On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, we’re talking about hope.

What it really means, why it sometimes gets a bad rap, and how we can look at it through a bunch of different lenses. 

I share why hope isn’t just some fluffy, pie-in-the-sky idea - but actually a powerful mindset and a skill that we can practice every day, especially when the world feels crazy, overwhelming or out of control. 

We talk about how hope is more than just a feeling… it’s also a way of thinking, a call to action, and a belief in the possibility of a better future! 

I get into the idea of “learned hopefulness,” and how it’s wicked interesting that hope actually needs a little uncertainty or negativity to get activated. 

Plus, I share stories from Greek mythology, psychology, and even a little Mister Rogers - to show how hope can be a guiding light, even when things look and feel tough. 

One of my big takeaways is that hope isn’t passive.

It’s not about just wishing things would get better, it’s about believing we can make a positive difference and then getting our ass in gear and actually doing something about it. 

I talk about the importance of shifting our perspective, training our minds to look for the good, the beautiful, and the holy…

And how our individual actions can ripple out to create bigger change in our families, communities, and the world. 

If you’re feeling a little low on hope, I invite you to join me in practicing it!

Visualize the future you want, “walk as if” your dreams are already happening, and remember that hope can be an act of resistance and a source of strength. 

And if you want to go deeper or get support, come check out my “Nest” community -or- my one-to-one mentoring. 

Wherever you are, may you leave the world a little better than you found it, and may your hope be a blessing to yourself and others! ❤️

KK’S KEY TAKEAWAYS:

​• Hope is more than a feeling; it is a mindset, a call to action, a practice, and a belief in the possibility of positive change.

​• Practicing hope requires us to shift our perspective and train our minds to look for the good, the beautiful, and the holy.

​• Hope is not passive; it inspires us to take action and create the future we want to see.

​• “Learned Hopefulness” means cultivating the belief that we can positively influence our own lives and the world.

​• Visualizing and embodying your desired future can more likely help to make hope a lived reality.

​• Individual change and inner peace are the starting points for creating broader change in families, communities, and society.

​• Hope can be an act of resistance and a source of strength during difficult times.

​• Joining a supportive community can help you practice and sustain hope in your daily life.

BIO:

Spiritual Mentor and writer Karen Kenney uses humor and dynamic storytelling to bring a down-to-earth, no-BS perspective to self-development.

Bringing together tools that coach the conscious and unconscious mind, Karen helps clients deepen their connections with Self, and discover their unique understandings of spirituality. 

Her practice combines neuroscience, subconscious reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis, somatic work, spiritual mentoring, and other holistic modalities to help regulate the nervous system, examine internal narratives, remove blocks, and reimagine what’s possible.

A passionate yoga teacher, long-time student of A Course in Miracles, and Gateless Writing instructor, Karen is a frequent speaker and retreat leader. Via her programs The Quest and The Nest, she coaches both individuals and groups. 

With The Karen Kenney Podcast, she encourages listeners to shift from a thought system of fear to one of love, compassion, and personal responsibility.

CONNECT WITH KAREN:

Website: http://karenkenney.com/

Podcast: https://www.karenkenney.com/podcast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenkenneylive/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenkenneylive/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KarenKenney

Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm so happy

to be here with you today, and today I want to talk about hope.

H, O, P, E, hope. And one of the reasons why I want to talk about

hope is that I think hope sometimes gets a bad rap. So

it's not like I have to be here, like in defense of hope, but I

want to just talk about hope and look at it through a couple of

different lenses. I always think of so many things as being like

a kaleidoscope, and we tend to, like lock things into being a

particular way, or thinking about something for a particular

way. And one of the things I love to do is to just kind of

like, you know, when a dog, he is a funny sound, he like, tilts

his head sideways. Sometimes, just like tilting your head

sideways, just a touch, it can give you a totally different

perspective. Just kind of shifting that kaleidoscope, just

one tiny turn, and all of a sudden you have a totally

different picture. The other reason why I want to talk about

hope today is because I think that there is so much going on

in the world that is so fucking insane and so just overwhelming

and scary and maddening and fear, like there's so much fear

that is generated in this kind of human existence realm, you

know what I mean? And there's so much that happens that feels

like it is out of our control. There's so much that we feel

like we do not control in the outer world. And when we start

to get overwhelmed by that, and we're getting bombarded through

the news the 24 hour, like 24/7 like news cycle and the endless

bombardment of social media and the Internet and the devices and

like all that stuff, when we get constantly reminded of how out

of control a lot of things feel, we can start to feel hopeless.

And I know that there are people out there who I've heard say

both Nia and fat to me, who have said things that they were

feeling hopeless and helpless. So this, for me, is like just

something that's, I think, important to talk about and I

want to dive into. And let's start off by and I got some

notes here in front of me, because I always like, I always

like to do my due diligence. I am a lover of words. I love to

know where a word originated from, what it means, and look at

it from a couple of different angles, right? So the word hope,

if we look at it as a noun, this is there's a couple of different

meanings for it. Number one, it's a feeling of expectation

and desire for a certain thing to happen. Okay? It's also as a

noun, grounds for believing that something good may happen. Okay?

