Got Hope?

I watched from afar as my fellow Americans celebrated in the streets, on their porches and in their homes as Joe Biden won the presidency. I gotta say, even though I have never regretted my decision to move to Germany, I was a little wistful that I couldn’t participate with them in person in what looked like totally unbridled joy.

2020 has not been the, ummmm, easiest year I wouldn’t say and the build up of a (seemingly endless) pandemic, then a burgeoning civil rights movement, and then the shitshow that was the 2020 elections left my fellow Americans exhausted and looking for something to look forward to - some signal that things would get better. The Biden/Harris win gave them hope.

This got me to thinking about the importance of hope, especially during times of despair, like NOW for instance. :) I thought about Viktor Frankl’s seminal book Man’s Search for Meaning, which begins in a concentration camp where he serves as a doctor helping to provide whatever small care he can under the worst conditions imaginable. One of his main findings, which later fed into his work in psychiatry and neurology, was that man (and woman) can survive even the most difficult and deplorable conditions as long as they have hope.. Hope that something will change for the better, hope for something to look forward to in the future. While the work of the yogi is to be with the present, whether we like what is happening or not, we also need hope.

Since his work was written almost 80 years ago, there has been quite a lot of work in the field of psychology on the importance of hope as a psychological trait to develop that can help us in times of adversity. People who have hope, along with a plan to meet their goals/hopes/dreams, tend to see obstacles in their path as mere challenges in need of creative strategies rather than a reason to stop and quit. They come up with alternatives… like little Ganesh in Hinduism that upon seeing a rock in the middle of a path sees the possibility of going over the rock, around the rock or even under the rock. Studies have found that people who have hope report higher life satisfaction which can serve as a buffer against the impact of negative and stressful life events. They also tend to perform better academically, in work and even athletically.

I have personally found that the thing that kept me feeling hopeful in the time of this second light lockdown here in Germany is my community. A community with a positive mindset committed to deliberately looking for joy, looking for the lessons within the muck, and being with what is, while making steps forward is everything. My current coaching group has helped me remain hopeful and positive at least as much as I have helped them. We even met a bit more than usual since, ya know, we are around more and can’t move around as much. We move together, meditate together, relax together, cook together, and laugh together. A lot.

I don’t want the group to end. So I decided to offer a 4 week mini course that is almost 100% practical. Bookwork and theory work is done all independently, but we will practice the habits of daily living from Ayurveda together. See the link here or below for more deets.

Hang in there peeps. We got this.