All despair is followed by hope.

Despair is useful. Hope is good. Faith is essential.

Imagine your day as you wake up. There are some knowns and some unknowns. You don’t know how everything is going to work out. During your day you will experience a range of emotions that will define the quality of your day. If the mind is left unattended it will resort to its set pathways of the brain. The old beaten path. Thoughts, memories, worries and fears that you carry around during your weekdays.

These thoughts are mostly negative. That is our brain’s built-in defence system. The amygdala. It has been there forever. Its main mission it to protect us. Protect us from known and imaginary danger.

As the day unfolds, you will unavoidably reach a point of despair. This is not intentional but rather expected. That’s the point of when you need to take charge. The brain’s mission is survival, not happiness.

The observation that despair is followed by hope, is quite true. If you’ve been at your lowest, everything else seems hopeful.

The feeling of despair is to be construed, nothing more than a wake up call. It is a sign that we need to grab the steering wheel, otherwise we are doomed to crash and burn. Hope is useful and can sustain us at times of hardships. However, you aren’t going to escape this vicious cycle between despair and hope, if all you do is hope.

Hope is a beggar. Faith is what you need. Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Having faith in something bigger that yourself, resets your expectations and makes you grateful. The fact that we perceive our body as all it is and all it is going to be, is a fallacy. Our soul is limitless.

Our soul is not contained within the limits of our body. Our body is contained within the limitlessness of our soul. I never expected Jim Carey to speak such truths, but he does.

Faith is key, if you are to reach what you are longing for. There is no shortcuts. No do overs. You only have one life and you choose how to direct it and create your masterpiece.

Starting today, take note of your thoughts and feelings for the day. If your day was happy overall, make a smiley face on your calendar. Repeat this for a week and you will have a snapshot of your quality of life. If you don’t like it. Change it.

You are not a tree, you can move. Deep rooted thoughts, fears and worries are to be used constructively. Stop avoiding them. Face them. Dance with them. Relief is inevitable.

Tasks and actions we postpone, because we don’t know where to start or require time for contemplating these, become snowballs. Ask different questions about them. Momentary despair is good. Use that feeling of despair to attack those tasks. Have faith though that there is a solution at the point when despair has overtaken you and push past that familiar ground.

Despair is useful. Hope is good. Faith is essential.