And here's a little another one. This one might be from Marion

Webster's Dictionary, dictionary, and it says hope is

an optimistic state of mind, not just a feeling. So one calls it

a feeling. This is calling it an optimistic state of mind that is

based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect

to events and circumstances in one's own life or the world at

large. Now, Marion Webster as a verb defines hope this way,

quote to expect with confidence, end quote or quote to cherish a

desire with anticipation. And I thought these were fabulous. I'm

a wicked hopeful. I'm kind of an annoyingly hopeful person. And I

know that some people can consider hope to be, almost be

like a little, little like Polly Anna ish, but I want to look at

it this way. So while some of us see hope like, let's talk about

this, because not all of us, not everybody's like me, not

everybody sees hope as a positive thing, um, so while

some of us see hope as a positive thing, like it's, for

me, it's like a glimmer. It's like a glimmer. It's a guide.

It's a guiding light when we're just in it. You know what I

mean? Like when things just feel like all hope is lost. You know,

I often use this as an example. If you were a kid in my

generation, there was a show called the banana splits, and on

the banana splits, I reference this character a lot, excuse me.

And he was on gullive his travels, and he was just like

this little Negative Nelly guy. And anytime something happened,

he would just mutter the words, we'll never make it. We're

doomed, right? And he was so not hopeful or positive, like at

all. And so while some of us see hope as a good thing, as a

guiding light, as something positive to get us through, like

Doc, Doc, times, other people think of hope as something

negative, like they'll say, Don't get your hopes up, or

you're just going to get disappointed. Or it feels

almost. Like, you know that saying, like having an albatross

around your neck, that hope kind of keeps us attached to

expectations or to dreams of, like, better or great at times,

it's like this thing where you just hope and hope and hope, but

nothing actually happens and you just end up defeated and

disappointed, and, you know, getting discouraged and all that

stuff. And when we think about this relationship to our

relationship, I should say to the word hope, I started

thinking about that old story, which is really interesting. So

you guys have all probably heard the phrase you're gonna open

Pandora's box. And this goes back to Greek, Greek mythology.

And what's really interesting is that Pandora actually wasn't

given a box to open. She was given a ja, I don't know why I

find that so funny. Pandora's ja, I guess it doesn't have the

same like, you know, same oomph to it like, so you open

Pandora's box. Okay? So back in Greek mythology, there's

Pandora, and Pandora is supposed to supposedly like the first

woman on earth. So first woman on earth, gods give her this ja,

and they tell her, don't open it. Okay, we already know how

that's going to end, because if she was curious, if she was

curious, as curious as I am, and it's like, here's this first

woman on earth, here's a jar. Don't open it. They told her,

keep it shut. But of course, her curiosity wins out. She opens it

out, and upon opening the jaw, all of a sudden, she releases,

like, every evil, every malady, like all these awful, all the

miseries of the world, like come pouring out, come flying out,

like, like a swarm of bees. It's like, right? If you've ever seen

like a horror movie where, like, it's something is like a mist or

a fog or whatever, and you open it up and it's like it just goes

out. So everything from like, sorrow to pain to envy to greed

to sickness, death, disease, hatred, strife, famine, like

whatever, all the bad shit, like, just comes pouring out.

And then, of course, Pandora is like, Oh my God, oh shit. And

she tries to, like, shut the jaw, and when she quickly closes

the jaw, slash box, right? There's one thing that stayed

trapped inside, and that was hope. So think about that inside

the jaw. Now I don't know what the gods were thinking. They

obviously have a wicked, funny sense of humor, but inside,

alongside all of these awful things, was also hope. So hope

stays trapped inside with all the other like melodies of the

human world, right? So everything else escapes, but

hope stays in the box. Now to some of us, we are like, Oh my

God, thank God. She held on to hope. She has this like divine

gift that is still in her power and in her presence and in her

possession that she can use right, this hope that human

humankind, right, has retained amidst all the other bad things,

all the adversities in the world, all the tragedies of the

world, all the horrors and all the suffering. We still have

hope. Well, other people look at it as like, it's kind of like,

hope is just kind of like lame, lame and wishful thinking. Some

people even see it like we're being taunted, like, it's like,

oh yeah, we have hope. Like, we have hope all these good things

are going to happen, but they never happen. You know what I

mean? So a lot of people look at it in a very negative way. Me,

personally, I'm a wicked big fan of hope, and we're going to get

into all that. But I, of course, I looked up hope, and I always

like to get a couple of different perspectives on this.

And there's a wonderful guy, a psychologist. I mean, I assume

he's wonderful in person, he seemed wonderful on video, but

he's a psychologist, and his name is, and I want to say this

correctly, Dr Dan Tomasulo, and he teaches positive psychology

at Columbia. He also, like, speaks on the science of learned

hopefulness. And of course, that just like grabbed me like that

title the science of learned hopefulness. And he says this.

He says Hope is the only positive emotion that requires

negativity or uncertainty in order for it to be activated.

Let me say that again, hope is the only positive emotion that

requires negativity or uncertainty to be activated. And

he went on to make a funny and he said, there's no need for

hope if everything is hunky dory, right?

