4 Ways To Hold Onto Hope This Week
Big feelings, long week
I brainstormed today’s Substack topic before looking at a calendar. Originally, I got the idea because I’m PMS-ing and getting over a second sinus infection, so I’m like, hey, maybe others are also going through a rollercoaster of big feelings. Then I realized what week this is (because denial has been a great place to live in since November), and, well, this note felt even more timely.
When I think about my hardest weeks, they usually revolve around things I can’t control—being sick, first-day cramps, or the world. In the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time strengthening my “keeping my side of the street clean” muscle, and it’s helped. I read the serenity prayer every morning to remind myself that what is in my control is enough to make a difference in my world and maybe even someone else’s.
I define hope as a guiding feeling that helps me commit to my present because it helps me believe my future is bright and warm. It’s not blind to reality, but it’s not riddled by the despair of my worst imagined outcomes either.
Hope doesn’t always come easily, especially when the world around you is really hard. The actions, people, and habits you use to hold onto hope are also determined by how much time, money, or emotional bandwidth you have. Hope is supposed to be subjective because we all create hope in our lives differently.
My four ideas may not register with you, and that’s okay. But just in case they do, here’s what I settled on for this week (and probably the next 1461 days).
Moderating my time on the Internet
Diving into hobbies
Volunteering
Community building
We live in a world with so much content available to us that it makes us feel like there’s a dinner table set that we’re supposed to make our way through or else. We don’t. We can log off social media, put on a different channel than the news, or unsubscribe from countless emails. I’m not suggesting we completely disassociate from reality, but I am encouraging mindful consumption that gives you time and energy back to dedicate to the parts of you that you need to protect to remain hopeful.
I have the capacity to focus on hobbies (like reading more romance books), volunteer opportunities (like this amazing grief-focused organization), and my loved ones because I’m not siloing myself off to only what the Internet has to offer. No matter what makes your week hard enough to have you searching for hopeful things to hold onto, I encourage you to use that energy as a jumping-off point for connecting with yourself and your loved ones a bit more. When you focus on what you can control, the uncontrollable parts of the world don’t feel that overwhelming.