September 25, 2025 • 54 mins
On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, we’re talking about hope.
What it really means, why it sometimes gets a bad rap, and how we can look at it through a bunch of different lenses.
I share why hope isn’t just some fluffy, pie-in-the-sky idea - but actually a powerful mindset and a skill that we can practice every day, especially when the world feels crazy, overwhelming or out of control.
We talk about how hope is more than just a feeling… it’s also a way of thinking, a call to action, and a belief in the possibility of a better future!
I get into the idea of “learned hopefulness,” and how it’s wicked interesting that hope actually needs a little uncertainty or negativity to get activated.
Plus, I share stories from Greek mythology, psychology, and even a little Mister Rogers - to show how hope can be a guiding light, even when things look and feel tough.
One of my big takeaways is that hope isn’t passive.
It’s not about just wishing things would get better, it’s about believing we can make a positive difference and then getting our ass in gear and actually doing something about it.
I talk about the importance of shifting our perspective, training our minds to look for the good, the beautiful, and the holy…
And how our individual actions can ripple out to create bigger change in our families, communities, and the world.
If you’re feeling a little low on hope, I invite you to join me in practicing it!
Visualize the future you want, “walk as if” your dreams are already happening, and remember that hope can be an act of resistance and a source of strength.
And if you want to go deeper or get support, come check out my “Nest” community -or- my one-to-one mentoring.
Wherever you are, may you leave the world a little better than you found it, and may your hope be a blessing to yourself and others! ❤️
KK’S KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Hope is more than a feeling; it is a mindset, a call to action, a practice, and a belief in the possibility of positive change.
• Practicing hope requires us to shift our perspective and train our minds to look for the good, the beautiful, and the holy.
• Hope is not passive; it inspires us to take action and create the future we want to see.
• “Learned Hopefulness” means cultivating the belief that we can positively influence our own lives and the world.
• Visualizing and embodying your desired future can more likely help to make hope a lived reality.
• Individual change and inner peace are the starting points for creating broader change in families, communities, and society.
• Hope can be an act of resistance and a source of strength during difficult times.
• Joining a supportive community can help you practice and sustain hope in your daily life.
BIO:
Spiritual Mentor and writer Karen Kenney uses humor and dynamic storytelling to bring a down-to-earth, no-BS perspective to self-development.
Bringing together tools that coach the conscious and unconscious mind, Karen helps clients deepen their connections with Self, and discover their unique understandings of spirituality.
Her practice combines neuroscience, subconscious reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis, somatic work, spiritual mentoring, and other holistic modalities to help regulate the nervous system, examine internal narratives, remove blocks, and reimagine what’s possible.
A passionate yoga teacher, long-time student of A Course in Miracles, and Gateless Writing instructor, Karen is a frequent speaker and retreat leader. Via her programs The Quest and The Nest, she coaches both...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey you guys, welcome to theKaren Kenney show. I'm so happy
to be here with you today, andtoday I want to talk about hope.
H, O, P, E, hope. And one of thereasons why I want to talk about
hope is that I think hopesometimes gets a bad rap. So
(00:22):
it's not like I have to be here,like in defense of hope, but I
want to just talk about hope andlook at it through a couple of
different lenses. I always thinkof so many things as being like
a kaleidoscope, and we tend to,like lock things into being a
particular way, or thinkingabout something for a particular
way. And one of the things Ilove to do is to just kind of
(00:43):
like, you know, when a dog, heis a funny sound, he like, tilts
his head sideways. Sometimes,just like tilting your head
sideways, just a touch, it cangive you a totally different
perspective. Just kind ofshifting that kaleidoscope, just
one tiny turn, and all of asudden you have a totally
different picture. The otherreason why I want to talk about
hope today is because I thinkthat there is so much going on
(01:07):
in the world that is so fuckinginsane and so just overwhelming
and scary and maddening andfear, like there's so much fear
that is generated in this kindof human existence realm, you
know what I mean? And there's somuch that happens that feels
like it is out of our control.There's so much that we feel
(01:29):
like we do not control in theouter world. And when we start
to get overwhelmed by that, andwe're getting bombarded through
the news the 24 hour, like 24/7like news cycle and the endless
bombardment of social media andthe Internet and the devices and
like all that stuff, when we getconstantly reminded of how out
(01:50):
of control a lot of things feel,we can start to feel hopeless.
And I know that there are peopleout there who I've heard say
both Nia and fat to me, who havesaid things that they were
feeling hopeless and helpless.So this, for me, is like just
something that's, I think,important to talk about and I
(02:11):
want to dive into. And let'sstart off by and I got some
notes here in front of me,because I always like, I always
like to do my due diligence. Iam a lover of words. I love to
know where a word originatedfrom, what it means, and look at
it from a couple of differentangles, right? So the word hope,
if we look at it as a noun, thisis there's a couple of different
meanings for it. Number one,it's a feeling of expectation
(02:35):
and desire for a certain thingto happen. Okay? It's also as a
noun, grounds for believing thatsomething good may happen. Okay?
And here's a little another one.This one might be from Marion
Webster's Dictionary,dictionary, and it says hope is
(02:55):
an optimistic state of mind, notjust a feeling. So one calls it
a feeling. This is calling it anoptimistic state of mind that is
based on an expectation ofpositive outcomes with respect
to events and circumstances inone's own life or the world at
(03:17):
large. Now, Marion Webster as averb defines hope this way,
quote to expect with confidence,end quote or quote to cherish a
desire with anticipation. And Ithought these were fabulous. I'm
a wicked hopeful. I'm kind of anannoyingly hopeful person. And I
(03:39):
know that some people canconsider hope to be, almost be
like a little, little like PollyAnna ish, but I want to look at
it this way. So while some of ussee hope like, let's talk about
this, because not all of us, noteverybody's like me, not
everybody sees hope as apositive thing, um, so while
some of us see hope as apositive thing, like it's, for
(04:01):
me, it's like a glimmer. It'slike a glimmer. It's a guide.
It's a guiding light when we'rejust in it. You know what I
mean? Like when things just feellike all hope is lost. You know,
I often use this as an example.If you were a kid in my
generation, there was a showcalled the banana splits, and on
the banana splits, I referencethis character a lot, excuse me.
(04:25):
And he was on gullive histravels, and he was just like
this little Negative Nelly guy.And anytime something happened,
he would just mutter the words,we'll never make it. We're
doomed, right? And he was so nothopeful or positive, like at
all. And so while some of us seehope as a good thing, as a
guiding light, as somethingpositive to get us through, like
(04:48):
Doc, Doc, times, other peoplethink of hope as something
negative, like they'll say,Don't get your hopes up, or
you're just going to getdisappointed. Or it feels
almost. Like, you know thatsaying, like having an albatross
around your neck, that hope kindof keeps us attached to
expectations or to dreams of,like, better or great at times,
(05:12):
it's like this thing where youjust hope and hope and hope, but
nothing actually happens and youjust end up defeated and
disappointed, and, you know,getting discouraged and all that
stuff. And when we think aboutthis relationship to our
relationship, I should say tothe word hope, I started
thinking about that old story,which is really interesting. So
(05:33):
you guys have all probably heardthe phrase you're gonna open
Pandora's box. And this goesback to Greek, Greek mythology.
And what's really interesting isthat Pandora actually wasn't
given a box to open. She wasgiven a ja, I don't know why I
find that so funny. Pandora'sja, I guess it doesn't have the
(05:59):
same like, you know, same oomphto it like, so you open
Pandora's box. Okay? So back inGreek mythology, there's
Pandora, and Pandora is supposedto supposedly like the first
woman on earth. So first womanon earth, gods give her this ja,
and they tell her, don't openit. Okay, we already know how
(06:21):
that's going to end, because ifshe was curious, if she was
curious, as curious as I am, andit's like, here's this first
woman on earth, here's a jar.Don't open it. They told her,
keep it shut. But of course, hercuriosity wins out. She opens it
out, and upon opening the jaw,all of a sudden, she releases,
(06:45):
like, every evil, every malady,like all these awful, all the
miseries of the world, like comepouring out, come flying out,
like, like a swarm of bees. It'slike, right? If you've ever seen
like a horror movie where, like,it's something is like a mist or
a fog or whatever, and you openit up and it's like it just goes
(07:05):
out. So everything from like,sorrow to pain to envy to greed
to sickness, death, disease,hatred, strife, famine, like
whatever, all the bad shit,like, just comes pouring out.
And then, of course, Pandora islike, Oh my God, oh shit. And
she tries to, like, shut thejaw, and when she quickly closes
(07:27):
the jaw, slash box, right?There's one thing that stayed
trapped inside, and that washope. So think about that inside
the jaw. Now I don't know whatthe gods were thinking. They
obviously have a wicked, funnysense of humor, but inside,
alongside all of these awfulthings, was also hope. So hope
(07:51):
stays trapped inside with allthe other like melodies of the
human world, right? Soeverything else escapes, but
hope stays in the box. Now tosome of us, we are like, Oh my
God, thank God. She held on tohope. She has this like divine
gift that is still in her powerand in her presence and in her
possession that she can useright, this hope that human
(08:14):
humankind, right, has retainedamidst all the other bad things,
all the adversities in theworld, all the tragedies of the
world, all the horrors and allthe suffering. We still have
hope. Well, other people look atit as like, it's kind of like,
hope is just kind of like lame,lame and wishful thinking. Some
(08:38):
people even see it like we'rebeing taunted, like, it's like,
oh yeah, we have hope. Like, wehave hope all these good things
are going to happen, but theynever happen. You know what I
mean? So a lot of people look atit in a very negative way. Me,
personally, I'm a wicked big fanof hope, and we're going to get
into all that. But I, of course,I looked up hope, and I always
(09:00):
like to get a couple ofdifferent perspectives on this.
And there's a wonderful guy, apsychologist. I mean, I assume
he's wonderful in person, heseemed wonderful on video, but
he's a psychologist, and hisname is, and I want to say this
correctly, Dr Dan Tomasulo, andhe teaches positive psychology
at Columbia. He also, like,speaks on the science of learned
(09:23):
hopefulness. And of course, thatjust like grabbed me like that
title the science of learnedhopefulness. And he says this.
He says Hope is the onlypositive emotion that requires
negativity or uncertainty inorder for it to be activated.
Let me say that again, hope isthe only positive emotion that
(09:44):
requires negativity oruncertainty to be activated. And
he went on to make a funny andhe said, there's no need for
hope if everything is hunkydory, right?