And it's true. But the thing about. About hope is that it's

flip of the coin, right? People who, people who, like, get their

hopes up and then get disappointed, or things don't go

their way, or things look like like they do in the world right

now, where, like, everything's kind of going down, and there's

all this negativity and all this division and all this murder and

hatred and schools mass shootings and school shootings

and like famine and genocide and like all these things that are

happening, it's what we can lose our bit of hope, right? We can

lose that bit of sunshine in our heart. We can lose that, what we

call it, a glimmer of hope, right? We lose that glimmer,

that sparkly, little divine thing that that like, like

Pandora, that she retained in the box. And to me, I'm like we,

you know, or in the job, we all have this, I think, in our

heart. But when we start to lose our belief in hope, if we don't

activate our hope and use it, and we're going to talk about

using hope in a minute, then hopelessness can often lead to

despair. And if you take a look around right now, just like I

was saying, we could all use a little more hope. So I want us

to consider thinking of looking at Hope like this. And this is

kind of how I look at Hope. I think of hope as many things,

not just one thing, right? So if we go back to the you know, the

definitions here, it's a feeling of expectation and desire for a

certain thing to happen. That's one way to look at it. But I

look at hope as a feeling. I look at it as a positive motion,

number one, number two. I also look at hope as a mindset, as a

particular outlook as a particular thought system. So to

me, it's not just a feeling, it's also a mindset. For me,

hope is also a call to action. It's an inspiration. It's

something that lights a little fire under my ass, you know what

I mean? And hope is also, to me, a practice. It's not some

ethereal thing out there. It's something that I can practice in

here. And we know,

we know that to me, it's kind of like that old saying in the

Bible, right? Faith without works is dead to me, hope,

without works, is dead. I don't think of hope is just something

that we get to like, sit around and like, Oh, I hope. I hope we

have a more inner, more peaceful world. I hope we have a less

violent world. It's like, No, you know how we get outer peace?

You know how we get world peace is individuals inside are

working on their own inner peace. Inner peace amongst all

the individuals leads to outer peace. What I have found is that

people who have more of an experience of of inner peace,

what they start to do is they start to have a different

experience of themselves. They start to have a different

experience, where they can start to believe in themselves and

trust themselves. And when you move through the world from that

place where you kind of have belief in yourself, and you

start to trust yourself, and you trust your inner teacher, you

trust that wise advocate or Holy Spirit, or the still inner voice

or the divine intelligence that moves through you, right? You

start to show up differently in the world. And I find that

people who are moving through the world with inner peace, they

tend to create outer peace around them. And just imagine if

more people right, stayed in that place of hopefulness. They

stayed in that place of believing that they could

actually make a difference and that they do something about it.

So to me, hope isn't passive. Hope is not a passive thing.

It's not like this naive Pollyanna ish, like, I'm just

gonna cross my fingers and hope for the best. No, it's not. It's

a skill. Hope is actually a skill, and it is a skill that we

can practice. It's a to me, again, it's a mindset that

inspires action, and it's like it's not just a belief. So I

guess that's number five to me. It's also a belief, but it's a

belief in the possibility of things getting better. It's a

belief in the possibility of change and transformation. Hope,

to me, is a belief in the possibility for a better future.

But and it comes along with it's a it has a plan on how to do it,

on how to get there. It's not just like pie in the sky, cross

my fingers. Hope it all works out. No, it's like I'm going to

take action to try to right, have a plan. Now, of course, a

miracle says a healed, healed mind does not plan. And that

doesn't mean that we don't have a plan. It's that we. Now don't

make our plan all on our own meaning. We get quiet, we slow

down, we spend we have some time of introspection, some self

reflection, some self awareness. We get wicked clear on our

motivations, on our intentions, on what's driving the bus within

us. We ask, we call upon the more intelligent parts of

ourselves, whether you call that your highest self, your higher

power, your good self, your good thinking, your comments,

whatever you want to call it Holy Spirit, right the again,

the quiet voice within the inner teacher, we make a plan from

that place on how we would like to create whatever it is, this

more peaceful world, this more kind, compassionate, loving

United States of America, perhaps right, not this

divisive. We hold on to a hope and a vision and a belief that

there is a possibility for things to look different. But we

don't just sit on our ass and expect the rest of the world to

figure it out. We try to come up, at least on an individual

level, a plan on how to get there. So for me, hope takes us

from having a problem and it swings open the door to

possibility. Because as long as you are stuck in hopelessness

and as long as you are stuck in despair, you are powerless when

you throw your hands up or shove your head in the sand or just

say you tap out and say, I'm out. I'm not saying don't take

breaks. There are a lot of people in this world, especially

black women, who have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting for a

really long time, and so a lot of us who have been maybe

sitting on the sidelines or saying shit like, oh well, God's

just gonna handle it all, like, hope helps the thoughts and

prayers and Namaste the day away, right? It's like no, some

of us have to step up and actually get involved. Have a

little bit more of a plan. You know what I'm saying, and so so

much of this when we're moving from that place of problem, the

suffering, the division, the hatred, all that stuff to

possibility, to me, that's the realm of spirit that's moving

from fear to love. So to me, in some ways, hope is miraculous,

because as A Course in Miracles, says all that, all that a

miracle is, is a shift in our perception, a shift in our mind

from fear to love. Now let me say this, if you're in the kind

of quote unquote spiritual realm, the spiritual quote

unquote world, or you have a spiritual practice, or you have

spiritual friends or whatever. No doubt, especially if you are

familiar with the Course of Miracles at all, you have heard

that, right? A miracle ends a shift in perception from fear to

love, and it's so easy to quote it. It's so easy to say the

words and to also like hear it, but not hear it like you hear

the tones and the fluctuations of sound making like coherent

words, but you're not receiving it. You're not getting it.

