Episode 21

Embracing Hope

"When I’m hopeful I’m focusing only on the possibility of the good.” There are endless positive possibilities around us. In this episode we discuss how hope helps us see what truly is possible and motivates us to work through the hard stuff in pursuit of our dreams.

About the Host:

Jani Roberts is the Owner of Alignment Essentials, a health and wellness company spanning the fitness, self-improvement, and mindfulness spaces. She is the creator of the Warrior® Workout, Moving Meditations™, Inspirational Conversations™ and all of the Alignment Essentials programming content. In addition, Jani is an International best-selling author of the book, Navigating the Clickety-Clack, How to Live a Peace-Filled Life in a Seemingly Toxic World.

Jani has over 40 years of experience in the health and wellness field. She owned and operated a large gym franchise in Florida, as well as a boutique studio for several years where she specialized in health and wellness related services, products, preventative health education, personal training, small group fitness classes, private nutrition and health coaching.

She has literally trained hundreds of thousands of instructors around the world, and she was the featured choreographer and performer on numerous training DVDs. She has presented for dozens of large Health and Wellness brands such Nike, and Adidas. She holds several certifications through ACE, AFAA and NASM.

Jani travels extensively as a speaker and presenter sharing her Alignment Essentials wellness tools and helping people find more joy in their lives and is currently training at the Shamanic Institute of Healing. 

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Transcript
Jani Roberts:

What? Life isn't supposed to suck? Get out of here. Life is supposed to be good for me? I don't think so. Truth? Did you know that you have the power to create your own reality? True? Did you know that you can live the life that you've always desired? Holy? That's right. And that's why we're here. Are you ready? Unless you're on Joy overload, you've come to the right place, it's time to get out of your own way and start creating more of what you want, and less of what you don't end up with the excuses. I'm your host, Jani Roberts, let's do this.

Jani Roberts:

Welcome, everyone good to be here with you or your family? It is on I am. I don't know about you. But I am more hopeful than ever, about all of it. That's right, about what is happening in the world, about what is happening in your life? What about what's happening in my life? All of it. We get to choose? Do we just throw our hands up in the air and say, the world's going to hell? It's a total shit show? Or do we take a different perspective. And I want to be clear here, I truly believe that there are forces that are driving us to look at this from different perspectives. And I think we can fairly say that some people would like us to throw our hands up and give up because that would make things move in a direction that they prefer. So we are constantly being exposed to what is not working. We rarely are shown what is working, we have to go look for that we choose to see what is working, instead of always, always giving our attention to what is not having hope is all about a feeling of expectation. And for a desire for things to go a certain way. It's a feeling of trust. It's a feeling of knowing that ultimately everything is going to be okay. Do I sit back and do nothing and expect things to go a certain way? Well, that's a choice. But we're here to participate. We're here to engage. We're here to learn, we're here to grow, or we're here to explore. Not, I mean, don't get me wrong, I like to chill, just like everybody else, a lot. But I also love the feeling of being stimulated by hope. And the excitement that comes with that this is possible. I'm certainly hoping in a way that I'm knowing that this is going to happen. In my experience, I'm going to experience this powerful desire that I have hope is present. It is an up very open and optimistic state of mind. And it is again based on our expectations, which come from our belief systems, and our perspective. And that's what the work that we do here at EY is all about getting to know what it is that you know that we're thinking most of the time that we're feeling that we're believing, and therefore what we're experiencing. So I expect fill in the blank. I feel as though there's really two types of hope. And this is explored a lot. Psychologically, there's chosen hope, right? This is Hope that helps us to live with a situation that we might feel is a problem we need to solve. And it's creating an uncertainty and kind of taking us into the unknown. And when we're choosing hope, for the smallest desire, this is essential to controlling whether or not you know, the negative that comes in that that kind of reverting back to what we always do diving down that rabbit hole. You know, going back to that same old story. transcended hope, is hoped it's not tied to an outcome. But it's more general. And I'm a huge believer in going more general when we're trying to shift because when we start getting specific, we tend to get stuck. And that's a pattern. Right? So we want to try to relax, chill out about a little that letting go look at the future. That's hope.