And it's true. But the thingabout. About hope is that it's
flip of the coin, right? Peoplewho, people who, like, get their
(10:06):
hopes up and then getdisappointed, or things don't go
their way, or things look likelike they do in the world right
now, where, like, everything'skind of going down, and there's
all this negativity and all thisdivision and all this murder and
hatred and schools massshootings and school shootings
and like famine and genocide andlike all these things that are
happening, it's what we can loseour bit of hope, right? We can
(10:29):
lose that bit of sunshine in ourheart. We can lose that, what we
call it, a glimmer of hope,right? We lose that glimmer,
that sparkly, little divinething that that like, like
Pandora, that she retained inthe box. And to me, I'm like we,
you know, or in the job, we allhave this, I think, in our
heart. But when we start to loseour belief in hope, if we don't
(10:52):
activate our hope and use it,and we're going to talk about
using hope in a minute, thenhopelessness can often lead to
despair. And if you take a lookaround right now, just like I
was saying, we could all use alittle more hope. So I want us
to consider thinking of lookingat Hope like this. And this is
(11:13):
kind of how I look at Hope. Ithink of hope as many things,
not just one thing, right? So ifwe go back to the you know, the
definitions here, it's a feelingof expectation and desire for a
certain thing to happen. That'sone way to look at it. But I
look at hope as a feeling. Ilook at it as a positive motion,
(11:34):
number one, number two. I alsolook at hope as a mindset, as a
particular outlook as aparticular thought system. So to
me, it's not just a feeling,it's also a mindset. For me,
hope is also a call to action.It's an inspiration. It's
something that lights a littlefire under my ass, you know what
(11:57):
I mean? And hope is also, to me,a practice. It's not some
ethereal thing out there. It'ssomething that I can practice in
here. And we know,
we know that to me, it's kind oflike that old saying in the
Bible, right? Faith withoutworks is dead to me, hope,
(12:21):
without works, is dead. I don'tthink of hope is just something
that we get to like, sit aroundand like, Oh, I hope. I hope we
have a more inner, more peacefulworld. I hope we have a less
violent world. It's like, No,you know how we get outer peace?
You know how we get world peaceis individuals inside are
working on their own innerpeace. Inner peace amongst all
(12:46):
the individuals leads to outerpeace. What I have found is that
people who have more of anexperience of of inner peace,
what they start to do is theystart to have a different
experience of themselves. Theystart to have a different
experience, where they can startto believe in themselves and
(13:06):
trust themselves. And when youmove through the world from that
place where you kind of havebelief in yourself, and you
start to trust yourself, and youtrust your inner teacher, you
trust that wise advocate or HolySpirit, or the still inner voice
or the divine intelligence thatmoves through you, right? You
start to show up differently inthe world. And I find that
(13:27):
people who are moving throughthe world with inner peace, they
tend to create outer peacearound them. And just imagine if
more people right, stayed inthat place of hopefulness. They
stayed in that place ofbelieving that they could
actually make a difference andthat they do something about it.
So to me, hope isn't passive.Hope is not a passive thing.
(13:48):
It's not like this naivePollyanna ish, like, I'm just
gonna cross my fingers and hopefor the best. No, it's not. It's
a skill. Hope is actually askill, and it is a skill that we
can practice. It's a to me,again, it's a mindset that
inspires action, and it's likeit's not just a belief. So I
(14:12):
guess that's number five to me.It's also a belief, but it's a
belief in the possibility ofthings getting better. It's a
belief in the possibility ofchange and transformation. Hope,
to me, is a belief in thepossibility for a better future.
But and it comes along with it'sa it has a plan on how to do it,
(14:37):
on how to get there. It's notjust like pie in the sky, cross
my fingers. Hope it all worksout. No, it's like I'm going to
take action to try to right,have a plan. Now, of course, a
miracle says a healed, healedmind does not plan. And that
doesn't mean that we don't havea plan. It's that we. Now don't
(15:00):
make our plan all on our ownmeaning. We get quiet, we slow
down, we spend we have some timeof introspection, some self
reflection, some self awareness.We get wicked clear on our
motivations, on our intentions,on what's driving the bus within
us. We ask, we call upon themore intelligent parts of
(15:24):
ourselves, whether you call thatyour highest self, your higher
power, your good self, your goodthinking, your comments,
whatever you want to call itHoly Spirit, right the again,
the quiet voice within the innerteacher, we make a plan from
that place on how we would liketo create whatever it is, this
more peaceful world, this morekind, compassionate, loving
(15:46):
United States of America,perhaps right, not this
divisive. We hold on to a hopeand a vision and a belief that
there is a possibility forthings to look different. But we
don't just sit on our ass andexpect the rest of the world to
figure it out. We try to comeup, at least on an individual
(16:06):
level, a plan on how to getthere. So for me, hope takes us
from having a problem and itswings open the door to
possibility. Because as long asyou are stuck in hopelessness
and as long as you are stuck indespair, you are powerless when
you throw your hands up or shoveyour head in the sand or just
(16:26):
say you tap out and say, I'mout. I'm not saying don't take
breaks. There are a lot ofpeople in this world, especially
black women, who have been doinga lot of the heavy lifting for a
really long time, and so a lotof us who have been maybe
sitting on the sidelines orsaying shit like, oh well, God's
(16:47):
just gonna handle it all, like,hope helps the thoughts and
prayers and Namaste the dayaway, right? It's like no, some
of us have to step up andactually get involved. Have a
little bit more of a plan. Youknow what I'm saying, and so so
much of this when we're movingfrom that place of problem, the
suffering, the division, thehatred, all that stuff to
(17:09):
possibility, to me, that's therealm of spirit that's moving
from fear to love. So to me, insome ways, hope is miraculous,
because as A Course in Miracles,says all that, all that a
miracle is, is a shift in ourperception, a shift in our mind
from fear to love. Now let mesay this, if you're in the kind
(17:33):
of quote unquote spiritualrealm, the spiritual quote
unquote world, or you have aspiritual practice, or you have
spiritual friends or whatever.No doubt, especially if you are
familiar with the Course ofMiracles at all, you have heard
that, right? A miracle ends ashift in perception from fear to
love, and it's so easy to quoteit. It's so easy to say the
words and to also like hear it,but not hear it like you hear
(17:57):
the tones and the fluctuationsof sound making like coherent
words, but you're not receivingit. You're not getting it.
You're not feeling it, andyou're not downloading how
powerful that actually is. Whenyou shift your mind from fear to
love, when there is a shift inperspective in your mind, it can
(18:18):
heal separation, it can healdivision. It can heal wars. It
can create forgiveness. It is asoothing balm to the soul. When
you are willing to shift how youhave been perceiving something,
yourself, a situation orsomebody else, it is a powerful,
powerful thing, because love,that's the state where love
(18:40):
happens in the realm ofcuriosity and creativity and
possibility. But when we stayattached to the problem, the
suffering, the division, thehopelessness, the helplessness,
we're screwed, we're right, likenothing's going to change. What
do they always say? Nothingchanges. If nothing changes,
right? So if we stay open tohope, if we stay open to the
(19:02):
idea, the belief in the practiceright, the feeling of hope,
anything that is felt right,thought about, felt spoken with
repetition, it literally createsneural networks in our brain
that allows that feeling good orbad, in this case, with hope
(19:23):
good, right to it a lot. So RickHansen says it like this,
neurons in your brain that firetogether, wire together. Another
way of saying this is youpractice an emotional state. How
you feel right, you practice anemotional state until it becomes
(19:44):
a neural trait. And for example,that's why people who get angry
really easily. What that tellsme is they've practiced getting
angry 1000 times before. Thatpeople who feel like they are
infinitely patient they have.Practice patience 1000 times
before that. Right? We practiceemotional state until it becomes
(20:07):
a neural trait. Neurons thatfire together, wire together to
me, if I keep my mind attuned tohope, to love, right, to all of
that stuff, when I shift out ofall that fear state that's what
despair and hopelessness andhatred and division and
separation and all that stuff,is when I shift out of that, the
(20:28):
world opens up. And Drthomasullo said this, I want to
share this because I thought itwas so great. He says, When I
talk about learned hopefulness,we're trying to cultivate a
perspective that optimizes thebelief that we can positively
influence the future. Thinkabout that. He says, it's about
(20:50):
agency and positivity. And thisis what I think is so powerful
about this sentence. He says,we're trying to cultivate a
perspective that optimizes thebelief that we can those two
words, that we can positivelyinfluence the future meaning.
I'm not at the mercy of what theworld out there is doing. I'm
(21:15):
not saying it doesn't feel likewe are and that sometimes we
are, sometimes somebody wouldjust sit in a light, and
somebody you know hits us frombehind, we get, boom, we got
little car accident from behind.Sometimes there are things that
are just kind of like happening.I'm not, I'm not spiritually
bypassing suffering, atrocities,awful things. I'm just saying we
hold on to the belief, though,that we can positively influence
(21:38):
the future. And what's happeningright now, I think, is that a
lot of people are losing theirbelief that they can actually
positively influence the futureand change how things are going,
change the direction that theworld in this country is going
in. And so we, you know, it'sreally important that we
understand how we can,
(22:01):
like influence our own beliefsand train our mind. And this is
what this is what meditation isall about. In some ways, this is
what A Course in Miracles allabout. It's about mind training.
It's training our mind to thinkalong the thoughts of love, a
thought system of love, insteadof a thought system of fear. And
(22:21):
here's what we know ourperception. So in A Course in
Miracles, it says perception,right? I'm tapping my forehead,
what we think of and hold to betrue in our mind, right?
Perception makes projection.It's what we put out onto the
world. So what we think in ourmind, in here is often what we
(22:43):
experience. Out there, ourperception informs our
experience. It informs ourknowledge, our knowledge right,
often informs what we think,informs what we believe. So if
we want to change our beliefs,like, oh my god, we're never
make it. We're doomed. We'refucked. It's all a mess. It's in
(23:06):
it is, look it's, I get it. Itlooks like a shit show out
there, like I get it. But if wewant to change our beliefs about
what's possible, we have toshift our perceptions. That's
the way that we get it done. Andthere's a quote that was made
famous by Wayne Dyer, if you'rea Wayne Dyer fan, right? The
writer, the author, the thinker,the speaker. He's no longer with
(23:29):
us. But Wayne had a thing wherehe would say, if we change the
way we look at things, thethings we look at change, and it
gets attributed to him. Yes, hesaid it in his books, but it's
not his original quote that camefrom the founder of quantum
physics. He was a Germanphysicist named Max Max Planck.
It was popularized by Wayne, butMax Planck basically
(23:52):
paraphrased, says, If we changethe way we look at things, the
things we look at change. So itkind of also goes along with
that saying, right? People, alot of times say, well, I'll
believe it when I see it. Andpeople we often say, like,
you'll see it. We flip thataround. We say, you'll see it
when you first believe it. So ashift in perception in your mind
(24:17):
swings open the door right topossibilities and the most
significant change, I often say,you know, everybody wants to
change the world out there. AndI always say, the way that you
change the world out there is bychanging the world first in
here, and I'm tapping my head inmy hat, right? Your body like in
(24:39):
here, the inner work is whatleads to external changes. And I
often say, like, if you want tosee a less violent world, right?
We just had this kid in Nashua,like, 23 years old, or
something, 2223 years old, youknow, and he breaks into, you
know, an event space. So there'san event space in a restaurant,
like a country club. Yeah, andhe just like, he shoots people.
(25:02):
And you're like, What the fuckwe see it all over the place. We
see it in, you know, children inschools and churches, the
insanity, right? We just sawCharlie Kirk get murdered.