You're not feeling it, and you're not downloading how

powerful that actually is. When you shift your mind from fear to

love, when there is a shift in perspective in your mind, it can

heal separation, it can heal division. It can heal wars. It

can create forgiveness. It is a soothing balm to the soul. When

you are willing to shift how you have been perceiving something,

yourself, a situation or somebody else, it is a powerful,

powerful thing, because love, that's the state where love

happens in the realm of curiosity and creativity and

possibility. But when we stay attached to the problem, the

suffering, the division, the hopelessness, the helplessness,

we're screwed, we're right, like nothing's going to change. What

do they always say? Nothing changes. If nothing changes,

right? So if we stay open to hope, if we stay open to the

idea, the belief in the practice right, the feeling of hope,

anything that is felt right, thought about, felt spoken with

repetition, it literally creates neural networks in our brain

that allows that feeling good or bad, in this case, with hope

good, right to it a lot. So Rick Hansen says it like this,

neurons in your brain that fire together, wire together. Another

way of saying this is you practice an emotional state. How

you feel right, you practice an emotional state until it becomes

a neural trait. And for example, that's why people who get angry

really easily. What that tells me is they've practiced getting

angry 1000 times before. That people who feel like they are

infinitely patient they have. Practice patience 1000 times

before that. Right? We practice emotional state until it becomes

a neural trait. Neurons that fire together, wire together to

me, if I keep my mind attuned to hope, to love, right, to all of

that stuff, when I shift out of all that fear state that's what

despair and hopelessness and hatred and division and

separation and all that stuff, is when I shift out of that, the

world opens up. And Dr thomasullo said this, I want to

share this because I thought it was so great. He says, When I

talk about learned hopefulness, we're trying to cultivate a

perspective that optimizes the belief that we can positively

influence the future. Think about that. He says, it's about

agency and positivity. And this is what I think is so powerful

about this sentence. He says, we're trying to cultivate a

perspective that optimizes the belief that we can those two

words, that we can positively influence the future meaning.

I'm not at the mercy of what the world out there is doing. I'm

not saying it doesn't feel like we are and that sometimes we

are, sometimes somebody would just sit in a light, and

somebody you know hits us from behind, we get, boom, we got

little car accident from behind. Sometimes there are things that

are just kind of like happening. I'm not, I'm not spiritually

bypassing suffering, atrocities, awful things. I'm just saying we

hold on to the belief, though, that we can positively influence

the future. And what's happening right now, I think, is that a

lot of people are losing their belief that they can actually

positively influence the future and change how things are going,

change the direction that the world in this country is going

in. And so we, you know, it's really important that we

understand how we can,

like influence our own beliefs and train our mind. And this is

what this is what meditation is all about. In some ways, this is

what A Course in Miracles all about. It's about mind training.

It's training our mind to think along the thoughts of love, a

thought system of love, instead of a thought system of fear. And

here's what we know our perception. So in A Course in

Miracles, it says perception, right? I'm tapping my forehead,

what we think of and hold to be true in our mind, right?

Perception makes projection. It's what we put out onto the

world. So what we think in our mind, in here is often what we

experience. Out there, our perception informs our

experience. It informs our knowledge, our knowledge right,

often informs what we think, informs what we believe. So if

we want to change our beliefs, like, oh my god, we're never

make it. We're doomed. We're fucked. It's all a mess. It's in

it is, look it's, I get it. It looks like a shit show out

there, like I get it. But if we want to change our beliefs about

what's possible, we have to shift our perceptions. That's

the way that we get it done. And there's a quote that was made

famous by Wayne Dyer, if you're a Wayne Dyer fan, right? The

writer, the author, the thinker, the speaker. He's no longer with

us. But Wayne had a thing where he would say, if we change the

way we look at things, the things we look at change, and it

gets attributed to him. Yes, he said it in his books, but it's

not his original quote that came from the founder of quantum

physics. He was a German physicist named Max Max Planck.

It was popularized by Wayne, but Max Planck basically

paraphrased, says, If we change the way we look at things, the

things we look at change. So it kind of also goes along with

that saying, right? People, a lot of times say, well, I'll

believe it when I see it. And people we often say, like,

you'll see it. We flip that around. We say, you'll see it

when you first believe it. So a shift in perception in your mind

swings open the door right to possibilities and the most

significant change, I often say, you know, everybody wants to

change the world out there. And I always say, the way that you

change the world out there is by changing the world first in

here, and I'm tapping my head in my hat, right? Your body like in

here, the inner work is what leads to external changes. And I

often say, like, if you want to see a less violent world, right?

We just had this kid in Nashua, like, 23 years old, or

something, 2223 years old, you know, and he breaks into, you

know, an event space. So there's an event space in a restaurant,

like a country club. Yeah, and he just like, he shoots people.

And you're like, What the fuck we see it all over the place. We

see it in, you know, children in schools and churches, the

insanity, right? We just saw Charlie Kirk get murdered.

