How to Build Hope

Every time obstacles, freak-outs, fear twinges or depressing news moments threaten to drag you down, you can create little hits of hopefulness to counter it. See, hope is not a psychological state it’s an organ state and that means you can generate it yourself regardless. You can’t control what is going on around you, but you can control what is going on within you, and that affects how you see life.

We’ve got an organ duo responsible for hope: the lung and large intestine. These are metal element organs and both hope and sadness are their domain. An instant way to delete those dark clouds is by by pressing on the large intestine point colon 4 (the flesh between your thumb and forefinger). Focus on your heart chakra in the middle of your chest and breathing through your nose (your large intestine meridian ends here) while you are doing it. This one simple action temporarily clears the metal meridians, breathing opens up and an uplifting feeling, like clouds parting to let light shine in, will course through you.

When to build hope

The best time to build hope is early morning metal element time (5am – 7am). We have to have dark and light, it’s part of life. But dark emotions, like sadness, emptiness, or fear can snowball and then it’s hard to stop the momentum heading towards rock-bottom crushing hopelessness. And feeling like the ground is gone from under you; or your life is over, or it’s too late to do anything, or your dreams are gone. This is never the case, and we can build a new future with dreams and hope right now.

Stop that snowball (melt it?) every morning as soon as you wake up with the most important ‘to do’; breath and movement. Avoid scrolling, screens and social media at all costs. They are the hope destroyers. Use breathing techniques that help boost hope. Square breathing, win hof breathing, or another type of meditative or therapeutic breathing.

Eat for Hope

Eat the foods that support hope and avoid the foods that sabotage hope (sugar and junk foods are the major offenders).

Try my hope stir fry.

• Chop up cabbage, onions, leek, celery and fresh coriander.
• Sprinkle a piece of fish with black sesame seeds, mustard seeds, and pepper. Heat some olive oil, and fry it lightly.
• Add the chopped mix and let it cook for a few minutes. Then add some wine – red or white – (or soy sauce) and stir until it’s mixed well. The fish will break up.

Hemp is the ‘hope grain’, so you could have some hemp seed bread or toast, or another form of hemp.

Doing all of the above also helps us pursue our spiritual purpose – which is to spread hope and light.