Are You Hopeful?
Do you have hope, hope for a better tomorrow? We hope so, some pun intended.
In a world of COVID-19, civil unrest, climate change and more, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and feel helpless.
That is why hope is an essential quality, both a state of mind and an emotion. It’s not something to cling to, but to develop and cultivate.
It can find the light at the end of the tunnel, or there can be a “hope against hope,” with little prospects of success.
What is hope, then, and why is it so important for your life’s journey? Wikipedia notes that hope is an “optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.”
In life’s meandering journey to wholeness, hope serves as an energetic tonic to empower us and get us there. The “there” in the future can become, with hope, a brighter present. In other words, today’s hope becomes tomorrow’s better future.
Hope then need not be a desperate measure, a Hail Mary pass when all else fails. It can become a vibrant hope, filled with love, healing and more, brimming with possibilities. Without hope, you become less confident, more weary.For without real hope, life drains out of you till you eventually become hopeless.
Two Things to Understand
The Words You Use
Words are so much a part of our lives, we rarely examine them. Here are a couple important things to keep in mind.
Our ongoing stream of thoughts contains many negative messages, some reasonable alerts, while many others are false warnings and alarms. We also re-play our favorite negative messages about ourselves and the world.
What’s more, living presents many societal problems that affect us. The media focuses on conflict as well, influencing – often unconsciously –how we describe things.
As a result, it’s easy to use negatively laden words and phrases without realizing the toll they take – on our daily life and the quality of our life
By contrast, using words with awareness can make a positive difference. Let’s explore how words can depress us or uplift us.
The Energy in the Words You Use
We describe below a powerful little exercise from our recent book The Ultimate Paradigm Shift.
Your Brightest Possible Future
Even in these times that try men’s souls, we seek an optimal future. The current challenges can inspire us to rise up and envision a better – a much better —world.
What kind of future do you want to live in? To answer this all-important question, here’s some help. Fill in this sentence:
“I want to live in a more ____________ world.”
Now imagine your personal journey through this awesome future.
The more you can craft an optimal future, the better for you and for the world. Your optimal experiences can reverberate in wonderful, unfathomable ways.
If you are a holistic-minded, heart-centered person, you have certain priorities. You want to make the world a more connected, loving place.
What you contribute, how you live your life, can make the difference. So as you elevate your life, the world around you grows and flourishes too. As you rise to greater vibratory heights, your perspective expands.
The Bright Future Creates the Present
As you seek more freedom, meaning and depth in your future, you integrate this awareness into your present. Hence the future shapes your present.
For your exciting, future life, where do you want more freedom?
Announcing: Soulful Living — New Weekly Facebook Live Show
Check out our new Podcast: Soulful Living Show.
If you are interested in engaging information you can use, join us for this show on transformation for coaches, healers and holistic-minded, heart-centered people.
Each week. we share a key soulful success and prosperity tip for you — to focus on to uplift your week.
Please share this with your friends.
WHEN: Sunday, 4:30 pm pst/7:30pm est
WHERE: FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/soulofsuccess
Here’s a preview clip for you to see:
Transform Your Life with Gratitude
What’s often the missing ingredient for love, healing and manifestation? Gratitude.
Gratitude is being thankful and appreciative, and more… Expressing it in your life is a game-changer. Gratitude can bring you up when you’re down. It can create a wonderful view alive, keeping you strong and flexible.
Learning how to express gratitude is a key to a wonderful life. Let it transform you. Here’s how…
Gratitude: The Magic Elixir
Gratitude can get you through the morass of life, in all its uncertainty and confusion. It can help life make more sense.
When you use gratitude, it become a magic elixir for an empowering, transcendent life. It redirects your attention to goodness, even amidst the bad. It gives you a fresh outlook. You connect with others and yourself more. As research shows, you become healthier, happier and can even live longer.
You realize you are fortunate in so many ways. As you focus on your good fortune, it grows into 
abundance and prosperity, too.
Providing a backdrop for your life, gratitude can help you better handle loss and overwhelm. It provides a way to becoming a more open, humble person.
To make gratitude grow with all its wonderful benefits, you must plant the seeds. How? By practicing it. Include gratitude in your journal and meditation.