That's a whole other show for another day. But if we want to

see a less violent world, a world with no more violence or

less violence, we must do the work on an individual level to

eradicate all the violence that we have within ourselves and our

own hearts and our own minds and our own DNA, like the way, and I

mean, I don't mean DNA, like actual DNA, but like, you know

what we walk around, the stories we carry, the beliefs we carry,

right? And that's the thing is. People like, well, there's

nothing we can do. I said, No, no, no, the first thing you do,

I always say, you can't complain about shit blowing around the

neighborhood. People like, oh, there's stuff all over the

street. And then, yeah, you might want to check your own

backyard, because that's where the stuff is coming right? Clean

up. Clean up your own trash barrels that you didn't roll

back in. You know what I'm saying? So we have all have our

own little garden to tend to, and that's where we start doing

the work. All that, all that a family is, is it's made up of

individuals. All that a neighborhood is, is it's made up

a bunch of different individuals. All that a

community is, is it's made up of a bunch of different

individuals. All that a state is like, it's a city, a state, you

can keep going out a company, a corporation. It's just made up

of individuals, a country made up of individuals, a government.

So the way that we create mass change, change on a global

scale. Wanting to see a more quote, unquote, peaceful world

or less violent world, one at a time, we gotta get our hats

right. We gotta get our minds right. And I think holding on to

hope and believing, actually, believing that we have the

possibility to create a better future, along with a plan on how

to do it and then actually taking some action. So we've got

to understand ourselves. We got to understand the way that we

look like, the lenses that we use to like, look through the

world, look at ourselves, each other and whatever, and that's

how we change. And I've said it before. You've heard me say it.

Why are there still in the richest country in the world,

why are there still children dying of starvation? Why are

there still kids going hungry at the end of the day? Why are

there kids who don't have, like, resources and things that they

need? Because enough people are okay with it. Enough people are

voting against it. Enough people have decided, like, Yeah, I'm

okay. I'm okay with kids getting killed when they go to school.

I'm okay. Like, look at our gun laws, look at all that stuff.

It's because enough people are okay with having some gun

deaths, right? Because we just think, like, Oh, yeah. Like, we

don't want to give up our guns. It's like, nobody's asking you

to give up the guns. We're asking for more like effective

leadership and like rules and laws around getting guns and all

that stuff. But again, another conversation for another day. So

when we change, right? This is the heart of the human

experience. Is our perception shapes our reality. And when we

understand the power of our own perspective, the power of our

own subconscious beliefs. When we start to get that the when we

start to change the way that we look at things, the things that

we are viewing, witnessing, observing, those things will

start to change. So from this right, we look at things

differently. This is how transformation happens. This is

how change happens. This is where we get hope, because we

actually start to see again. It's not this Pollyanna ish

crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. It's like, well,

what am I going to do about this vision of hope that I have? You

know, in A Course in Miracles, it's like lesson 33 it says

there's another way of looking at the world. There is another

way of looking at the world. We all know. We've talked about it

on this show. If you're a regular listen to the show, the

brain has its own negativity bias. It gets up in the morning.

It's the brain's job is to keep you safe. So it's always going

to be looking for threats. It's going to be looking for things

that are scary, things that are wrong, things that are bad. It's

always trying to judge its environment for safety, right?

It's not sitting around like trying to see the good in

everybody. You know, I've trained my brain. I think I was

kind of like that anyways as a kid, but part of being a Course

in Miracles student for like, over 30 years is that I have

trained my mind in a very specific way, right? So I did

last year a 30 day challenge, and I'm going to seriously

consider bringing it back, either somewhere sometime this

year, or start off the year with it in 2026 but I did a challenge

called The Good, the beautiful and the holy and. Speaking of A

Course in Miracles, there's another way of looking at the

world, right? There's another line in A Course in Miracles

that says Child of God, and I just consider us all God's kids,

whether you believe in God or not, think of yourself as a

child of the universe or a child of love. I don't use your own

happy word, but it says child of God. You were created to create

the good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not forget this. Child

of God. You were created to create the good, the beautiful

and the holy. Do not forget this. And my challenge was all

about taking 30 days to help us, to train our mind over the

course of 30 days, to look inside you. But I started with

the outside world, because for a lot of people, it's easier to do

it to the outside, to look for the good, to look for the

beautiful, to look for

the holy. In this case, holy doesn't necessarily mean

religious. It doesn't mean it couldn't be beautiful things

like, maybe you you went to church service and you're like,

Oh, that felt like a holy experience. Or maybe you had a

deep talk with a friend and there was reconciliation or

forgiveness, and that felt like a holy moment, or a holy instant

or whatever. But holy could mean like, I broaden the scope,

because I know that word for some people can be like, Man,

that makes me a little uncomfy, right? But so the challenge was

all about taking 30 days right to really look around and

observe the good, the beautiful and the holy. And it trained our

minds to look at what already exists in the world, right? And

then we had to shift it to acknowledging those things that

lived within us that we're good, beautiful and holy people find

that pot like way harder. And again, that's a conversation for

another day. But here's what I'm trying to say, when we're

looking for the good, the beautiful and the holy, we have

so much more hope, you know. And I think about and I've talked

about it many times, as you all know, I'm a huge fan of Mister

Rogers, right? When Mister Rogers talks about how when bad

or scary things happen in the world, this is a famous thing. I

know it's not the first time you're hearing it from me, but

meaning you've heard it from other places. And his mom would

tell him, like, when the scary things happened, she'd be like,

Freddie, look for the help is. Look for the people who are

helping. That to me is like, good, beautiful and holy. That's

like looking for the hopeful, looking for the places where

people aren't just flapping their gums or crossing their

fingers. They're doing something about the tragedy, the trauma,

the travesty, like their boots on the ground. They're getting

their hands dirty. They're like diving in so I guess what I'm

trying to say is we don't have to just accept the way that

things are out there, the way that things, quote, unquote,

appear to be in this small reality, as we say, in this very

human kind of, you know, drama, this play that is being acted

out on the cosmic level, right? And in a course, in miracles, we

call it like a dream. And in yoga, we call it Maya, the

illusion, this illusion of separation, right? So we don't

just have to accept the way that things are. We can train our

mind, and we can challenge ourselves to try to see things

in a new way, and to not just try to see things in a new way,

but to actually see things in a new way. Because hope is

teachable. Hope is what I like to say. It's learnable, right?

