7 Ways to Watering Hope
Hope is a plant. The state of this plant depends on your current mental state. You may be at the stage of putting the seed to grow the plant or maybe your plant has already been planted, maybe it is growing, or perhaps life has been especially difficult and your plant has started to wilt. Despite the condition of your plant, we can water it. Your life’s conditions can impact the amount of sunlight it gets but you control the watering jug. It is in your ability to continue to water the plant.
7 Ways to Watering your Hope Plant
1. Hope Meditation
- We get so caught up in our thoughts that we forget where we are and we lose sight of the bigger picture.
- Life is much broader than this thought that is bothering you.
- It is bigger than your biggest worry.
- There is more to life than what has been consuming you.
Find a quiet place, a silent corner, and spare 4 minutes to do the following meditation to bring your attention back to this present moment, to let go of your thoughts and worries and just be for these few minutes:
2. Happiness Scale
- Every day we do countless things and too often we think about the negative things and ignore the little things that bring us joy.
- Happiness here can mean joy, a positive feeling.
- Take a look at your schedule today, rank the tasks that you need to do using the happiness scale.
- Once you have ranked all items, take a look at the items you ranked as bringing you the most happiness and see if you can try and do more of that.
- Then look at the items that you ranked low and ask yourself if you really need to do those things and if you do then is there a way you can somehow bump it up the scale (perhaps by changing the way you do it).
For example, Anna ranked her daily cup of coffee as an 8 on her happiness scale so she decided to be more mindful of that moment and remove any distractions from her coffee time. She ranked studying for tests as 2 on her scale. Upon further reflection, she noticed that it's her last-minute studying that made the task so low on the scale so she decided to better manage her studying moving forward so the task does not remain so low on the scale.
3. Follow the right people!
The kind of people you follow can positively or negatively influence your goals. Whatever your goals are (becoming more confident, managing anxiety, etc) chances are that there exist accounts/pages that can support you.
Pick a social media platform of your choice and follow an account that will contribute positively to your mental health/goal.
You can even follow 7 Cups social media accounts if you are interested in mental health-related posts and self-care reminders.
Instagram - @7Cups| Twitter - @7Cups & @7CupsTeen | Facebook - 7CupsOfTea | Youtube - 7 Cups of Tea
4. Books are your friend
- Too often we think we are alone in our struggles, that no one understands what we are going through. It is a very lonely assumption to have.
- The reality is most of the time many people have gone through/are going through the same struggles as you.
- Some of them have learned some key insights that they shared either as articles on the internet, videos or a book.
Books are a great way to slowly start to challenge your negative beliefs and start working on better managing/improving your struggles. Whatever you are going through, there is a high chance there is a book out there that can help you.
5. Grit
- Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals.
- It is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles.
- It is one of the most important life-skills.
Take some time to watch the following video.
6. Quote of the Day
Quotes can be a powerful way to feel inspired, hopeful, or positive but they work best when we feel like we resonate with the quote and it means something to us.
Take a moment to search for positive quotes, find one that you like and share it with our community by making a post here. You can save the post you make and keep adding to it.
7. Pictures that make you feel hopeful.
- A picture is worth a thousand words.
- Take or search for pictures that make you feel hopeful.
- Maybe these pictures might make for a good wallpaper or you can even share them on 7cups if you want!
You can upload the pictures here!
Loved these ideas? Walk through the complete "Watering Hope" Growth Path here