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Turning Despair To Hope
by Wayne Dyer
Begin to take delight in nonattachment.
Through raising your own awareness you can love without being attached.
An attached love creates despair because you are placing the source of
your fulfillment and happiness on someone else. If they refuse to
cooperate in the way that you feel they must, then you move into
despair.
Instead, have hope for yourself. You can
love anyone and appreciate him or her for who they are, without telling
yourself that you will be devastated if they let you down. Anthony
DeMello has two extremely powerful affirmations in The Way To Love that
will help you to experience love in a nonattached way.
1. “I am not really attached to you at
all. I am merely deluding myself into the belief that without you I will
not be happy.”
2. “I leave you free to be yourself: to
think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations,
behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.”
When you observe these two recommendations
for detached love you will notice that the person becomes important to
you in the same way that a rainbow or a concert are lovely in
themselves. You set yourself free in a compelling way. The love actually
intensifies, all despair is dissolved and you have hope in your heart
rather than the pain that attachments bring.
Practice reinforcing hope rather than
despair. Don’t be an enabler of despair by commiserating with those who
are feeling low. I once took a vow as a counselor/therapist that I would
always seek to have my clients put the emphasis on their successes
rather than the things that brought about feelings of despair.
For instance, I encouraged a client who
was unable to get along with his parents to examine the brief times when
he felt he had successful interactions with them. I pushed him to
recount any moments of success. How he felt, what he thought, what were
the results, how his day went at the times of success and so on. By
looking for any signs of success, I would make the counseling sessions
experiences of hope rather than reinforcers of despair.
Similarly, clients with addictions and
even chronic pain all had some moments in their lives when they felt
successful at handling their “problems.” One week of not overeating,
three days of not drinking, one whole pain-free day. All these kinds of
experiences provide an opportunity to remember that the power to replace
despair with hope, if only for a day or so, is available. If it can be
done for one day, then two days is not so outrageous and you have a
hopeful idea.
I found that reinforcing negatives,
talking about causes, rehashing hurt feelings and reliving painful
emotions often served to reinforce a feeling of hopelessness in the
present moment. As a counselor/therapist I wanted to bring hope to
despair and in the process help to nullify despair for good.
This logic applies to despair in your
life. Recall past moments when you felt a degree of hope and success
handling a problem and try to re-create the thoughts and feelings that
you were experiencing. By doing so, you give yourself a road map out of
your despair. By reinforcing hope, you will act on those new thoughts
and feelings.
Remember to call in God and literally turn
the despair over to God You can end an experience of despair by making a
present moment decision to let it go in a moment of silent prayer. “I
cannot handle this situation alone, I know that you are here with me as
my silent senior partner. I am entrusting this to you.” This quiet
simple little prayer will give you immediate relief from the feelings of
despair. This is a way of letting go of the idea that all is hopeless.
In essence, what you are doing with the prayer is asking that love guide
your life. It is a way of emptying your agenda and utilizing the power
that revolves the planets around the sun, keeps that same sun in place
and turns a seed into a flower or a baby. It is far superior to saying,
“I’ll do this all by myself.” By asking for divine intervention you can
step back and allow yourself to symbolically take God’s hand.
This advice is as ancient as the
scriptures. Utilize it and release yourself from the drama of your
despair. In five short words, you can bring hope to despair and effect a
spiritual solution to any problem related to that despair: “Ask and you
shall receive.”
Act as if the hope you have for the relief
of despair is already here and in place. Rather than your normal
reaction to despair, of being inactive, speaking in terms of
hopelessness, complaining and fault-finding, feeling self-pity and
pessimism, create a picture of how you would like everything to work out
and firmly make a commitment to act as if what you want is already here.
If you want more abundance, get a picture of yourself as having already
received material blessings. Go and sit in the car of your dreams in a
showroom, visualize yourself driving it, then hold that picture in your
consciousness. The way will be shown to you. As I said in Manifest Your
Destiny, your job is not to say how; it is to say, “Yes!”
My wife and I do this instead of
despairing over a particular trend or behavior with our children. We
both try to visualize whatever the situation may be working out for
them. Then we treat them as if they have already achieved what we
thought was in their best interests. We then practice acting out in this
way toward them because this is our mental image of them. Our pessimism
dissolves and is replaced with positive reinforcement to materialize the
picture of success we already have in place. So, we can say to them,
“You are doing great in school,” or “You’ll be on time for school
tomorrow,” or “You are taking much better care of yourself” or “It’s
great to see you happy.” We reinforce hope by acting as if what we
wanted for them was already here.
Despair is really just an image in our
minds. In reality, we are whatever we decide to think in the face of any
circumstance and choosing to see the problem as dissolved is in fact the
replacement of despair with hope.
Next month more suggestions for turning
despair to hope.
Excerpted from There’s A Spiritual
Solution
To Every Problem
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer is the renowned
bestselling author of 15 books of nonfiction and three textbooks and has
a doctorate in counseling psychology. He lectures across the country and
appears regularly on radio and television.
http://www.drwaynedyer.com/home/
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