We can learn to be more hopeful. And there's a quote that I want

to share again. It comes from, I always want to make sure I say

his name, Dr thomasullo. He said this, I love this. He says,

learned hopefulness cultivates perspectives, optimizing the

belief that we can positively influence the future. Learned

hopefulness, I'm going to say it again. Learned hopefulness

cultivates perspectives, optimizing the belief that we

can positively influence the future. And I can say this, as

somebody who works with the subconscious mind a lot, with

myself and with my clients and with members of the nest, is

that when you hold on to a belief, and to me, this is like

almost self hypnosis, right? It's not self delusional, but

it's literally, how do we how do we create an outcome that we

desire, not by focusing on our lack and what we don't have, but

we literally create, like little movies in our mind, right? We

use our imagination, and we imagine what it's like. We

visualize a better future. We literally put ourselves in our

mind's eye in a better future. And we practice this. We

practice seeing things differently. We hold the vision

of what's possible, and we put ourself into the scene in that

movie, as if we are there right now. And we look around in the

movie and it's like, what am I seeing, what am I feeling? What

am I what am I hearing? What am I tasting or touching? We use

the five senses. We make it really real, and we practice a

vision. And athletes do this all the time. They call it they call

it visualization. It's really. Self hypnosis, right? It's same

Z. Same z is different, same thing. It's like they're

visualizing. They see themselves swinging the bat. They see

themselves taking the shot. They see themselves like swinging the

golf club, right? They put them. They see themselves winning the

race, running faster. They see themselves doing it all

perfectly, and right? They let their nervous system, their

mind, their neurons, their physical body, have the

experience of it already be differently, and we can do this

with hope too, when we practice it enough times that belief that

we can positively influence the future. This is how things

actually come to be right. We bring it to life. We practice

hopefulness. It's so powerful. And this is what I'm saying. Is

like hope is teachable, hopefulness is learnable. And

this is how we keep the darkness out. We keep the darkness out by

always noticing the little glimmers of light of

possibility. We train our mind to look for love, and then we

take action again. We don't just talk about it. We don't just

think about it. It's the application of the theory. We do

something about it. And we want to start by emulating

internally, right? We embody the thing that we wish to be

different out there, we emulate internally what we want to

experience externally. That's the gig, and then we take

action, because hope is taking action on that possibility. So

we can transform hope from something that's quote, unquote

passive to something that's a powerful catalyst for change,

something that actually can shape our world. We're not just

sitting around thinking about it, dreaming about it,

visualizing about it. We are then taking that practice and

we're putting it to good use out in the world. And I think if we

can shift our relationship from Hope, from like it just being

like this, whatever she hopes, yeah, keep hoping. Yeah, keep

hoping, you know, and people roll their eyes, or whatever.

But hope is something to me that has empowered me, right? Hope

that, Oh, my God, this is not going to last forever. In fact,

it doesn't matter why, but I was looking, I was looking at my

high school yearbook. That's a whole of the story. And

underneath my picture? Well, it's not even my picture. I

think I've told this story before.

My picture in the yearbook does not have my name underneath it.

That's a whole story for another day, but my quote in the

yearbook was, nothing lasts forever. And I think a lot of

people could take that to mean something really negative, and I

would say the only thing that lasts forever. So no thing lasts

forever. But you know what lasts forever is love? You know it's

eternal. Eternal is our spirit. That's what lasts forever. But I

was thinking of it too, like this is like, No no thing, no

suffering, no one way of being right? Because we are etern in

the human realm. We are eternally changing, right? We

are eternally changing, whether it's our skin, right, even,

like, look at me, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to be 57 next week,