That's a whole other show foranother day. But if we want to
see a less violent world, aworld with no more violence or
less violence, we must do thework on an individual level to
(25:27):
eradicate all the violence thatwe have within ourselves and our
own hearts and our own minds andour own DNA, like the way, and I
mean, I don't mean DNA, likeactual DNA, but like, you know
what we walk around, the storieswe carry, the beliefs we carry,
right? And that's the thing is.People like, well, there's
nothing we can do. I said, No,no, no, the first thing you do,
(25:50):
I always say, you can't complainabout shit blowing around the
neighborhood. People like, oh,there's stuff all over the
street. And then, yeah, youmight want to check your own
backyard, because that's wherethe stuff is coming right? Clean
up. Clean up your own trashbarrels that you didn't roll
back in. You know what I'msaying? So we have all have our
own little garden to tend to,and that's where we start doing
(26:12):
the work. All that, all that afamily is, is it's made up of
individuals. All that aneighborhood is, is it's made up
a bunch of differentindividuals. All that a
community is, is it's made up ofa bunch of different
individuals. All that a state islike, it's a city, a state, you
can keep going out a company, acorporation. It's just made up
of individuals, a country madeup of individuals, a government.
(26:36):
So the way that we create masschange, change on a global
scale. Wanting to see a morequote, unquote, peaceful world
or less violent world, one at atime, we gotta get our hats
right. We gotta get our mindsright. And I think holding on to
hope and believing, actually,believing that we have the
(26:58):
possibility to create a betterfuture, along with a plan on how
to do it and then actuallytaking some action. So we've got
to understand ourselves. We gotto understand the way that we
look like, the lenses that weuse to like, look through the
world, look at ourselves, eachother and whatever, and that's
how we change. And I've said itbefore. You've heard me say it.
(27:20):
Why are there still in therichest country in the world,
why are there still childrendying of starvation? Why are
there still kids going hungry atthe end of the day? Why are
there kids who don't have, like,resources and things that they
need? Because enough people areokay with it. Enough people are
voting against it. Enough peoplehave decided, like, Yeah, I'm
(27:41):
okay. I'm okay with kids gettingkilled when they go to school.
I'm okay. Like, look at our gunlaws, look at all that stuff.
It's because enough people areokay with having some gun
deaths, right? Because we justthink, like, Oh, yeah. Like, we
don't want to give up our guns.It's like, nobody's asking you
to give up the guns. We'reasking for more like effective
(28:02):
leadership and like rules andlaws around getting guns and all
that stuff. But again, anotherconversation for another day. So
when we change, right? This isthe heart of the human
experience. Is our perceptionshapes our reality. And when we
understand the power of our ownperspective, the power of our
(28:23):
own subconscious beliefs. Whenwe start to get that the when we
start to change the way that welook at things, the things that
we are viewing, witnessing,observing, those things will
start to change. So from thisright, we look at things
differently. This is howtransformation happens. This is
(28:43):
how change happens. This iswhere we get hope, because we
actually start to see again.It's not this Pollyanna ish
crossing your fingers and hopingfor the best. It's like, well,
what am I going to do about thisvision of hope that I have? You
know, in A Course in Miracles,it's like lesson 33 it says
there's another way of lookingat the world. There is another
(29:04):
way of looking at the world. Weall know. We've talked about it
on this show. If you're aregular listen to the show, the
brain has its own negativitybias. It gets up in the morning.
It's the brain's job is to keepyou safe. So it's always going
to be looking for threats. It'sgoing to be looking for things
that are scary, things that arewrong, things that are bad. It's
always trying to judge itsenvironment for safety, right?
(29:25):
It's not sitting around liketrying to see the good in
everybody. You know, I'vetrained my brain. I think I was
kind of like that anyways as akid, but part of being a Course
in Miracles student for like,over 30 years is that I have
trained my mind in a veryspecific way, right? So I did
last year a 30 day challenge,and I'm going to seriously
(29:48):
consider bringing it back,either somewhere sometime this
year, or start off the year withit in 2026 but I did a challenge
called The Good, the beautifuland the holy and. Speaking of A
Course in Miracles, there'sanother way of looking at the
world, right? There's anotherline in A Course in Miracles
that says Child of God, and Ijust consider us all God's kids,
(30:09):
whether you believe in God ornot, think of yourself as a
child of the universe or a childof love. I don't use your own
happy word, but it says child ofGod. You were created to create
the good, the beautiful and theholy. Do not forget this. Child
of God. You were created tocreate the good, the beautiful
and the holy. Do not forgetthis. And my challenge was all
(30:33):
about taking 30 days to help us,to train our mind over the
course of 30 days, to lookinside you. But I started with
the outside world, because for alot of people, it's easier to do
it to the outside, to look forthe good, to look for the
beautiful, to look for
the holy. In this case, holydoesn't necessarily mean
(30:57):
religious. It doesn't mean itcouldn't be beautiful things
like, maybe you you went tochurch service and you're like,
Oh, that felt like a holyexperience. Or maybe you had a
deep talk with a friend andthere was reconciliation or
forgiveness, and that felt likea holy moment, or a holy instant
or whatever. But holy could meanlike, I broaden the scope,
because I know that word forsome people can be like, Man,
(31:17):
that makes me a little uncomfy,right? But so the challenge was
all about taking 30 days rightto really look around and
observe the good, the beautifuland the holy. And it trained our
minds to look at what alreadyexists in the world, right? And
then we had to shift it toacknowledging those things that
(31:38):
lived within us that we're good,beautiful and holy people find
that pot like way harder. Andagain, that's a conversation for
another day. But here's what I'mtrying to say, when we're
looking for the good, thebeautiful and the holy, we have
so much more hope, you know. AndI think about and I've talked
about it many times, as you allknow, I'm a huge fan of Mister
Rogers, right? When MisterRogers talks about how when bad
(32:01):
or scary things happen in theworld, this is a famous thing. I
know it's not the first timeyou're hearing it from me, but
meaning you've heard it fromother places. And his mom would
tell him, like, when the scarythings happened, she'd be like,
Freddie, look for the help is.Look for the people who are
helping. That to me is like,good, beautiful and holy. That's
like looking for the hopeful,looking for the places where
(32:23):
people aren't just flappingtheir gums or crossing their
fingers. They're doing somethingabout the tragedy, the trauma,
the travesty, like their bootson the ground. They're getting
their hands dirty. They're likediving in so I guess what I'm
trying to say is we don't haveto just accept the way that
things are out there, the waythat things, quote, unquote,
appear to be in this smallreality, as we say, in this very
(32:46):
human kind of, you know, drama,this play that is being acted
out on the cosmic level, right?And in a course, in miracles, we
call it like a dream. And inyoga, we call it Maya, the
illusion, this illusion ofseparation, right? So we don't
just have to accept the way thatthings are. We can train our
mind, and we can challengeourselves to try to see things
(33:08):
in a new way, and to not justtry to see things in a new way,
but to actually see things in anew way. Because hope is
teachable. Hope is what I liketo say. It's learnable, right?
We can learn to be more hopeful.And there's a quote that I want
to share again. It comes from, Ialways want to make sure I say
his name, Dr thomasullo. He saidthis, I love this. He says,
(33:30):
learned hopefulness cultivatesperspectives, optimizing the
belief that we can positivelyinfluence the future. Learned
hopefulness, I'm going to say itagain. Learned hopefulness
cultivates perspectives,optimizing the belief that we
can positively influence thefuture. And I can say this, as
(33:53):
somebody who works with thesubconscious mind a lot, with
myself and with my clients andwith members of the nest, is
that when you hold on to abelief, and to me, this is like
almost self hypnosis, right?It's not self delusional, but
it's literally, how do we how dowe create an outcome that we
desire, not by focusing on ourlack and what we don't have, but
(34:17):
we literally create, like littlemovies in our mind, right? We
use our imagination, and weimagine what it's like. We
visualize a better future. Weliterally put ourselves in our
mind's eye in a better future.And we practice this. We
practice seeing thingsdifferently. We hold the vision
of what's possible, and we putourself into the scene in that
(34:40):
movie, as if we are there rightnow. And we look around in the
movie and it's like, what am Iseeing, what am I feeling? What
am I what am I hearing? What amI tasting or touching? We use
the five senses. We make itreally real, and we practice a
vision. And athletes do this allthe time. They call it they call
it visualization. It's really.Self hypnosis, right? It's same
(35:01):
Z. Same z is different, samething. It's like they're
visualizing. They see themselvesswinging the bat. They see
themselves taking the shot. Theysee themselves like swinging the
golf club, right? They put them.They see themselves winning the
race, running faster. They seethemselves doing it all
perfectly, and right? They lettheir nervous system, their
(35:22):
mind, their neurons, theirphysical body, have the
experience of it already bedifferently, and we can do this
with hope too, when we practiceit enough times that belief that
we can positively influence thefuture. This is how things
actually come to be right. Webring it to life. We practice
(35:42):
hopefulness. It's so powerful.And this is what I'm saying. Is
like hope is teachable,hopefulness is learnable. And
this is how we keep the darknessout. We keep the darkness out by
always noticing the littleglimmers of light of
possibility. We train our mindto look for love, and then we
(36:04):
take action again. We don't justtalk about it. We don't just
think about it. It's theapplication of the theory. We do
something about it. And we wantto start by emulating
internally, right? We embody thething that we wish to be
different out there, we emulateinternally what we want to
experience externally. That'sthe gig, and then we take
(36:28):
action, because hope is takingaction on that possibility. So
we can transform hope fromsomething that's quote, unquote
passive to something that's apowerful catalyst for change,
something that actually canshape our world. We're not just
sitting around thinking aboutit, dreaming about it,
visualizing about it. We arethen taking that practice and
(36:50):
we're putting it to good use outin the world. And I think if we
can shift our relationship fromHope, from like it just being
like this, whatever she hopes,yeah, keep hoping. Yeah, keep
hoping, you know, and peopleroll their eyes, or whatever.
But hope is something to me thathas empowered me, right? Hope
that, Oh, my God, this is notgoing to last forever. In fact,
(37:12):
it doesn't matter why, but I waslooking, I was looking at my
high school yearbook. That's awhole of the story. And
underneath my picture? Well,it's not even my picture. I
think I've told this storybefore.
My picture in the yearbook doesnot have my name underneath it.
