Finding ways to grow your hope can be like growing a garden. Hope can come in many different packages and grow in different ways.  The definition of hope includes:

  • a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen
  • a feeling of trust.
  • want something to happen or be the case.
  • intend if possible to do something.

All of these definitions could look like different flowers in a garden, depending on what you need at the present moment.  Are you desiring a change in your career or move into retirement?  Are you hoping that you can trust someone more?  Or are you hoping something about your life will be different – better health perhaps, but you’re not sure?

I have had coaching conversations lately with women who are on the verge of sprouting new hopeful ideas. They are moving into new ways of living.  We have discussed their initial hopes and dreams which feel like little sprouts, tender and green.

How do you go about planting your garden of hope?

Till the soil.

Sometimes before hope for a different life, or a different career or even a different day, you are in the dark.  You have to begin to dig the soil around you, break up the hard dirt and get it ready for the hopes and dreams to sprout.  Tilling may include examining your mindsets – what is causing you to be stuck or feel hopeless?  What do you need to do to get the right ingredients in the soil so that it’s ready to plant?  Sometimes it’s a question such as “How would I like my life to be different?”

Examine the seeds.

Begin to explore all the different seeds you might want to plant.  Research your possibilities for change.  What is the one thing, that if you did this thing, would start you moving forward to other positive changes in your life?  What do you want to be?  What do you want to do?  What do you want to have?  These are the vision questions to help you examine seeds of hope you can plant.   Is it a career change?  Is it a lifestyle change?  Is it the way you think about yourself on a daily basis?

Choose seeds to plant.

Start your hope garden by creating a vision board or a picture of what your garden could look like.  Then choose what seeds to plant.  For example, one client I am working with has decided to move forward with a career change.  That’s a large seed to plant.  However, as she nurtures and lets it grow slowly, she’s excited to see what kind of beautiful flower will grow from it.

Care for the seed and sprout tenderly.

The seed of hope is tender.  When any change is being explored, you have to keep weeds pulled, like “What am I thinking- I can’t do this?”  or “This is too hard, I don’t know what I’m doing.”  Or letting other people’s comments trample on the tender shoot “What do you mean you’re changing jobs?”

Ask for help in tending your hope garden.

Tending a garden can be a challenge. You are working, watching and waiting.  You can be pulling weeds, watering the hope and waiting for it to grow.  By watching for changes in hope, you feel the strength growing within yourself.  It’s okay to ask for a community of helpers to support you as you tend your garden.  They may like to walk in the hope garden with you and admire the growth.

I know the plans I have for you plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Jeremiah 29:11

Growing your hope garden takes time, energy, sunshine and patience.  The change that hope brings, even day to day will bloom for a lifetime.  I would love to help you find and tend your hope garden.  Let’s get those sprouts growing.

 

Nancy Booth is a certified life coach and certified brain-based coach.  She loves creating safe spaces for women going through life’s transitions to discover and support their visions for health and well-being in an overwhelming world, explore possibilities for next steps and find hope.  She writes about taming the overwhelm through connecting to yourself and others, possibilities thinking, and brain-based strategies for hopeful living.  You can sign up to receive her weekly blog or contact her to find out ways you can begin to shed overwhelm, explore possibilities and find hope.