Don’t Give Into Despair: 9 Tips To Find Hope During Difficult Times
Finding hope during difficult times without succumbing to despair may be perhaps one of the hardest things you will ever attempt to do.
But if you dare try, it will also be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life too.
Everyone experiences despair. It’s a universal experience of grief, and suffering. It also has an added complicated layer of an unwanted loss that some part of you hasn’t come to terms with yet, and doesn’t want to. This part of you wants what it lost back. And It refuses to accept the finality of what is over and no longer a possibility in your life.
Finding hope during this difficult time gets dicy. More often than not, the only thing that feels “hopeful”, is something that somehow creates a pathway of possibility towards that “thing” that you can no longer have.
Clinging to this preconceived idea of what “hope” is, and what feels hopeful to you is a set up. It will in time, lead you down the pathway of despair. And this pathway is filled with deep suffering, that you can mitigate if you are willing to learn how.
Finding Hope during difficult times is a proactive strategy to help you grieve a loss that you really don’t want to grieve.
But grieving is something everyone must learn to do if they are to have any experience of peace and joy and hope in their lives.
This is so because life is a series of beginnings and endings. Each ending leads to new beginnings that eventually end and so on and so forth. Like any good book, your life, and the many phases of it, have several chapters to each phase. Some phases have only a few short chapters, while others have longer complicated ones, with lots of plot twists and turns.
Hopelessness and despair sets in, when you just don’t feel like writing that next chapter. You want to keep writing the last one or have some kind of addenmun to it. In your grieving process you are stuck cycling through what many call the “denial” and “bargaining” stages of your grief.
And there’s a notable reason that you are stuck in the “denial” and “bargaining” stages. It is because the sadness, and anger and pain over this loss feels just too overwhelming. This is why you stay focussed on refusing to accept “what is”. It’s easier (at least at first) to try to find ways to get “what is” to be “what you want, think and need it should be”.
In a way, these tactics (denial and bargaining) are noble, but misguided attempts to find hope during difficult times so that you won’t give into despair. They attempt to protect you from the magnitude of your pain and all the other awful feelings that accompany it.
The problem is, these tactics are destined to fail. And this cycle of denial and bargaining, inevitably then leads to a deep experience of failure, shame, and suffering.
Finding hope during difficult times that will help you not give into despair, is a strategy to interrupt this cycle so you can take your time and gently grieve this loss.
First, it’s important to accept this truth. You are not ready to finish up this chapter in your life. You are also not ready to start writing your next chapter. You are in a transition period that will take as long as it takes. So give yourself tons of time and space to embrace this transition.
As you give yourself that time and space that you need, here are 9 tips in the form of a simple daily practice that will help you embrace your transition and find hope during this difficult time.
First, ask your brilliant left analytical brain that’s constantly thinking, planning, organizing and trying to figure everything out, to take a back seat for right now. Healing is the right brain and body’s work. Spending too much time overthinking things will hinder your healing process. See if you can reorganize your left brain in ways that will help facilitate your right brain’s job. Perhaps let it make lists and ways to organize your time and the proactive healing tasks for you to do during that time.
Next, take time each day to lay down on the floor. Yes, the floor and you can lay on a mat on the floor if you prefer. This helps initiate the relaxation response. You can also put your legs up on a wall onr relax them on a chair, which is great for relaxing your back. Close your eyes and follow your breath. Notice if you try to control your inhale and exhale, and then let that go. Your body knows how to breathe all on its own, and your job is to not work so hard right now.
As you follow your breath, notice that there's an inhale (beginning), exhale (ending) and pause (transition). Remind yourself that you are in the pause right now and get really curious about all that you experience during this pause.
Scan your body for tension and notice where you hold it. Chances are, this is where your exiled grief is hiding out too. Put your focus on those tense areas and bring your hands to your heart and just breath. This is how you send compassion to your pain.
If the tension gives way to grief, gently ask the grief to not overwhelm you. Silently let it know that it matters and that you are listening to it, but ask it to go slow.
Do this for 5-10 minutes each day, and set a timer if you are pressed for time.
Take a couple of minutes after this practice to do some stream of conscious journaling. It’s a great way to find a voice for all the layers of your grief and then let that voice be heard via your pen to the paper.
Take note of how you feel after each time you do this. Do you feel 10 % lighter and better? If so, great, you are now walking down the pathway of hope, and you managed to find it during one of the most difficult times in your life - success!
Rinse and repeat.
Tip 9 is perhaps the most important tip to help you find hope during difficult times and not give into despair. You have to practice the skill of having compassion for your pain.
Just like playing an instrument or learning a sport, practice, practice, practice is the key to mastery.
And if you can learn how to master the art of grieving a loss, then you will develop a new found confidence and wisdom that you will hold inside of you, And this wisdom is a deep found knowing that you will be ok, no matter what twists and turns and losses life brings you.