That's a whole story for anotherday, but my quote in the
yearbook was, nothing lastsforever. And I think a lot of
(37:36):
people could take that to meansomething really negative, and I
would say the only thing thatlasts forever. So no thing lasts
forever. But you know what lastsforever is love? You know it's
eternal. Eternal is our spirit.That's what lasts forever. But I
was thinking of it too, likethis is like, No no thing, no
suffering, no one way of beingright? Because we are etern in
(37:58):
the human realm. We areeternally changing, right? We
are eternally changing, whetherit's our skin, right, even,
like, look at me, I'm like, Oh,I'm going to be 57 next week,
next week. So to me, hope isreally powerful, and it helps us
to overcome the trials and thetribulations and the traumas of
life and holding on, holding onto to the fact that we can
(38:23):
overcome things. Nothing lastsforever. Gandhi had that
beautiful quote where he saysbasically, like, I'm totally
paraphrasing, but like in timesof strife, in times of war, in
times of whatever he says,murderers and tyrants have been
around forever, and it oftenseems like they're winning, but
in the end they fall, always inthe end they fall. Always, love
(38:43):
wins. And he says, Rememberthis, like remember this,
remember this. So with hope, youknow, we can find the inner
strength. Hope for me gives methe inner strength to endure
wicked, hard shit. It helps meto find resiliency in the face
of devastating, devastatingcircuit circumstances, things
(39:06):
I've, you know, I've livedthrough in my own life. It's
helped me to navigateuncertainties in life, and it's
also given me the curiosity whenI'm hopeful and I'm shifting my
brain out of that fight andflight state, like rather than
getting shut down from that, youknow that sympathetic nervous
system response of whereeverything just goes into, like
(39:27):
learned trauma response, when Istay in that place of
possibility and hopefulness anda more light, a more like
curious, it allows me to staycurious and to stay into, like
the part of my brain that canactually do good problem
solving. It helps me to have thecuriosity and the courage to,
like find solutions to things,which is a really big deal, you
(39:50):
know what I mean. And so I couldtalk about this. I could talk
about this forever, but I wantto leave you with a quote from
and I've shared this quotebefore. Four on the podcast, and
hopefully this is helping you tolook at Hope. Hope is a
different way too, that isactually more powerful. It is
actually more action oriented.So remember, it's a feeling. For
(40:12):
me, it's also so I get the fivehere, right? So to me, hope is a
feeling, a positive emotion.It's a mindset and an outlook
and a thought system that leanstowards love. It's a call to
action, and it's a practice.Hope is a practice right, like
the good, the beautiful and theholy, seeking those things out,
(40:32):
finding it. It's also a belief,and our beliefs have the power
to shape right, the stories wetell, what we believe about
ourselves, and if we believethat things are hopeful, we are
way more likely to have morepositive outcomes than if we
just sit in the shit. I alwayssay, don't sit in the shitty
diaper, right? But being likethis stinks. Like, yeah, get out
(40:52):
of the shitty diaper, right?Like, change your mind. Let's do
something about it. Okay? But wealso know this is this. This
little quote is from Guru Singh,and this is for the people who
are always like, Don't get yourhopes up too high. Okay, I love
this. So let's say that you havea dream, right? You're dreaming
a dream. There's this thing thatyou want to do, or want a
(41:14):
particular outcome, or like,whatever, right? And he says,
walk as if. And he's like,dream, your dream, whatever that
dream is. He's like, walk as if.And what that means is, walk as
if it's going to happen. Walk asif, like in your mind, even in
your mind, see it as alreadydone, is already happening. He's
(41:37):
like, walk as if, and fill inthe blank whatever your dream
is, he's like dream, your dream,and walk as if that dream is
already happening, is alreadycoming through, right? And I
always say to people at thispoint, who would I have to be?
This is where you want to getunder the under. Who would I
have to be? What's, who's thekind of person that I would have
(42:00):
to be in order for that dreamright to come true. Like, what
steps do I need to take? Who?How would I have to think? How
would I have to speak? How wouldI have to hold myself right? Who
would I have to be? Walk as ifthat means, embody it as if it
is already true. Okay? And hesays this, he goes on to say, he
(42:23):
says, walk as if and dream yourdream, dream, your dream, and
walk as if whatever that dreamis is already happening, because
we know what we want and wereceive our expectations. So
learn to expect the best, and donot follow that old saying,
quote, don't get your hopes up,or don't get your expectations
up. You don't want to bedisappointed. He says, If you
(42:47):
don't want to be disappointed,don't be act in a different way.
Walk as if get your expectationsway up there, and you be you and
no one else. And then he ends itwith, love you. Good job. Thank
you. Good job. Walk as if dream,you dream. And I love that. I
(43:09):
have taken that so many timeswhen people like, Yeah, but what
if? What if it doesn't happen?And it's like, I'm going to be
disappointed? I'm like, Well,you can decide to not be
disappointed. You can decidethat this is not a failure, that
it's information, that you learnsomething new about yourself or
the world or this company orthis president or this whatever,
right? It's like, walk as if tryto do the thing, envision it,
(43:34):
live as if it's going to happen,and if the thing doesn't happen,
right? Because I always say,like, at some point, I would say
you're going to figure out thatthere's a lesson in this. For
some for something, there'ssomething to learn or see here,
it's going to be like getting agift. It's like getting a
blessing. I there, I saw afantastic bumper sticker one
time, and it said somethinglike, please save me from the
(43:56):
things that I want. I'm going tosay that again, please save me.
I would say it like this, pleasesave me from the things that I
think I want. Right? So if theexpectation or whatever the
thing is, you got your hopes wayup there, you got your hopes sky
high, and then the thing didn'thappen. I always hold on to the
(44:18):
possibility that it's becausesomething bigger or better or
different, you know, I rememberwhen I heard Oprah speak. I got
to hear her speak in person andmeet her, and it was a magical
evening. It was reallyremarkable. And I have a
recording of her talking, andone of the things she said is,
she says, You know, I had thesethoughts, these ideas are like
(44:39):
what I wanted. And she says, ButGod, dreams a bigger dream for
me than I could dream formyself. So so often we limit
ourselves. We do not dream bigenough. We don't get our hopes
up enough, and we keep ourselvesin these small little boxes, and
we think, well, that's just notpossible for a person like me.
That's just not possible for X,Y and Z. However you see
(45:00):
yourself, this identity thatyou've created right beyond
being one of God's kids, we slapall these labels on ourselves,
and a lot of times, we don'tallow ourselves to dream big or
to think something is possible.We give up, we become hopeless.
We tell ourselves, oh, my dreamsdon't matter, or that doesn't
matter, or there's no fixing theworld, or we're never going to
be united again, we're alwaysgoing to be divided. And I just
(45:25):
don't. I can't let myselfbelieve that. And it's not that
I'm pollyannish. I just don't. Ijust think like no, because I
know what can happen. I knowthat miracles happen. And again,
I'm not talking like miracles,like walking on water. I'm
talking about people choosing toactually listen to each other,
people being open to seeing adifferent point of view, people
(45:48):
actually listening tounderstand. I remain hopeful
that we're not always going tobe it's not always going to be
that this country is not goingin the direction that I see it
going in. I have to remainhopeful that will, there will be
a time when perhaps, and look,it hasn't always been good. And
(46:08):
this is the whole thing aboutlike, again. Don't get me
started about the whole megamake America great again. I'm
like, great for who wasn'talways great for black people.
Wasn't always great for gaypeople. Wasn't always always
great for, you know, transpeople wasn't always great for
indigenous folks. Wasn't alwaysgreat for women. Wasn't always
great, you know, wasn't alwaysgreat for a lot of us. How about
(46:29):
we have hope for a new vision, anew United and actually United
States for America, where wetake the words of the
Constitution that says all menare created equal under God,
right? What if we actually likelive that and believe that? What
a different, differentexperience we'd all be having.
(46:49):
And then I couldn't talk abouthope, whatever you feel about
Barack Obama. I mean, I wasgonna say I don't really care.
It's not true. I guess I'malways open to listening to
people, but I'm a fan, okay? AndI remember back in 2008
when he came to New Hampshire,and I got to hear him speak
(47:11):
live, and what a powerful,powerful orator he was. And
these are just a couple ofquotes, because he ran his whole
campaign. He ran his whole firstcampaign on hope. I will never
forget it, because I rememberfeeling so fcking hopeful. I was
so full of hope, this vision,when you when, when I heard him
speak in 2004 at the DemocraticNational Convention in Boston.
(47:34):
It wasn't there in person forthat one, but I heard it. I
think it was like the shot heardaround the world, that voice and
how much hope he had and howsmart he was. And it was and it
was brilliant. And I just wantedto share this with you. So he
says this, one of the things hesaid is, hope is not false. You
know, people talk about falsehope. He's like, here's one
(47:56):
thing that I can tell you, thathope has never been and that's
false, okay? And he said this atthe New Hampshire primary in his
New Hampshire primary speech,January 8, 2008 this is what he
said. He says, When we havefaced down impossible odds, when
we've been told we're not ready,or that we shouldn't try, or
that we can't, generations ofAmericans have responded with a
(48:20):
simple creed that sums up thespirit of a people, yes we can,
and that right there, yes wecan. That is the language of
hope. That's me talking now,right? We've been we've have
faced impossible odds. We'vebeen told we're not ready, that
we shouldn't even try, that wecan't. And generations after
(48:42):
generations after generations ofAmericans have responded with a
very simple creed that sums upthe spirit of a people, and it's
yes we can, and to me, that ishopeful, and I think that we
can. And then his beautifulwife, Michelle, I'm going to
leave you with these two things,she had said this in 2011 she
(49:04):
says, we may not always have acomfortable life, and you will
not always be able to solve allthe world's problems all at
once, but don't everunderestimate the impact You can
have, because history has shownus that courage can be
contagious and hope can take ona life of its own. Hope indeed
(49:30):
can take on a life of its own.And I think if we just keep our
hopes up, if we hold on to thatglimmer of light in our hearts,
whoo, it can take on a life ofits own. And then she also said
this in 2017 she says somethingthat has carried us through
(49:51):
every moment. She said, in thisWhite House and in every moment
of our lives, is the power ofhope. The belief that something
better is always possible ifyou're willing to work for it
and fight for it. And this isthe part of me saying we have to
(50:11):
take hope out of this airy fairykind of just like pie in the sky
idea this Pollyanna ish, like,Oh my goodness. And you get your
hands dirty, you get your ass ingear, you get down to business,
and you fight for it, and youwork for it, and you train your
mind to be looking for the good,the beautiful and the holy. You
trained your mind to be hopefulinstead of hopeless and
(50:35):
helpless. You reclaim your powerback. And for a lot of us right
now, hope is like an act ofresistance. Hope is like a way
of like, saying, like, no, like,I'm not giving up. I will fight
for justice. I will speak up onbehalf of love. I will be a
living example of the world,right? I'm going to embody it,
(50:56):
right? I'm going to emulateinternally, what I hope to see
out there. So it starts with us.It starts with us. And then I'll
leave you with that famous youknow, Margaret Atwood, her quote
from a Handmaid's Tale, right?And she says, Don't let the
bastards grind you down. Don'tlet the bastards grind you down.
(51:23):
So stay hopeful out there.People, stay hopeful out there.
So that's what I have for youtoday. I hope it's helpful in
some way. I hope you feel reasonin your heart to be hopeful. I
hope your mind is starting toalign. The assignment is
alignment, that we align withlove, because so much of what's
happening in the world right nowis fear, and it is designed to
(51:47):
make people feel divided, tofeel helpless, to feel hopeless,
and one of the acts ofresistance, and that's just the
other thing right to me, hope isa way of kind of just saying,
like, you know, fuck you to theman, you know what I'm saying,
like, You're not going to takemy joy from me. You're not going
to take my you're not going totake my belief and our power as
(52:07):
informed citizens to make adifference in the world. I'm
just not going to do it. I'm notgiving up. I'm not throwing my
hands up. You know, we were madefor these times. If you're on
the planet right now, you weremade for this time, and your
being here, there's a reason forit you matter. You're worthy.