Jani Roberts:

We talked about hoping built on faith. Well, what is faith? Faith is a belief system. And we talk about this all the time, guys, we talk about, what are those thoughts that you're thinking? Because the thoughts that you're thinking, create your beliefs, your beliefs, create your patterns, in your patterns, create your reality. These are all connected. So so hope is very much connected to waiting to the pause. And where does it come from? When you have that twinge of hope. And maybe there are times when you're like, don't do it, don't hope it's not going to work out. It never works out for you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not, I'm not discounting how you feel. I'm just saying, you know, that story. Where's that hope coming from? I believe it comes from source, I believe it's a knock on the door of your heart, saying hello. There's more to you, there's more to your experience, there's just more. More, it creates an attitude of possibilities. When I expect I can, it's like I'm expecting good or bad, good things to happen or bad things to happen. But when I'm hopeful and focusing more, if not only on the good, and the possibility of the good. Oh, yeah. When I'm in that hopeful state, I don't feel so helpless. I can feel the possibility and stimulate joy. I can let the stress go release the nonsense. And quite quickly feel an improvement in my energy, like the quality of my state of mind improves immediately. So hopeful is how we want to live. We want to cultivate that. This will enhance our perception and our perspective. It will enable us to solve what we know here today. We don't talk too much about problems. It's more like situations, okay. We don't really have problems, we have a situation and we're going to solve this situation. So our solving ability is enhanced. We get a little maybe competitive in a fun way. Alright, let's do this. This stimulates self esteem. It releases any any of those thoughts that don't serve us. It's all about being hopeful. So what do you think? I mean, what do you choose? We're really trying to dig deep here because you can just it's so easy to throw your hands in the air and just be like, forget it. Just forget it. I'm too pissed off to be hopeful. I'm too full of fear to be hopeful. I feel too guilty to be hopeful. Don't feel capable or worthy of being hopeful. You think I should be more optimistic just come closer so I can smack you in the face. This is about optimism. This is about the crap that's going on in my life. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere because when we feel like our we have no control of our life, we're in a corner. We're going to fit we're going to be defensive. We are backed into a corner no matter what seems to be taken away from us. We still control our thoughts nobody else does. That's one thing that we can't blame anybody at all got my mother taught me that that was true. Well that was then in this is now and you know it isn't. So what do you choose to think? What do you want to believe? Do you want to break that? pattern, you want to just pass it on to your kids, and they can also continue on, you know, no pain, no gain.

Jani Roberts:

It's a choice. We have to look at this. There is hope, no matter what is happening, there is hope. And there are people teaching us about this hope, everywhere we go. They're all around us. When you are more hopeful, you will have more energy. When we lose hope we don't, we're not inspired to do anything. If we have a couch, we can't even get off the couch. itself. But we have to decide, what do we want to do? Do we want to keep going? It's, it's like that question. You know, you've probably been asked, What do you where do you see yourself in five years? Yeah, you know, and most of us switch gears to like our work our job? Well, I mean, where do you see yourself in five years, I personally don't like to dabble too much in the future, I'd rather say like five seconds. Because you can stay in a hopeless state as long as you choose to. And you guys know me, I am not saying that your hopeless state is not justified. I am not saying that horrific things have not happened to place you in this hopeless state. What I am saying is you still have a choice. And if you need more time, if you're still grieving, whatever it is that you're grieving, and this has left you feeling hopeless, then take your time, we all it takes us it takes we all need to take that time. But at some point, you will fatigue from the hopelessness. And that heart of yours will crack open. And you will feel a beam of hope. The possibility of hope. Entering your life again, we've all experienced this, we've been through very difficult times. And we've come out on the other side and finding that hope, again, was part of that process. And if you are in one of those situations where like Yeah, before, but not this time, this one's I can't I can't come back from this, then this is when you ask for help. Nobody said we have to figure this all out alone. Yeah, sure. Some people want you to think it's a weakness. You know, if you ask for help, when we truly know that it is the greatest sign of braver, we've talked about this. So controlling things has, you know, many sides to it. Listening is so key hope should relate to your innate born, God given ability to solve whatever situation you are in. It can be solved. Will things go back to the way they were? Probably not. And in many situations, absolutely not. Because that's impossible. However, how you feel about it, and how you choose to think about it can most certainly change. And this idea that we must compare ourselves to one another? What I don't know where that all started. But for me, it started early. I don't remember who brought it up, if anybody actually did but it was there. And it was exhausting. It was exhausting. When I was a child, when I was a teenager Judo was a young woman is an older woman. It's always been exhausting until I learned that there was no truth in that. Zero. It was an illusion. It was something someone else believed. It was a belief I picked up and I carried with me and once I chose to understand, to take the time to do the work and know that that simply wasn't true for me that I didn't even believe it. Even though for a long time, I was certain that I did. When I really did the work and I was like I don't think that about myself. I don't think that at all. Where did that come from? Where did I pick that up from? I became hopeful again, hopefully that I can see myself differently. Not the way other people see me. What really matters is how I see myself. That's what really matters. And then the rest of it's a no brainer. Because once we get into self love, it's a party. So the outcome is peace. The outcome is I mentioned earlier have be more self esteem, being able to stand in your power, not talking about ego.

