Hope

Viktor Frankl is quoted as saying; “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  I would argue that in that space lives our hope.  Our hope for redemption, for life for the future.

Dr. Frankl’s point was that even though we don’t necessarily control our circumstance, we do control how we react to that circumstance.  His scientific views were uniquely formed in the arbitrary brutality of the Nazi concentration camps.  Where he had to come to grips with not being in control of anything but was able to transcend by owning his own responses.

We have a choice every day when we open our eyes what we are going to do with that day.  We have a choice to make it the best day or let is slide by.  This is the ultimate version of hope.  If you wake up, you get to choose.  It’s in your control.  No matter what else is going on.  Regardless of what personal prison you may find yourself in.  You get to choose.

This is not just by our actions.  Actions are important but too often action is coopted by activity.  It is also by making a choice about our emotions.  Action without emotion is often held up as the pinnacle of societal success.  Action in itself is neither good nor bad.  Action is simple movement.  It is energy applied.

Action applied in this context is simply a way of moving away the place you’re in and potentially, potentially, towards a better place.  Force action to become a positive force it needs a vector.  A vector is what encapsulates direction and magnitude.  Action applied without direction or magnitude is chaos. Chaos expends energy without getting anywhere.

Emotion gives us the magnitude and directions we need to make action a positive force.  That emotional state creates the intent that fuels our action.  And the emotions, those are the things that we get to choose.  It is the intent that informs the actions and it is the emotion that informs intent.

Get your intent right and you can focus all your force in the direction you need to travel.

This is what is so important about the fact that you get to choose your response.  What it means is that you get to choose your intent.  There is nothing in circumstance that forces your choice.  This choice of intent gives you the foundation for your actions.  It becomes your purpose and your protection as you move towards something new or better.

Because there will be resistance.  Resistance is a tricky business.  Resistance becomes stronger in relation to the magnitude of the force.  This means the harder you try the stiffer the resistance will become.  This resistance will come from all directions in all forms.  There will be status quo resistance of inertia.  There will be internal resistance of your own imagining.  There will be physical and arbitrary resistance in this chaotic world.

I’ve got some great news for you.  Your intent is immune to resistance.  This intent cannot be dimmed by resistance.  Your intent is the golden core that does not change.  Regardless of success, failure and movement, intent is constant.  Intent is the bell weather to your journey.

You get to choose your intent.  You can build your intent.  This is the first step.

Intent overcomes fear.  If we know and believe in why we are acting, then the fear of acting falls away.  If we are acting true to our intent, there is no chance of real failure.  The action itself aligns with the intent.  The result, the outcome is detached.  The good news is that when we bring positive intent to our actions it raises the probability of an outcome that aligns with that intent.

Intent will begin to drive action.  Intent can make action necessary.  Once intent is known the direction and magnitude of action becomes obvious.  The actions taken will be much more focused and effective because they are aligned by the core of our intent.  If your intent is true, your actions will be true.

This is what people miss when they look around at the situation they are in and frantically ask; “What should I do?” The answer is not what you should do, but how you should think.  What is your intent?  Start with your emotions and build your intent.  The ‘what to do’ will them become obvious and you will have the fuel to do it.

This is why I think there is always hope.  There is no place so dark and broken in the human soul where you are robbed of your ability to choose how to think.  The ‘you’ in you always has the ability to think.  And with that ability to think comes the choice of your emotions and your intent.

Those emotions and that intent drive the actions that create a life.

There is always hope.  There is always the ability to choose your intent.  In doing so you choose your life.