You have worth. And it's timethat you know those of us who
are aligned with love, that weget serious, that we get serious
(52:28):
about our love, that we getserious about our hope, we get
serious about like, training ourmind to be looking for the good,
the beautiful and the holy, andthen to do something about it.
Okay, that's what I got. I hopeyou have a fantastic rest of
your day, evening, wheneveryou're listening to this, I
appreciate you so much fortuning in, for listening, for
watching, however you're takingthis in. And if any of this
(52:52):
feels like, yeah, you know what?I could use a little bit more of
this in my life. Please comejoin us in the nest. Just go to
Karen kenney.com nest. It's mygroup, spiritual mentoring
program. It's a beautifulcommunity of like minded people
who are trying to like, youknow, make a difference in the
world. And they start withthemselves. That's the whole
point. They start withthemselves, with their own
stories, with their own beliefs,their own subconscious beliefs.
(53:13):
And how do we show up in theworld as like, as I say, as
agents of love. You know what Imean. And if you ever want to
work together, one to one, thatis my one to one spiritual
mentoring program, and that iscalled the quest. And again, you
can find all this stuff on mywebsite at Karen Kenney, k e n,
n, e y.com, thank you for tuningin wherever you go. May you
(53:37):
leave yourself in the animals,the other people, the places you
go and the environment betterthan how you found it wherever
you go, may you and your energyand your presence and your love
and your hope be a blessing.Bye. You.
Hey you guys, welcome to theKaren Kenney show. I'm so happy
to be here with you today, andtoday I want to talk about hope.
H, O, P, E, hope. And one of thereasons why I want to talk about
hope is that I think hopesometimes gets a bad rap. So
(00:22):
it's not like I have to be here,like in defense of hope, but I
want to just talk about hope andlook at it through a couple of
different lenses. I always thinkof so many things as being like
a kaleidoscope, and we tend to,like lock things into being a
particular way, or thinkingabout something for a particular
way. And one of the things Ilove to do is to just kind of
(00:43):
like, you know, when a dog, heis a funny sound, he like, tilts
his head sideways. Sometimes,just like tilting your head
sideways, just a touch, it cangive you a totally different
perspective. Just kind ofshifting that kaleidoscope, just
one tiny turn, and all of asudden you have a totally
different picture. The otherreason why I want to talk about
hope today is because I thinkthat there is so much going on
(01:07):
in the world that is so fuckinginsane and so just overwhelming
and scary and maddening andfear, like there's so much fear
that is generated in this kindof human existence realm, you
know what I mean? And there's somuch that happens that feels
like it is out of our control.There's so much that we feel
(01:29):
like we do not control in theouter world. And when we start
to get overwhelmed by that, andwe're getting bombarded through
the news the 24 hour, like 24/7like news cycle and the endless
bombardment of social media andthe Internet and the devices and
like all that stuff, when we getconstantly reminded of how out
(01:50):
of control a lot of things feel,we can start to feel hopeless.
And I know that there are peopleout there who I've heard say
both Nia and fat to me, who havesaid things that they were
feeling hopeless and helpless.So this, for me, is like just
something that's, I think,important to talk about and I
(02:11):
want to dive into. And let'sstart off by and I got some
notes here in front of me,because I always like, I always
like to do my due diligence. Iam a lover of words. I love to
know where a word originatedfrom, what it means, and look at
it from a couple of differentangles, right? So the word hope,
if we look at it as a noun, thisis there's a couple of different
meanings for it. Number one,it's a feeling of expectation
(02:35):
and desire for a certain thingto happen. Okay? It's also as a
noun, grounds for believing thatsomething good may happen. Okay?
And here's a little another one.This one might be from Marion
Webster's Dictionary,dictionary, and it says hope is
(02:55):
an optimistic state of mind, notjust a feeling. So one calls it
a feeling. This is calling it anoptimistic state of mind that is
based on an expectation ofpositive outcomes with respect
to events and circumstances inone's own life or the world at
(03:17):
large. Now, Marion Webster as averb defines hope this way,
quote to expect with confidence,end quote or quote to cherish a
desire with anticipation. And Ithought these were fabulous. I'm
a wicked hopeful. I'm kind of anannoyingly hopeful person. And I
(03:39):
know that some people canconsider hope to be, almost be
like a little, little like PollyAnna ish, but I want to look at
it this way. So while some of ussee hope like, let's talk about
this, because not all of us, noteverybody's like me, not
everybody sees hope as apositive thing, um, so while
some of us see hope as apositive thing, like it's, for
(04:01):
me, it's like a glimmer. It'slike a glimmer. It's a guide.
It's a guiding light when we'rejust in it. You know what I
mean? Like when things just feellike all hope is lost. You know,
I often use this as an example.If you were a kid in my
generation, there was a showcalled the banana splits, and on
the banana splits, I referencethis character a lot, excuse me.
(04:25):
And he was on gullive histravels, and he was just like
this little Negative Nelly guy.And anytime something happened,
he would just mutter the words,we'll never make it. We're
doomed, right? And he was so nothopeful or positive, like at
all. And so while some of us seehope as a good thing, as a
guiding light, as somethingpositive to get us through, like
(04:48):
Doc, Doc, times, other peoplethink of hope as something
negative, like they'll say,Don't get your hopes up, or
you're just going to getdisappointed. Or it feels
almost. Like, you know thatsaying, like having an albatross
around your neck, that hope kindof keeps us attached to
expectations or to dreams of,like, better or great at times,
(05:12):
it's like this thing where youjust hope and hope and hope, but
nothing actually happens and youjust end up defeated and
disappointed, and, you know,getting discouraged and all that
stuff. And when we think aboutthis relationship to our
relationship, I should say tothe word hope, I started
thinking about that old story,which is really interesting. So
(05:33):
you guys have all probably heardthe phrase you're gonna open
Pandora's box. And this goesback to Greek, Greek mythology.
And what's really interesting isthat Pandora actually wasn't
given a box to open. She wasgiven a ja, I don't know why I
find that so funny. Pandora'sja, I guess it doesn't have the
(05:59):
same like, you know, same oomphto it like, so you open
Pandora's box. Okay? So back inGreek mythology, there's
Pandora, and Pandora is supposedto supposedly like the first
woman on earth. So first womanon earth, gods give her this ja,
and they tell her, don't openit. Okay, we already know how
(06:21):
that's going to end, because ifshe was curious, if she was
curious, as curious as I am, andit's like, here's this first
woman on earth, here's a jar.Don't open it. They told her,
keep it shut. But of course, hercuriosity wins out. She opens it
out, and upon opening the jaw,all of a sudden, she releases,
(06:45):
like, every evil, every malady,like all these awful, all the
miseries of the world, like comepouring out, come flying out,
like, like a swarm of bees. It'slike, right? If you've ever seen
like a horror movie where, like,it's something is like a mist or
a fog or whatever, and you openit up and it's like it just goes
(07:05):
out. So everything from like,sorrow to pain to envy to greed
to sickness, death, disease,hatred, strife, famine, like
whatever, all the bad shit,like, just comes pouring out.
And then, of course, Pandora islike, Oh my God, oh shit. And
she tries to, like, shut thejaw, and when she quickly closes
(07:27):
the jaw, slash box, right?There's one thing that stayed
trapped inside, and that washope. So think about that inside
the jaw. Now I don't know whatthe gods were thinking. They
obviously have a wicked, funnysense of humor, but inside,
alongside all of these awfulthings, was also hope. So hope
(07:51):
stays trapped inside with allthe other like melodies of the
human world, right? Soeverything else escapes, but
hope stays in the box. Now tosome of us, we are like, Oh my
God, thank God. She held on tohope. She has this like divine
gift that is still in her powerand in her presence and in her
possession that she can useright, this hope that human
(08:14):
humankind, right, has retainedamidst all the other bad things,
all the adversities in theworld, all the tragedies of the
world, all the horrors and allthe suffering. We still have
hope. Well, other people look atit as like, it's kind of like,
hope is just kind of like lame,lame and wishful thinking. Some
(08:38):
people even see it like we'rebeing taunted, like, it's like,
oh yeah, we have hope. Like, wehave hope all these good things
are going to happen, but theynever happen. You know what I
mean? So a lot of people look atit in a very negative way. Me,
personally, I'm a wicked big fanof hope, and we're going to get
into all that. But I, of course,I looked up hope, and I always
(09:00):
like to get a couple ofdifferent perspectives on this.
And there's a wonderful guy, apsychologist. I mean, I assume
he's wonderful in person, heseemed wonderful on video, but
he's a psychologist, and hisname is, and I want to say this
correctly, Dr Dan Tomasulo, andhe teaches positive psychology
at Columbia. He also, like,speaks on the science of learned
(09:23):
hopefulness. And of course, thatjust like grabbed me like that
title the science of learnedhopefulness. And he says this.
He says Hope is the onlypositive emotion that requires
negativity or uncertainty inorder for it to be activated.
Let me say that again, hope isthe only positive emotion that
(09:44):
requires negativity oruncertainty to be activated. And
he went on to make a funny andhe said, there's no need for
hope if everything is hunkydory, right?
And it's true. But the thingabout. About hope is that it's
flip of the coin, right? Peoplewho, people who, like, get their
(10:06):
hopes up and then getdisappointed, or things don't go
their way, or things look likelike they do in the world right
now, where, like, everything'skind of going down, and there's
all this negativity and all thisdivision and all this murder and
hatred and schools massshootings and school shootings
and like famine and genocide andlike all these things that are
happening, it's what we can loseour bit of hope, right? We can
(10:29):
lose that bit of sunshine in ourheart. We can lose that, what we
call it, a glimmer of hope,right? We lose that glimmer,
that sparkly, little divinething that that like, like
Pandora, that she retained inthe box. And to me, I'm like we,
you know, or in the job, we allhave this, I think, in our
heart. But when we start to loseour belief in hope, if we don't
(10:52):
activate our hope and use it,and we're going to talk about
using hope in a minute, thenhopelessness can often lead to
despair. And if you take a lookaround right now, just like I
was saying, we could all use alittle more hope. So I want us
to consider thinking of lookingat Hope like this. And this is
(11:13):
kind of how I look at Hope. Ithink of hope as many things,
not just one thing, right? So ifwe go back to the you know, the
definitions here, it's a feelingof expectation and desire for a
certain thing to happen. That'sone way to look at it. But I
look at hope as a feeling. Ilook at it as a positive motion,
(11:34):
number one, number two. I alsolook at hope as a mindset, as a
particular outlook as aparticular thought system. So to
me, it's not just a feeling,it's also a mindset. For me,
hope is also a call to action.It's an inspiration. It's
something that lights a littlefire under my ass, you know what
(11:57):
I mean? And hope is also, to me,a practice. It's not some
ethereal thing out there. It'ssomething that I can practice in
here. And we know,
we know that to me, it's kind oflike that old saying in the
Bible, right? Faith withoutworks is dead to me, hope,
(12:21):
without works, is dead. I don'tthink of hope is just something
that we get to like, sit aroundand like, Oh, I hope. I hope we
have a more inner, more peacefulworld. I hope we have a less
violent world. It's like, No,you know how we get outer peace?
