This week I was on location shooting for AL-KO in the beautiful south of Bavaria. We had a really good time – even though the weather worked against us. But I tried to remain hopeful. You guessed it: hope – that’ this week’s topic.
If you read last week’s newsletter you might remember that Janine and I went to see Leon Windscheid live at Circus Krone. He is psychologist and tries to explain science and feelings in a funny and interesting way. We like him a lot and listen to his podcast “Betreutes Fühlen” (“supervised feeling”) every week. This week he spoke about hope. He explained that there are two main ingredients for hope: willpower and waypower.
Willpower means to have the will to act. To change things. And waypower means to be able to see possibilities and opportunities. You have to be convinced that there is a better future waiting and that you can contribute to it yourself. That’s it. Doesn’t sound to hard, does it? Then why do we still lose hope sometimes?
We need to constantly remind ourselves that we can act and change things. Even if it’s just our behavior. As I said earlier, we shot outside this week. On Monday and Tuesday, it was well above 30 degrees – very exhausting for the entire team. On Wednesday it finally cooled off but it also started to be super cloudy and it even rained. That also made it hard for us to work. But what can you do? Being mad about the weather puts everyone in a bad mood and then the atmosphere on set will be bad. You can only remain hopeful that the sun will come out again and until then you do everything in your power to make the most out of it.
There are so many aspects in our everyday life where we need hope. The war in Ukraine. The financial situation in our country. The climate crisis. All very big and frightening topics, all at the same time. But we have to have hope.
Someone I think of when I think about the word hope is Barack Obama. Even though he wasn’t able to fulfill all of his promises, he always spread hope. He listened to the people’s concerns and made you believe that there is hope for a better future. I’d like to have some of that attitude. His strong believe in hope is very inspiring to me.
For me, I really learned what hope meant during the harder times in therapy. Well, therapy is always hard but there are times when it’s even harder and more painful than usual. As I mentioned on this blog before, there were some times when I would crawl up in bed after a session. Tired. Sad. Powerless. And hopeless. Janine always reminded me to never lose hope. She reminded me of what I achieved so far. And how my live would look like if I kept going. And every time I gained more confidence in being hopeful. I’m so glad I kept going and still do, because I’ve never been as happy and as stable as I am these days.
The next time I feel hopeless, I will try to think about the two ingredients: do I have the will to change things? and do I see a better future with me putting in the work for it? And then I’ll work on it.
When do you lose hope? And what makes you feel hopeful again? Let me know how things are going for you.
Have a wonderful and hopeful Sunday. I am so excited for our future.
/Seppi
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