Jani Roberts:

Talking about self esteem that provides a higher hope. That keeps me open to that. It's very quiet. self respect is a quiet

Unknown:

internal dignity. That brings peace. So what do you think? Are you hopeful? Could you try? What would be in it for you?

Jani Roberts:

What would you have to lose? If you tried to be a bit more helpful? hopeful? I don't know, you tell me. Do you encourage others to be more hopeful? Or is your hopelessness seeping over into your relationships? I don't know. I'm not judging it. I'm just asking, just planting a few seeds. I believe that hope is the belief that things will work. Mostly when it seems otherwise. I mean, it's easy to have hope when things are rolling along him. Right in the flow. But when it gets bumpy, the hope will help you stay calm, peaceful, it already knows you're gonna get through it. It remembers when you already got through so many other situations, trust, just trust. So hope is a positive, potent spiritual practice. And it has the ability to help us each of us shift through the bumpy times. So many times, I've heard the same glimmer of hope. There's just a glimmer of hope. And whenever you feel that, think about movies that you watch, this happens all the time in movies, all of a sudden, there's a little hope. And then they follow the hope, that light that thought that possibility. And the outcome is better. We can learn hope. This can be learned practice, patients will really help you to experience more hope. I want to be patient in this bumpy ride, or during this bumpy time. Because I know there's something here for me to learn, that's going to be extraordinarily valuable to me on my journey. I don't want to ignore this bumpy time, I want to embrace it. Some sometimes it's easier said than done. But I'm knowing this because I've done this before. I've experienced something similar, maybe not the same story at all, but the same feeling. And this is where courage came in. Got to do this. I've got to know, this is where persistence comes in. I'm going to see this through I'm hopeful. So if you have a tendency to dwell on the past, to live in thoughts about the past, consider hope. Hope that there's a completely different experience waiting for you. When I was just watching a movie, and I wish I could remember what it was but that expression, hope for the best but expect the worst. I was like, Oh, how about hope for the best. And leave the expectations on the table? Still don't have any. Why set yourself up for any type of disappointment when you know, through this work that there is really no disappointment. There's just uncomfortable space that we need to navigate through to expand from Think about what you've been through in your life, the uncomfortable times. Where did that bring you to? Did you gain clarity around what you didn't want more of in your life? Probably. I do know this when we don't have any hope. And people come into our space and they're they're not in a good place. We get sucked right in. They start taking us down their rabbit hole and we're right there with them. I know I can't believe it. Can you believe that? That's so unfair. And again, I really am not judging and I'm not saying that there isn't validity to the fact that you feel like something is unfair. My point is that when you're doing this work, be mindful All of who you're surrounding yourself with. Because in that moment, when someone is struggling, there's an opportunity for you to actually gift a seed of hope. Yeah, don't make it all about you. Right? This has been a big deal for me, like, you know what, why focus on me, this person's awfully obviously struggling, I don't need to focus on the fact that I don't really want to join that party. But I don't want to be rude and walk away from it completely. What I could do is say, You know what, I know this is really challenging, but I am really hopeful for you, because I've seen what you can do.

Jani Roberts:

I've seen what you've overcome. I've seen what you've moved through, and you got this. So keep that in mind. Nothing but love for you peace out. And I'm really saying that with love, I wouldn't hang out in that conversation. I plant that seed, and I just let it cultivate, I let them think about that. And if they're not ready to hear it, then that's okay. I can't control that. That's not my work. That's their work. But I had an opportunity to plant a seed of hopelessness, or to plant a seed of hope. What am I choosing? Take the time. Be the one, believe me, you will feel much better by helping by planting that seed of hope than you will by going down that rabbit hole with someone thinking that oh, I'll just you know, go along with it because it'll make them feel better and I feel so bad for them and will will will Oh, don't take their power away. Don't throw your power away. Stand in hope. Knowing there is always some for you. And for each of us. I am hopeful that this was helpful to you. I am hopeful that you will share this idea with others. Until next time warriors. You are always on my heart. Sending love sending hope. Talk to you next time. Peace.