Also, gratitude and wonder arise from appreciating nature; the sky, the earth, the water all around us. It just takes an intention to do so.
10 Gratitudes – A Starter List to Express Gratitude
Fear of Selling and Spiritual Growth
Do you enjoy selling? Well some people do. Many others, particularly holistically minded people, find selling doesn’t come naturally to them. They may have many negative associations about selling. They may even have a strong fear of selling (selling out?).
Yet what’s most important here, looking at the big picture, it becomes apparent that selling is part of the spiritual journey to wholeness. Thus it’s good to face any fears or contradictions around this area of our lives.
What is Selling?
Part of the confusion with selling is that it has two definitions. One has to do with persuading people, the other has to do with transferring goods or services in exchange for money. Each can present challenges, especially when money is involved.
Mastering Life’s Mystery and Energies: The 4 Keys to Mastering Your Life
How do you gain mastery? The definition of mastery is “comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment.” What’s more, how do you master life’s mystery and energies?
In this article, we will first explore gaining mastery of a particular subject – then expand to discussing how to gain mastery of your life as a whole.
Examples of masters are Shin Lim the magician who recently won America’s Got Talent, Roger Federer or Serena Williams in tennis, or Izhak Perlman for his violin ability. To master something, you must put together certain elements, then you will not only begin to act like a master, but live with mastery in that realm.
First, a suggestion: Don’t sell yourself short on becoming masterful. Before we get specific in our examination of mastery, let’s say one need not rise to the very best artist or athlete on earth to gain mastery.
There’s no requirement to be part of an exclusive group of superhumans to become masterful. Mastery is open to virtually anyone who is willing to follow a certain path that leads to advanced accomplishment in a certain area.
One consideration to understanding mastery is that sometimes there are external 
measurable standards to guide you, like speed or wins or skill level. Then there are internals that are harder to measure, which come from the unique expression and life experience of each person.
Let’s look at the four key components to help one gain mastery.
About Your Spiritual Hygiene and Evolution
Your spiritual evolution and and spiritual hygiene are directly connected.
Let’s clarify some terms and figure how it all connects… We know that personal hygiene refers to being physically clean and presentable. In general, such hygiene maintains ourselves, keeping us fresh and socially acceptable to others.
On another level, we can develop spiritual hygiene. By that we mean how you keep yourself relatively clean (without being a fanatic about it) on ALL levels: physically, emotionally and mentally, which synthesizes spiritual hygiene.
Note: Spiritual hygiene is not about moral purity or following some strict external code. Such rigid behavior and inflexible approach leads to problems such as being judgmental, as we will discuss.
Here are four important ways to keep your spiritual hygiene up, for greater integrity, living fully and spiritual evolution:
Are You In Control? How to Take Charge of Your Life and Destiny
Do you feel your life is basically in control or out of control? And how much control do you actually have over your life?
These are essential questions. And to respond intelligently, one needs to take into account some important considerations, which we will now examine.
What Areas Can You Control?
Here are some areas that you can control, at least to a certain extent. You can say that you are in control of your…
health
finances
priorities
time
energy
Such control means you have a realistic sense of what’s involved with the area. You also feel good relating positively to the particular area (with your health, time, energy, etc.).
Negative Control
Some people veer toward being too lax, without boundaries or attention. This lack of awareness can lead to negligence and destruction.
How to Have a Strong Mind and Live Fully
Everyone wants a strong, healthy body. How about a strong, healthy mind?
This subject is particularly important with the rise in Alzheimer’s disease cases. With more people being affected, there is an urgent need to fortify the brain. Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia incubate for a long time. It can take many years to develop, so this is a good time to bolster your mind, and by extension, your brain.
What’s more, we want to go beyond just preserving our mind. We want to keep it as fresh and energized as possible.
What is “Mind”?
We are referring to “mind” as your consciousness that directly influences your physical body and brain.
Also …
* In turn, the body and mind are influenced by the environment.
* Also the brain, like the body, is material; the mind is immaterial.
Five Lessons from the Body to Have a Strong Mind
To get clues about a healthy mind, let’s consider characteristics of a healthy body. Since the body is physical, it’s easier to see what makes it work well.
Other points here…