You know how we get world peaceis individuals inside are
working on their own innerpeace. Inner peace amongst all
(12:46):
the individuals leads to outerpeace. What I have found is that
people who have more of anexperience of of inner peace,
what they start to do is theystart to have a different
experience of themselves. Theystart to have a different
experience, where they can startto believe in themselves and
(13:06):
trust themselves. And when youmove through the world from that
place where you kind of havebelief in yourself, and you
start to trust yourself, and youtrust your inner teacher, you
trust that wise advocate or HolySpirit, or the still inner voice
or the divine intelligence thatmoves through you, right? You
start to show up differently inthe world. And I find that
(13:27):
people who are moving throughthe world with inner peace, they
tend to create outer peacearound them. And just imagine if
more people right, stayed inthat place of hopefulness. They
stayed in that place ofbelieving that they could
actually make a difference andthat they do something about it.
So to me, hope isn't passive.Hope is not a passive thing.
(13:48):
It's not like this naivePollyanna ish, like, I'm just
gonna cross my fingers and hopefor the best. No, it's not. It's
a skill. Hope is actually askill, and it is a skill that we
can practice. It's a to me,again, it's a mindset that
inspires action, and it's likeit's not just a belief. So I
(14:12):
guess that's number five to me.It's also a belief, but it's a
belief in the possibility ofthings getting better. It's a
belief in the possibility ofchange and transformation. Hope,
to me, is a belief in thepossibility for a better future.
But and it comes along with it'sa it has a plan on how to do it,
(14:37):
on how to get there. It's notjust like pie in the sky, cross
my fingers. Hope it all worksout. No, it's like I'm going to
take action to try to right,have a plan. Now, of course, a
miracle says a healed, healedmind does not plan. And that
doesn't mean that we don't havea plan. It's that we. Now don't
(15:00):
make our plan all on our ownmeaning. We get quiet, we slow
down, we spend we have some timeof introspection, some self
reflection, some self awareness.We get wicked clear on our
motivations, on our intentions,on what's driving the bus within
us. We ask, we call upon themore intelligent parts of
(15:24):
ourselves, whether you call thatyour highest self, your higher
power, your good self, your goodthinking, your comments,
whatever you want to call itHoly Spirit, right the again,
the quiet voice within the innerteacher, we make a plan from
that place on how we would liketo create whatever it is, this
more peaceful world, this morekind, compassionate, loving
(15:46):
United States of America,perhaps right, not this
divisive. We hold on to a hopeand a vision and a belief that
there is a possibility forthings to look different. But we
don't just sit on our ass andexpect the rest of the world to
figure it out. We try to comeup, at least on an individual
(16:06):
level, a plan on how to getthere. So for me, hope takes us
from having a problem and itswings open the door to
possibility. Because as long asyou are stuck in hopelessness
and as long as you are stuck indespair, you are powerless when
you throw your hands up or shoveyour head in the sand or just
(16:26):
say you tap out and say, I'mout. I'm not saying don't take
breaks. There are a lot ofpeople in this world, especially
black women, who have been doinga lot of the heavy lifting for a
really long time, and so a lotof us who have been maybe
sitting on the sidelines orsaying shit like, oh well, God's
(16:47):
just gonna handle it all, like,hope helps the thoughts and
prayers and Namaste the dayaway, right? It's like no, some
of us have to step up andactually get involved. Have a
little bit more of a plan. Youknow what I'm saying, and so so
much of this when we're movingfrom that place of problem, the
suffering, the division, thehatred, all that stuff to
(17:09):
possibility, to me, that's therealm of spirit that's moving
from fear to love. So to me, insome ways, hope is miraculous,
because as A Course in Miracles,says all that, all that a
miracle is, is a shift in ourperception, a shift in our mind
from fear to love. Now let mesay this, if you're in the kind
(17:33):
of quote unquote spiritualrealm, the spiritual quote
unquote world, or you have aspiritual practice, or you have
spiritual friends or whatever.No doubt, especially if you are
familiar with the Course ofMiracles at all, you have heard
that, right? A miracle ends ashift in perception from fear to
love, and it's so easy to quoteit. It's so easy to say the
words and to also like hear it,but not hear it like you hear
(17:57):
the tones and the fluctuationsof sound making like coherent
words, but you're not receivingit. You're not getting it.
You're not feeling it, andyou're not downloading how
powerful that actually is. Whenyou shift your mind from fear to
love, when there is a shift inperspective in your mind, it can
(18:18):
heal separation, it can healdivision. It can heal wars. It
can create forgiveness. It is asoothing balm to the soul. When
you are willing to shift how youhave been perceiving something,
yourself, a situation orsomebody else, it is a powerful,
powerful thing, because love,that's the state where love
(18:40):
happens in the realm ofcuriosity and creativity and
possibility. But when we stayattached to the problem, the
suffering, the division, thehopelessness, the helplessness,
we're screwed, we're right, likenothing's going to change. What
do they always say? Nothingchanges. If nothing changes,
right? So if we stay open tohope, if we stay open to the
(19:02):
idea, the belief in the practiceright, the feeling of hope,
anything that is felt right,thought about, felt spoken with
repetition, it literally createsneural networks in our brain
that allows that feeling good orbad, in this case, with hope
(19:23):
good, right to it a lot. So RickHansen says it like this,
neurons in your brain that firetogether, wire together. Another
way of saying this is youpractice an emotional state. How
you feel right, you practice anemotional state until it becomes
(19:44):
a neural trait. And for example,that's why people who get angry
really easily. What that tellsme is they've practiced getting
angry 1000 times before. Thatpeople who feel like they are
infinitely patient they have.Practice patience 1000 times
before that. Right? We practiceemotional state until it becomes
(20:07):
a neural trait. Neurons thatfire together, wire together to
me, if I keep my mind attuned tohope, to love, right, to all of
that stuff, when I shift out ofall that fear state that's what
despair and hopelessness andhatred and division and
separation and all that stuff,is when I shift out of that, the
(20:28):
world opens up. And Drthomasullo said this, I want to
share this because I thought itwas so great. He says, When I
talk about learned hopefulness,we're trying to cultivate a
perspective that optimizes thebelief that we can positively
influence the future. Thinkabout that. He says, it's about
(20:50):
agency and positivity. And thisis what I think is so powerful
about this sentence. He says,we're trying to cultivate a
perspective that optimizes thebelief that we can those two
words, that we can positivelyinfluence the future meaning.
I'm not at the mercy of what theworld out there is doing. I'm
(21:15):
not saying it doesn't feel likewe are and that sometimes we
are, sometimes somebody wouldjust sit in a light, and
somebody you know hits us frombehind, we get, boom, we got
little car accident from behind.Sometimes there are things that
are just kind of like happening.I'm not, I'm not spiritually
bypassing suffering, atrocities,awful things. I'm just saying we
hold on to the belief, though,that we can positively influence
(21:38):
the future. And what's happeningright now, I think, is that a
lot of people are losing theirbelief that they can actually
positively influence the futureand change how things are going,
change the direction that theworld in this country is going
in. And so we, you know, it'sreally important that we
understand how we can,
(22:01):
like influence our own beliefsand train our mind. And this is
what this is what meditation isall about. In some ways, this is
what A Course in Miracles allabout. It's about mind training.
It's training our mind to thinkalong the thoughts of love, a
thought system of love, insteadof a thought system of fear. And
(22:21):
here's what we know ourperception. So in A Course in
Miracles, it says perception,right? I'm tapping my forehead,
what we think of and hold to betrue in our mind, right?
Perception makes projection.It's what we put out onto the
world. So what we think in ourmind, in here is often what we
(22:43):
experience. Out there, ourperception informs our
experience. It informs ourknowledge, our knowledge right,
often informs what we think,informs what we believe. So if
we want to change our beliefs,like, oh my god, we're never
make it. We're doomed. We'refucked. It's all a mess. It's in
(23:06):
it is, look it's, I get it. Itlooks like a shit show out
there, like I get it. But if wewant to change our beliefs about
what's possible, we have toshift our perceptions. That's
the way that we get it done. Andthere's a quote that was made
famous by Wayne Dyer, if you'rea Wayne Dyer fan, right? The
writer, the author, the thinker,the speaker. He's no longer with
(23:29):
us. But Wayne had a thing wherehe would say, if we change the
way we look at things, thethings we look at change, and it
gets attributed to him. Yes, hesaid it in his books, but it's
not his original quote that camefrom the founder of quantum
physics. He was a Germanphysicist named Max Max Planck.
It was popularized by Wayne, butMax Planck basically
(23:52):
paraphrased, says, If we changethe way we look at things, the
things we look at change. So itkind of also goes along with
that saying, right? People, alot of times say, well, I'll
believe it when I see it. Andpeople we often say, like,
you'll see it. We flip thataround. We say, you'll see it
when you first believe it. So ashift in perception in your mind
(24:17):
swings open the door right topossibilities and the most
significant change, I often say,you know, everybody wants to
change the world out there. AndI always say, the way that you
change the world out there is bychanging the world first in
here, and I'm tapping my head inmy hat, right? Your body like in
(24:39):
here, the inner work is whatleads to external changes. And I
often say, like, if you want tosee a less violent world, right?
We just had this kid in Nashua,like, 23 years old, or
something, 2223 years old, youknow, and he breaks into, you
know, an event space. So there'san event space in a restaurant,
like a country club. Yeah, andhe just like, he shoots people.
(25:02):
And you're like, What the fuckwe see it all over the place. We
see it in, you know, children inschools and churches, the
insanity, right? We just sawCharlie Kirk get murdered.
That's a whole other show foranother day. But if we want to
see a less violent world, aworld with no more violence or
less violence, we must do thework on an individual level to
(25:27):
eradicate all the violence thatwe have within ourselves and our
own hearts and our own minds andour own DNA, like the way, and I
mean, I don't mean DNA, likeactual DNA, but like, you know
what we walk around, the storieswe carry, the beliefs we carry,
right? And that's the thing is.People like, well, there's
nothing we can do. I said, No,no, no, the first thing you do,
(25:50):
I always say, you can't complainabout shit blowing around the
neighborhood. People like, oh,there's stuff all over the
street. And then, yeah, youmight want to check your own
backyard, because that's wherethe stuff is coming right? Clean
up. Clean up your own trashbarrels that you didn't roll
back in. You know what I'msaying? So we have all have our
own little garden to tend to,and that's where we start doing
(26:12):
the work. All that, all that afamily is, is it's made up of
individuals. All that aneighborhood is, is it's made up
a bunch of differentindividuals. All that a
community is, is it's made up ofa bunch of different
individuals. All that a state islike, it's a city, a state, you
can keep going out a company, acorporation. It's just made up
of individuals, a country madeup of individuals, a government.
(26:36):
So the way that we create masschange, change on a global
scale. Wanting to see a morequote, unquote, peaceful world
or less violent world, one at atime, we gotta get our hats
right. We gotta get our mindsright. And I think holding on to
hope and believing, actually,believing that we have the
(26:58):
possibility to create a betterfuture, along with a plan on how
to do it and then actuallytaking some action. So we've got
to understand ourselves. We gotto understand the way that we
look like, the lenses that weuse to like, look through the
world, look at ourselves, eachother and whatever, and that's
how we change. And I've said itbefore. You've heard me say it.
