This friend is trusting her team, trusting the process, trusting her body, trusting her experience as real, and trusting her intuition. She will tell you that this knowing, that this trust, is vital to her ability to heal.
So here is my call to you, trust you. Trust that you are in process. Trust that you can reach out for support and that your team is out there. Trust that you can get through anything that comes your way. Trust that things will improve, that the lockdowns will end, that we will get to embrace our loved ones again. Trust that if you want things to change that you can create that change. Get curious about how “hope” and “try” show up for you. If you are a spiritual or religious person, how does trust vs. hope show up in how you worship? To the use of the word “try” Yoda says, “Do or do not. There is no try.” To “hope” I say, “Trust or figure out what you need. You do not need hope. What do you need to deeply trust yourself?”