next week. So to me, hope is really powerful, and it helps us

to overcome the trials and the tribulations and the traumas of

life and holding on, holding on to to the fact that we can

overcome things. Nothing lasts forever. Gandhi had that

beautiful quote where he says basically, like, I'm totally

paraphrasing, but like in times of strife, in times of war, in

times of whatever he says, murderers and tyrants have been

around forever, and it often seems like they're winning, but

in the end they fall, always in the end they fall. Always, love

wins. And he says, Remember this, like remember this,

remember this. So with hope, you know, we can find the inner

strength. Hope for me gives me the inner strength to endure

wicked, hard shit. It helps me to find resiliency in the face

of devastating, devastating circuit circumstances, things

I've, you know, I've lived through in my own life. It's

helped me to navigate uncertainties in life, and it's

also given me the curiosity when I'm hopeful and I'm shifting my

brain out of that fight and flight state, like rather than

getting shut down from that, you know that sympathetic nervous

system response of where everything just goes into, like

learned trauma response, when I stay in that place of

possibility and hopefulness and a more light, a more like

curious, it allows me to stay curious and to stay into, like

the part of my brain that can actually do good problem

solving. It helps me to have the curiosity and the courage to,

like find solutions to things, which is a really big deal, you

know what I mean. And so I could talk about this. I could talk

about this forever, but I want to leave you with a quote from

and I've shared this quote before. Four on the podcast, and

hopefully this is helping you to look at Hope. Hope is a

different way too, that is actually more powerful. It is

actually more action oriented. So remember, it's a feeling. For

me, it's also so I get the five here, right? So to me, hope is a

feeling, a positive emotion. It's a mindset and an outlook

and a thought system that leans towards love. It's a call to

action, and it's a practice. Hope is a practice right, like

the good, the beautiful and the holy, seeking those things out,

finding it. It's also a belief, and our beliefs have the power

to shape right, the stories we tell, what we believe about

ourselves, and if we believe that things are hopeful, we are

way more likely to have more positive outcomes than if we

just sit in the shit. I always say, don't sit in the shitty

diaper, right? But being like this stinks. Like, yeah, get out

of the shitty diaper, right? Like, change your mind. Let's do

something about it. Okay? But we also know this is this. This

little quote is from Guru Singh, and this is for the people who

are always like, Don't get your hopes up too high. Okay, I love

this. So let's say that you have a dream, right? You're dreaming

a dream. There's this thing that you want to do, or want a

particular outcome, or like, whatever, right? And he says,

walk as if. And he's like, dream, your dream, whatever that

dream is. He's like, walk as if. And what that means is, walk as

if it's going to happen. Walk as if, like in your mind, even in

your mind, see it as already done, is already happening. He's

like, walk as if, and fill in the blank whatever your dream

is, he's like dream, your dream, and walk as if that dream is

already happening, is already coming through, right? And I

always say to people at this point, who would I have to be?

This is where you want to get under the under. Who would I

have to be? What's, who's the kind of person that I would have

to be in order for that dream right to come true. Like, what

steps do I need to take? Who? How would I have to think? How

would I have to speak? How would I have to hold myself right? Who

would I have to be? Walk as if that means, embody it as if it

is already true. Okay? And he says this, he goes on to say, he

says, walk as if and dream your dream, dream, your dream, and

walk as if whatever that dream is is already happening, because

we know what we want and we receive our expectations. So

learn to expect the best, and do not follow that old saying,

quote, don't get your hopes up, or don't get your expectations

up. You don't want to be disappointed. He says, If you

don't want to be disappointed, don't be act in a different way.

Walk as if get your expectations way up there, and you be you and

no one else. And then he ends it with, love you. Good job. Thank

you. Good job. Walk as if dream, you dream. And I love that. I

have taken that so many times when people like, Yeah, but what

if? What if it doesn't happen? And it's like, I'm going to be

disappointed? I'm like, Well, you can decide to not be

disappointed. You can decide that this is not a failure, that

it's information, that you learn something new about yourself or

the world or this company or this president or this whatever,

right? It's like, walk as if try to do the thing, envision it,

live as if it's going to happen, and if the thing doesn't happen,

right? Because I always say, like, at some point, I would say

you're going to figure out that there's a lesson in this. For

some for something, there's something to learn or see here,

it's going to be like getting a gift. It's like getting a

blessing. I there, I saw a fantastic bumper sticker one

time, and it said something like, please save me from the

things that I want. I'm going to say that again, please save me.

I would say it like this, please save me from the things that I

think I want. Right? So if the expectation or whatever the

thing is, you got your hopes way up there, you got your hopes sky

high, and then the thing didn't happen. I always hold on to the

possibility that it's because something bigger or better or

different, you know, I remember when I heard Oprah speak. I got

to hear her speak in person and meet her, and it was a magical

evening. It was really remarkable. And I have a

recording of her talking, and one of the things she said is,

she says, You know, I had these thoughts, these ideas are like

what I wanted. And she says, But God, dreams a bigger dream for

me than I could dream for myself. So so often we limit

ourselves. We do not dream big enough. We don't get our hopes

up enough, and we keep ourselves in these small little boxes, and

we think, well, that's just not possible for a person like me.

That's just not possible for X, Y and Z. However you see

yourself, this identity that you've created right beyond

being one of God's kids, we slap all these labels on ourselves,

and a lot of times, we don't allow ourselves to dream big or

to think something is possible. We give up, we become hopeless.

We tell ourselves, oh, my dreams don't matter, or that doesn't

matter, or there's no fixing the world, or we're never going to

be united again, we're always going to be divided. And I just

don't. I can't let myself believe that. And it's not that

I'm pollyannish. I just don't. I just think like no, because I

know what can happen. I know that miracles happen. And again,

I'm not talking like miracles, like walking on water. I'm

talking about people choosing to actually listen to each other,

people being open to seeing a different point of view, people

actually listening to understand. I remain hopeful

that we're not always going to be it's not always going to be

that this country is not going in the direction that I see it

going in. I have to remain hopeful that will, there will be

a time when perhaps, and look, it hasn't always been good. And

this is the whole thing about like, again. Don't get me

started about the whole mega make America great again. I'm

like, great for who wasn't always great for black people.

