Hey! Welcome back to your daily mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about finding hope during difficult or uncertain times. Hope, to me, is key to resilience. Unless we have a belief, a sense that we'll be able to get through this, that we'll be able to impact our future, we can get caught in a state of helplessness, giving up, feeling like there's nothing we can do. One of my favorite books on the topic of hope is called Learned Hopefulness by Dr.

Dan Tomasulo. And he makes this distinction where he says faith is believing change will happen because of some outside force that someone else will make it happen. But hope happens when we believe we can positively impact our future, and through impacting our present moment. I think there's something empowering in that. But it can be tough when we look at our circumstance and feel like there's nothing I can do.

This has just been thrust upon me. How am I supposed to change this experience or do something about this experience? I can't even see up or down right or left. I just feel trapped and confined. That feeling is what leads to that feeling of helplessness, of not being able to do anything. And it's understandable.

And if you're experiencing it, my heart goes out to you. And I know what that feeling is alike. One thing that we can do, though, in these moments, is just ask, what can I do now? What can I control now? That simple question, either what can I do now, or what can I control now? Helps us start to look more positively at a simple action. We can take in this moment to move in the direction of a positive future. We might not see the end of the road.

It might feel like we're just driving down a long dark winding road with just being able to see what's in front of us with our headlights. But that distance in front of us is enough for us to take the next step, and then the next step, and then the next step, and then the next step. And eventually it might get brighter and brighter until we can see where all of this is leading. But right now, when we're in total uncertainty, chaos, confusion. We can't be expected to know what the outcome is and that's okay.

But starting by, to take just one step in that direction, asking an empowering question — what can I do now? What can I control now? That starts to activate different parts of the brain that will look for solutions, that will be proactive. And that will take us out of helplessness. So you can begin working with that question in your own life. We'll build on this in our meditation today. As always, thank you for your practice.

You've made it all the way through. We're almost at the end of this series, and I'm really proud of you for making it this far. I'll talk to you shortly and until then take care.