Everyone loves hope. We hope to get better. We hope anxiety will go away. We hope we will find something that soothes us and makes us feel better. Hope is positive, right? We love to hope. There is always hope!
But hope, wonderful as we think it might be, is not a recovery plan.
This is often an unpopular statement, but that does not make it untrue. Hope is not a plan for recovery, and hoping to get better has never actually made anyone better.
Why would I say such a thing?
Because hope is simply thinking. It might be wishing too. Wishing is a thing that humans do. We think, and we wish. But regardless of what the law of attraction crowd wants you to believe, thinking and wishing (even when we call it hoping) does not create a damn thing. Hoping does not change the universe in any meaningful way. Not by itself, at least.
Sitting passively and hoping to get better does not create any change in your life. If hoping is thinking, then it stands to reason that simply thinking does not create any change either. If you could think recovery, or hope it, you would not be reading this right now, You’ve likely being trying to do that for quite some time without much success.
Anxiety recovery is an ACTIVE process. If we do not get active and take real steps in a new direction, we remain stuck. Thinking - hoping - is not action. Thinking can certainly inform our actions. If you want to think positively about getting better, then by all means, go for it. But then let that thinking and hoping inform ACTION. We MUST take action if we are to recover.
I say this often, so I will say it again here. That is a raw deal, but is the deal we have, so we must acknowledge that and work with it.
Hope is not only not a plan, but hope can be a sneaky hindrance to recovery in some ways. When we hope to get better, when we think about it and talk about it in a hopeful way, we can sometimes be fooled into thinking that we are recovering. But just hoping, no matter how hard you may hope or how earnest your hope may be, is not action, and is therefore not recovery. Do not let hope fool you into thinking that you are getting better while you sit on the sofa.
I am not trying to rob you of hope here.
Hope is lovely when kept in its proper place. Hope is the belief that things can change and that you can get better. In that light, hope is correct! You CAN get better. You CAN change things. There is - in fact - always hope! Do not let that go. But before there can be change, and therefore recovery, we must get active.
Keep hoping, but then start doing. That is a powerful combination that will serve you well.
Tomorrow we’ll take a little time to look a bit more about the concept of hope, and what it really means in our lives.
48. Hope Is Not A Plan