Wasn't always great for gay people. Wasn't always always

great for, you know, trans people wasn't always great for

indigenous folks. Wasn't always great for women. Wasn't always

great, you know, wasn't always great for a lot of us. How about

we have hope for a new vision, a new United and actually United

States for America, where we take the words of the

Constitution that says all men are created equal under God,

right? What if we actually like live that and believe that? What

a different, different experience we'd all be having.

And then I couldn't talk about hope, whatever you feel about

Barack Obama. I mean, I was gonna say I don't really care.

It's not true. I guess I'm always open to listening to

people, but I'm a fan, okay? And I remember back in 2008

when he came to New Hampshire, and I got to hear him speak

live, and what a powerful, powerful orator he was. And

these are just a couple of quotes, because he ran his whole

campaign. He ran his whole first campaign on hope. I will never

forget it, because I remember feeling so fcking hopeful. I was

so full of hope, this vision, when you when, when I heard him

speak in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

It wasn't there in person for that one, but I heard it. I

think it was like the shot heard around the world, that voice and

how much hope he had and how smart he was. And it was and it

was brilliant. And I just wanted to share this with you. So he

says this, one of the things he said is, hope is not false. You

know, people talk about false hope. He's like, here's one

thing that I can tell you, that hope has never been and that's

false, okay? And he said this at the New Hampshire primary in his

New Hampshire primary speech, January 8, 2008 this is what he

said. He says, When we have faced down impossible odds, when

we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or

that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a

simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people, yes we can,

and that right there, yes we can. That is the language of

hope. That's me talking now, right? We've been we've have

faced impossible odds. We've been told we're not ready, that

we shouldn't even try, that we can't. And generations after

generations after generations of Americans have responded with a

very simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people, and it's

yes we can, and to me, that is hopeful, and I think that we

can. And then his beautiful wife, Michelle, I'm going to

leave you with these two things, she had said this in 2011 she

says, we may not always have a comfortable life, and you will

not always be able to solve all the world's problems all at

once, but don't ever underestimate the impact You can

have, because history has shown us that courage can be

contagious and hope can take on a life of its own. Hope indeed

can take on a life of its own. And I think if we just keep our

hopes up, if we hold on to that glimmer of light in our hearts,

whoo, it can take on a life of its own. And then she also said

this in 2017 she says something that has carried us through

every moment. She said, in this White House and in every moment

of our lives, is the power of hope. The belief that something

better is always possible if you're willing to work for it

and fight for it. And this is the part of me saying we have to

take hope out of this airy fairy kind of just like pie in the sky

idea this Pollyanna ish, like, Oh my goodness. And you get your

hands dirty, you get your ass in gear, you get down to business,

and you fight for it, and you work for it, and you train your

mind to be looking for the good, the beautiful and the holy. You

trained your mind to be hopeful instead of hopeless and

helpless. You reclaim your power back. And for a lot of us right

now, hope is like an act of resistance. Hope is like a way

of like, saying, like, no, like, I'm not giving up. I will fight

for justice. I will speak up on behalf of love. I will be a

living example of the world, right? I'm going to embody it,

right? I'm going to emulate internally, what I hope to see

out there. So it starts with us. It starts with us. And then I'll

leave you with that famous you know, Margaret Atwood, her quote

from a Handmaid's Tale, right? And she says, Don't let the

bastards grind you down. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

So stay hopeful out there. People, stay hopeful out there.

So that's what I have for you today. I hope it's helpful in

some way. I hope you feel reason in your heart to be hopeful. I

hope your mind is starting to align. The assignment is

alignment, that we align with love, because so much of what's

happening in the world right now is fear, and it is designed to

make people feel divided, to feel helpless, to feel hopeless,

and one of the acts of resistance, and that's just the

other thing right to me, hope is a way of kind of just saying,

like, you know, fuck you to the man, you know what I'm saying,

like, You're not going to take my joy from me. You're not going

to take my you're not going to take my belief and our power as

informed citizens to make a difference in the world. I'm

just not going to do it. I'm not giving up. I'm not throwing my

hands up. You know, we were made for these times. If you're on

the planet right now, you were made for this time, and your

being here, there's a reason for it you matter. You're worthy.

You have worth. And it's time that you know those of us who

are aligned with love, that we get serious, that we get serious

about our love, that we get serious about our hope, we get

serious about like, training our mind to be looking for the good,

the beautiful and the holy, and then to do something about it.

Okay, that's what I got. I hope you have a fantastic rest of

your day, evening, whenever you're listening to this, I

appreciate you so much for tuning in, for listening, for

watching, however you're taking this in. And if any of this

feels like, yeah, you know what? I could use a little bit more of

this in my life. Please come join us in the nest. Just go to

Karen kenney.com nest. It's my group, spiritual mentoring

program. It's a beautiful community of like minded people

who are trying to like, you know, make a difference in the

world. And they start with themselves. That's the whole

point. They start with themselves, with their own

stories, with their own beliefs, their own subconscious beliefs.

And how do we show up in the world as like, as I say, as

agents of love. You know what I mean. And if you ever want to

work together, one to one, that is my one to one spiritual

mentoring program, and that is called the quest. And again, you

can find all this stuff on my website at Karen Kenney, k e n,

n, e y.com, thank you for tuning in wherever you go. May you

leave yourself in the animals, the other people, the places you

go and the environment better than how you found it wherever

you go, may you and your energy and your presence and your love

and your hope be a blessing. Bye. You.