(27:20):
Why are there still in therichest country in the world,
why are there still childrendying of starvation? Why are
there still kids going hungry atthe end of the day? Why are
there kids who don't have, like,resources and things that they
need? Because enough people areokay with it. Enough people are
voting against it. Enough peoplehave decided, like, Yeah, I'm
(27:41):
okay. I'm okay with kids gettingkilled when they go to school.
I'm okay. Like, look at our gunlaws, look at all that stuff.
It's because enough people areokay with having some gun
deaths, right? Because we justthink, like, Oh, yeah. Like, we
don't want to give up our guns.It's like, nobody's asking you
to give up the guns. We'reasking for more like effective
(28:02):
leadership and like rules andlaws around getting guns and all
that stuff. But again, anotherconversation for another day. So
when we change, right? This isthe heart of the human
experience. Is our perceptionshapes our reality. And when we
understand the power of our ownperspective, the power of our
(28:23):
own subconscious beliefs. Whenwe start to get that the when we
start to change the way that welook at things, the things that
we are viewing, witnessing,observing, those things will
start to change. So from thisright, we look at things
differently. This is howtransformation happens. This is
(28:43):
how change happens. This iswhere we get hope, because we
actually start to see again.It's not this Pollyanna ish
crossing your fingers and hopingfor the best. It's like, well,
what am I going to do about thisvision of hope that I have? You
know, in A Course in Miracles,it's like lesson 33 it says
there's another way of lookingat the world. There is another
(29:04):
way of looking at the world. Weall know. We've talked about it
on this show. If you're aregular listen to the show, the
brain has its own negativitybias. It gets up in the morning.
It's the brain's job is to keepyou safe. So it's always going
to be looking for threats. It'sgoing to be looking for things
that are scary, things that arewrong, things that are bad. It's
always trying to judge itsenvironment for safety, right?
(29:25):
It's not sitting around liketrying to see the good in
everybody. You know, I'vetrained my brain. I think I was
kind of like that anyways as akid, but part of being a Course
in Miracles student for like,over 30 years is that I have
trained my mind in a veryspecific way, right? So I did
last year a 30 day challenge,and I'm going to seriously
(29:48):
consider bringing it back,either somewhere sometime this
year, or start off the year withit in 2026 but I did a challenge
called The Good, the beautifuland the holy and. Speaking of A
Course in Miracles, there'sanother way of looking at the
world, right? There's anotherline in A Course in Miracles
that says Child of God, and Ijust consider us all God's kids,
(30:09):
whether you believe in God ornot, think of yourself as a
child of the universe or a childof love. I don't use your own
happy word, but it says child ofGod. You were created to create
the good, the beautiful and theholy. Do not forget this. Child
of God. You were created tocreate the good, the beautiful
and the holy. Do not forgetthis. And my challenge was all
(30:33):
about taking 30 days to help us,to train our mind over the
course of 30 days, to lookinside you. But I started with
the outside world, because for alot of people, it's easier to do
it to the outside, to look forthe good, to look for the
beautiful, to look for
the holy. In this case, holydoesn't necessarily mean
(30:57):
religious. It doesn't mean itcouldn't be beautiful things
like, maybe you you went tochurch service and you're like,
Oh, that felt like a holyexperience. Or maybe you had a
deep talk with a friend andthere was reconciliation or
forgiveness, and that felt likea holy moment, or a holy instant
or whatever. But holy could meanlike, I broaden the scope,
because I know that word forsome people can be like, Man,
(31:17):
that makes me a little uncomfy,right? But so the challenge was
all about taking 30 days rightto really look around and
observe the good, the beautifuland the holy. And it trained our
minds to look at what alreadyexists in the world, right? And
then we had to shift it toacknowledging those things that
(31:38):
lived within us that we're good,beautiful and holy people find
that pot like way harder. Andagain, that's a conversation for
another day. But here's what I'mtrying to say, when we're
looking for the good, thebeautiful and the holy, we have
so much more hope, you know. AndI think about and I've talked
about it many times, as you allknow, I'm a huge fan of Mister
Rogers, right? When MisterRogers talks about how when bad
(32:01):
or scary things happen in theworld, this is a famous thing. I
know it's not the first timeyou're hearing it from me, but
meaning you've heard it fromother places. And his mom would
tell him, like, when the scarythings happened, she'd be like,
Freddie, look for the help is.Look for the people who are
helping. That to me is like,good, beautiful and holy. That's
like looking for the hopeful,looking for the places where
(32:23):
people aren't just flappingtheir gums or crossing their
fingers. They're doing somethingabout the tragedy, the trauma,
the travesty, like their bootson the ground. They're getting
their hands dirty. They're likediving in so I guess what I'm
trying to say is we don't haveto just accept the way that
things are out there, the waythat things, quote, unquote,
appear to be in this smallreality, as we say, in this very
(32:46):
human kind of, you know, drama,this play that is being acted
out on the cosmic level, right?And in a course, in miracles, we
call it like a dream. And inyoga, we call it Maya, the
illusion, this illusion ofseparation, right? So we don't
just have to accept the way thatthings are. We can train our
mind, and we can challengeourselves to try to see things
(33:08):
in a new way, and to not justtry to see things in a new way,
but to actually see things in anew way. Because hope is
teachable. Hope is what I liketo say. It's learnable, right?
We can learn to be more hopeful.And there's a quote that I want
to share again. It comes from, Ialways want to make sure I say
his name, Dr thomasullo. He saidthis, I love this. He says,
(33:30):
learned hopefulness cultivatesperspectives, optimizing the
belief that we can positivelyinfluence the future. Learned
hopefulness, I'm going to say itagain. Learned hopefulness
cultivates perspectives,optimizing the belief that we
can positively influence thefuture. And I can say this, as
(33:53):
somebody who works with thesubconscious mind a lot, with
myself and with my clients andwith members of the nest, is
that when you hold on to abelief, and to me, this is like
almost self hypnosis, right?It's not self delusional, but
it's literally, how do we how dowe create an outcome that we
desire, not by focusing on ourlack and what we don't have, but
(34:17):
we literally create, like littlemovies in our mind, right? We
use our imagination, and weimagine what it's like. We
visualize a better future. Weliterally put ourselves in our
mind's eye in a better future.And we practice this. We
practice seeing thingsdifferently. We hold the vision
of what's possible, and we putourself into the scene in that
(34:40):
movie, as if we are there rightnow. And we look around in the
movie and it's like, what am Iseeing, what am I feeling? What
am I what am I hearing? What amI tasting or touching? We use
the five senses. We make itreally real, and we practice a
vision. And athletes do this allthe time. They call it they call
it visualization. It's really.Self hypnosis, right? It's same
(35:01):
Z. Same z is different, samething. It's like they're
visualizing. They see themselvesswinging the bat. They see
themselves taking the shot. Theysee themselves like swinging the
golf club, right? They put them.They see themselves winning the
race, running faster. They seethemselves doing it all
perfectly, and right? They lettheir nervous system, their
(35:22):
mind, their neurons, theirphysical body, have the
experience of it already bedifferently, and we can do this
with hope too, when we practiceit enough times that belief that
we can positively influence thefuture. This is how things
actually come to be right. Webring it to life. We practice
(35:42):
hopefulness. It's so powerful.And this is what I'm saying. Is
like hope is teachable,hopefulness is learnable. And
this is how we keep the darknessout. We keep the darkness out by
always noticing the littleglimmers of light of
possibility. We train our mindto look for love, and then we
(36:04):
take action again. We don't justtalk about it. We don't just
think about it. It's theapplication of the theory. We do
something about it. And we wantto start by emulating
internally, right? We embody thething that we wish to be
different out there, we emulateinternally what we want to
experience externally. That'sthe gig, and then we take
(36:28):
action, because hope is takingaction on that possibility. So
we can transform hope fromsomething that's quote, unquote
passive to something that's apowerful catalyst for change,
something that actually canshape our world. We're not just
sitting around thinking aboutit, dreaming about it,
visualizing about it. We arethen taking that practice and
(36:50):
we're putting it to good use outin the world. And I think if we
can shift our relationship fromHope, from like it just being
like this, whatever she hopes,yeah, keep hoping. Yeah, keep
hoping, you know, and peopleroll their eyes, or whatever.
But hope is something to me thathas empowered me, right? Hope
that, Oh, my God, this is notgoing to last forever. In fact,
(37:12):
it doesn't matter why, but I waslooking, I was looking at my
high school yearbook. That's awhole of the story. And
underneath my picture? Well,it's not even my picture. I
think I've told this storybefore.
My picture in the yearbook doesnot have my name underneath it.
That's a whole story for anotherday, but my quote in the
yearbook was, nothing lastsforever. And I think a lot of
(37:36):
people could take that to meansomething really negative, and I
would say the only thing thatlasts forever. So no thing lasts
forever. But you know what lastsforever is love? You know it's
eternal. Eternal is our spirit.That's what lasts forever. But I
was thinking of it too, likethis is like, No no thing, no
suffering, no one way of beingright? Because we are etern in
(37:58):
the human realm. We areeternally changing, right? We
are eternally changing, whetherit's our skin, right, even,
like, look at me, I'm like, Oh,I'm going to be 57 next week,
next week. So to me, hope isreally powerful, and it helps us
to overcome the trials and thetribulations and the traumas of
life and holding on, holding onto to the fact that we can
(38:23):
overcome things. Nothing lastsforever. Gandhi had that
beautiful quote where he saysbasically, like, I'm totally
paraphrasing, but like in timesof strife, in times of war, in
times of whatever he says,murderers and tyrants have been
around forever, and it oftenseems like they're winning, but
in the end they fall, always inthe end they fall. Always, love
(38:43):
wins. And he says, Rememberthis, like remember this,
remember this. So with hope, youknow, we can find the inner
strength. Hope for me gives methe inner strength to endure
wicked, hard shit. It helps meto find resiliency in the face
of devastating, devastatingcircuit circumstances, things
(39:06):
I've, you know, I've livedthrough in my own life. It's
helped me to navigateuncertainties in life, and it's
also given me the curiosity whenI'm hopeful and I'm shifting my
brain out of that fight andflight state, like rather than
getting shut down from that, youknow that sympathetic nervous
system response of whereeverything just goes into, like
(39:27):
learned trauma response, when Istay in that place of
possibility and hopefulness anda more light, a more like
curious, it allows me to staycurious and to stay into, like
the part of my brain that canactually do good problem
solving. It helps me to have thecuriosity and the courage to,
like find solutions to things,which is a really big deal, you
(39:50):
know what I mean. And so I couldtalk about this. I could talk
about this forever, but I wantto leave you with a quote from
and I've shared this quotebefore. Four on the podcast, and
hopefully this is helping you tolook at Hope. Hope is a
different way too, that isactually more powerful. It is
actually more action oriented.So remember, it's a feeling. For
(40:12):
me, it's also so I get the fivehere, right? So to me, hope is a
feeling, a positive emotion.It's a mindset and an outlook
and a thought system that leanstowards love. It's a call to
action, and it's a practice.Hope is a practice right, like
the good, the beautiful and theholy, seeking those things out,
(40:32):
finding it. It's also a belief,and our beliefs have the power
to shape right, the stories wetell, what we believe about
ourselves, and if we believethat things are hopeful, we are
way more likely to have morepositive outcomes than if we
just sit in the shit. I alwayssay, don't sit in the shitty
diaper, right? But being likethis stinks. Like, yeah, get out
(40:52):
of the shitty diaper, right?Like, change your mind. Let's do
something about it. Okay? But wealso know this is this. This
little quote is from Guru Singh,and this is for the people who
are always like, Don't get yourhopes up too high. Okay, I love
this. So let's say that you havea dream, right? You're dreaming
a dream. There's this thing thatyou want to do, or want a
(41:14):
particular outcome, or like,whatever, right? And he says,
walk as if. And he's like,dream, your dream, whatever that
dream is. He's like, walk as if.And what that means is, walk as
if it's going to happen. Walk asif, like in your mind, even in
your mind, see it as alreadydone, is already happening. He's
(41:37):
like, walk as if, and fill inthe blank whatever your dream
is, he's like dream, your dream,and walk as if that dream is
already happening, is alreadycoming through, right? And I
always say to people at thispoint, who would I have to be?
This is where you want to getunder the under. Who would I
have to be? What's, who's thekind of person that I would have
(42:00):
to be in order for that dreamright to come true. Like, what
steps do I need to take? Who?How would I have to think? How
would I have to speak? How wouldI have to hold myself right? Who
would I have to be? Walk as ifthat means, embody it as if it
is already true. Okay? And hesays this, he goes on to say, he
(42:23):
says, walk as if and dream yourdream, dream, your dream, and
walk as if whatever that dreamis is already happening, because
we know what we want and wereceive our expectations. So
learn to expect the best, and donot follow that old saying,
quote, don't get your hopes up,or don't get your expectations
up. You don't want to bedisappointed. He says, If you
(42:47):
don't want to be disappointed,don't be act in a different way.
Walk as if get your expectationsway up there, and you be you and
no one else. And then he ends itwith, love you. Good job. Thank
you. Good job. Walk as if dream,you dream. And I love that. I
(43:09):
have taken that so many timeswhen people like, Yeah, but what
if? What if it doesn't happen?And it's like, I'm going to be
disappointed? I'm like, Well,you can decide to not be
disappointed. You can decidethat this is not a failure, that
it's information, that you learnsomething new about yourself or
the world or this company orthis president or this whatever,
right? It's like, walk as if tryto do the thing, envision it,
(43:34):
live as if it's going to happen,and if the thing doesn't happen,
right? Because I always say,like, at some point, I would say
you're going to figure out thatthere's a lesson in this. For
some for something, there'ssomething to learn or see here,
it's going to be like getting agift. It's like getting a
blessing. I there, I saw afantastic bumper sticker one
time, and it said somethinglike, please save me from the
(43:56):
things that I want. I'm going tosay that again, please save me.
I would say it like this, pleasesave me from the things that I
think I want. Right? So if theexpectation or whatever the
thing is, you got your hopes wayup there, you got your hopes sky
high, and then the thing didn'thappen. I always hold on to the
(44:18):
possibility that it's becausesomething bigger or better or
different, you know, I rememberwhen I heard Oprah speak. I got
to hear her speak in person andmeet her, and it was a magical
evening. It was reallyremarkable. And I have a
recording of her talking, andone of the things she said is,
she says, You know, I had thesethoughts, these ideas are like
(44:39):
what I wanted. And she says, ButGod, dreams a bigger dream for
me than I could dream formyself. So so often we limit
ourselves. We do not dream bigenough. We don't get our hopes
up enough, and we keep ourselvesin these small little boxes, and
we think, well, that's just notpossible for a person like me.
That's just not possible for X,Y and Z. However you see
(45:00):
yourself, this identity thatyou've created right beyond
being one of God's kids, we slapall these labels on ourselves,
and a lot of times, we don'tallow ourselves to dream big or
to think something is possible.We give up, we become hopeless.
We tell ourselves, oh, my dreamsdon't matter, or that doesn't
matter, or there's no fixing theworld, or we're never going to
be united again, we're alwaysgoing to be divided. And I just
(45:25):
don't. I can't let myselfbelieve that. And it's not that
I'm pollyannish. I just don't. Ijust think like no, because I
know what can happen. I knowthat miracles happen. And again,
I'm not talking like miracles,like walking on water. I'm
talking about people choosing toactually listen to each other,
people being open to seeing adifferent point of view, people
(45:48):
actually listening tounderstand. I remain hopeful
that we're not always going tobe it's not always going to be
that this country is not goingin the direction that I see it
going in. I have to remainhopeful that will, there will be
a time when perhaps, and look,it hasn't always been good. And
(46:08):
this is the whole thing aboutlike, again. Don't get me
started about the whole megamake America great again. I'm
like, great for who wasn'talways great for black people.
Wasn't always great for gaypeople. Wasn't always always
great for, you know, transpeople wasn't always great for
indigenous folks. Wasn't alwaysgreat for women. Wasn't always
great, you know, wasn't alwaysgreat for a lot of us. How about
(46:29):
we have hope for a new vision, anew United and actually United
States for America, where wetake the words of the
Constitution that says all menare created equal under God,
right? What if we actually likelive that and believe that? What
a different, differentexperience we'd all be having.
(46:49):
And then I couldn't talk abouthope, whatever you feel about
Barack Obama. I mean, I wasgonna say I don't really care.
It's not true. I guess I'malways open to listening to
people, but I'm a fan, okay? AndI remember back in 2008
when he came to New Hampshire,and I got to hear him speak
(47:11):
live, and what a powerful,powerful orator he was. And
these are just a couple ofquotes, because he ran his whole
campaign. He ran his whole firstcampaign on hope. I will never
forget it, because I rememberfeeling so fcking hopeful. I was
so full of hope, this vision,when you when, when I heard him
speak in 2004 at the DemocraticNational Convention in Boston.
(47:34):
It wasn't there in person forthat one, but I heard it. I
think it was like the shot heardaround the world, that voice and
how much hope he had and howsmart he was. And it was and it
was brilliant. And I just wantedto share this with you. So he
says this, one of the things hesaid is, hope is not false. You
know, people talk about falsehope. He's like, here's one
(47:56):
thing that I can tell you, thathope has never been and that's
false, okay? And he said this atthe New Hampshire primary in his
New Hampshire primary speech,January 8, 2008 this is what he
said. He says, When we havefaced down impossible odds, when
we've been told we're not ready,or that we shouldn't try, or
that we can't, generations ofAmericans have responded with a
(48:20):
simple creed that sums up thespirit of a people, yes we can,
and that right there, yes wecan. That is the language of
hope. That's me talking now,right? We've been we've have
faced impossible odds. We'vebeen told we're not ready, that
we shouldn't even try, that wecan't. And generations after
(48:42):
generations after generations ofAmericans have responded with a
very simple creed that sums upthe spirit of a people, and it's
yes we can, and to me, that ishopeful, and I think that we
can. And then his beautifulwife, Michelle, I'm going to
leave you with these two things,she had said this in 2011 she
(49:04):
says, we may not always have acomfortable life, and you will
not always be able to solve allthe world's problems all at
once, but don't everunderestimate the impact You can
have, because history has shownus that courage can be
contagious and hope can take ona life of its own. Hope indeed
(49:30):
can take on a life of its own.And I think if we just keep our
hopes up, if we hold on to thatglimmer of light in our hearts,
whoo, it can take on a life ofits own. And then she also said
this in 2017 she says somethingthat has carried us through
(49:51):
every moment. She said, in thisWhite House and in every moment
of our lives, is the power ofhope. The belief that something
better is always possible ifyou're willing to work for it
and fight for it. And this isthe part of me saying we have to
(50:11):
take hope out of this airy fairykind of just like pie in the sky
idea this Pollyanna ish, like,Oh my goodness. And you get your
hands dirty, you get your ass ingear, you get down to business,
and you fight for it, and youwork for it, and you train your
mind to be looking for the good,the beautiful and the holy. You
trained your mind to be hopefulinstead of hopeless and
(50:35):
helpless. You reclaim your powerback. And for a lot of us right
now, hope is like an act ofresistance. Hope is like a way
of like, saying, like, no, like,I'm not giving up. I will fight
for justice. I will speak up onbehalf of love. I will be a
living example of the world,right? I'm going to embody it,
(50:56):
right? I'm going to emulateinternally, what I hope to see
out there. So it starts with us.It starts with us. And then I'll
leave you with that famous youknow, Margaret Atwood, her quote
from a Handmaid's Tale, right?And she says, Don't let the
bastards grind you down. Don'tlet the bastards grind you down.
(51:23):
So stay hopeful out there.People, stay hopeful out there.
So that's what I have for youtoday. I hope it's helpful in
some way. I hope you feel reasonin your heart to be hopeful. I
hope your mind is starting toalign. The assignment is
alignment, that we align withlove, because so much of what's
happening in the world right nowis fear, and it is designed to
(51:47):
make people feel divided, tofeel helpless, to feel hopeless,
and one of the acts ofresistance, and that's just the
other thing right to me, hope isa way of kind of just saying,
like, you know, fuck you to theman, you know what I'm saying,
like, You're not going to takemy joy from me. You're not going
to take my you're not going totake my belief and our power as
(52:07):
informed citizens to make adifference in the world. I'm
just not going to do it. I'm notgiving up. I'm not throwing my
hands up. You know, we were madefor these times. If you're on
the planet right now, you weremade for this time, and your
being here, there's a reason forit you matter. You're worthy.
You have worth. And it's timethat you know those of us who
are aligned with love, that weget serious, that we get serious
(52:28):
about our love, that we getserious about our hope, we get
serious about like, training ourmind to be looking for the good,
the beautiful and the holy, andthen to do something about it.
Okay, that's what I got. I hopeyou have a fantastic rest of
your day, evening, wheneveryou're listening to this, I
appreciate you so much fortuning in, for listening, for
watching, however you're takingthis in. And if any of this
(52:52):
feels like, yeah, you know what?I could use a little bit more of
this in my life. Please comejoin us in the nest. Just go to
Karen kenney.com nest. It's mygroup, spiritual mentoring
program. It's a beautifulcommunity of like minded people
who are trying to like, youknow, make a difference in the
world. And they start withthemselves. That's the whole
point. They start withthemselves, with their own
stories, with their own beliefs,their own subconscious beliefs.
(53:13):
And how do we show up in theworld as like, as I say, as
agents of love. You know what Imean. And if you ever want to
work together, one to one, thatis my one to one spiritual
mentoring program, and that iscalled the quest. And again, you
can find all this stuff on mywebsite at Karen Kenney, k e n,
n, e y.com, thank you for tuningin wherever you go. May you
(53:37):
leave yourself in the animals,the other people, the places you
go and the environment betterthan how you found it wherever
you go, may you and your energyand your presence and your love
and your hope be a blessing.Bye. You.
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