Why Hope is So Important Today
Your expectations determine your future.
These days, it’s easy to get cynical. Young people surveyed don’t have a very hopeful view of the future. They expect that they will not live as well as their parents, that Social Security and Medicare will disappear. They believe the environment is degrading, that natural resources like clean air and water will become scarce. They see our culture becoming morally rotten, lying and cheating becoming normal behavior, even in our leaders. There are huge disparities of wealth and privilege between a small group of the very rich and the masses with very little. It’s no surprise when we read that depression and suicide are increasing at alarming rates in our population. It’s a big problem. But there is a healthy response to it.
I am a licensed psychotherapist who teaches people how to solve difficult problems and achieve successes that have been eluding them. I myself struggled with some discouraging and seemingly unsolvable problems until I learned some important lessons about our mind’s powers and applied some simple principles to change not only my spirits but the realities in my life.
If you’ve read books dealing with self-improvement, success and enhancing personal performance, you’ve no doubt heard that you must imagine or visualize your goals attained, the success you desire. Many believe in a “Law of Attraction” where negative thoughts bring you negative experience and positive thoughts bring you positive experiences, that the Universe delivers what you think about. When I first read about these principles and techniques, I thought it sounded like a lot of nonsense. I believed in science. I like to see proof when a hypothesis is proposed. I want to see it to believe it. I don’t want hocus-pocus. There was little in the way of proof to support those assertions.
I didn’t believe in them, so I didn’t practice the techniques they talked about, like creative visualization, written goal setting and using a vision board. I also didn’t believe in prayer. I dismissed it all. It sounded foolish, things that could not possibly make a difference. So why do them?
But my training in neuroscience led me to an experiment where I saw, in real time, in the physical world, how my thoughts instantly and unconsciously work to make real what I think. It was like magic, and it changed my life.
I conduct this experiment, a demonstration of the effect your thoughts have on your objective reality, with every client I train. They are never the same.
After witnessing this phenomenon firsthand, I never again imagined that I was destined to be fat. (I had been a hopelessly obese yo-yo-dieter for 25 years). I never again allowed myself to think I’d never get a break, never get ahead (for years, without wealth or a college degree, I was stuck, like a rat on a treadmill, getting nowhere.) I stopped thinking those thoughts, stopped saying those things, because I realized that the minute I did, I was putting the power of the Universe, the power of the most complex computer in existence, the human brain, to work 24/7 to make me a big fat failure. And that’s what it had done.
After seeing that phenomenon firsthand with that experiment, I started praying, started daydreaming about what I really wanted to have happen, no matter how bleak things looked. I made lists of my dreams and goals. I posted vision boards with pictures of how I wanted to be, what I wanted to happen in my life. I started to believe in the possibility of successes that had been out of reach. I knew that when I did, a power greater than my will went to work on them. Nothing happened overnight, but over time, everything changed.
In 1983, I decided I could become thin. After all, if I could get myself to eat the right way somehow, I’d become thinner, just like everyone who eats right. I knew the nutrition science that would result in perfect weight control, but up until then, I just could not apply it. I didn’t have the will power. So, I started using those methods that would put that greater power to work on it. I put up a picture of a fit body with my face on it (I had been an overweight diet failure for 25 years and I was over 300 pounds at the time). I put up pictures of sailplaning, horseback riding and canoeing, things I’d love to do, but had not even dared to imagine at 330 pounds, when I had no belief in the possibility.
In 1984 and ’85 I discovered a way to lose weight permanently and lost 140 pounds in 18 months. I’ve maintained my ideal weight, 180 pounds, since, 35 years and counting.
In 1985, at the age of 38, with no college degree, working full time and living paycheck to paycheck, I decided to dream of becoming a licensed psychotherapist. Crazy, yes? I put a mock-up of a medical license with my name on it on my vision board.
Like I said, the miracles did not happen overnight, but things changed. In 1990, at 40 years old, I took the walk with all the graduating kids at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and picked up my Bachelor of Science degree. In 1998, I was handed my Master of Arts, Counselor Education, at the University of South Florida. In 2004, I had finished my internships, passed the boards, and the Florida Department of Health listed me as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and I opened my practice.
In 2006, I started dreaming of having a book that would teach others what I had learned to solve my weight problem. I made a mock-up of a book jacket and started daydreaming about having book signings. I was blissfully ignorant about getting a book produced and published, but in 2009, my book was on the market and I had book signings at Barnes & Nobel and Books-a-Million. It’s been doing well, and I love getting the feedback from people it has helped.
Everything changed when I started believing in the possibility of my hopes becoming actualized and started practicing, rather than just hearing about, the mind control techniques like visualization, written goals, and vision boards. I also started praying and taking a few minutes a day to meditate on my dreams.
The way our mind operates, it works 24/7 to make real what you imagine, what you expect. Your beliefs are the things your mind unconsciously pictures and expects, even when you sleep. When you hope and pray and open your mind to the possibility that those dreams can occur, you are giving your mind, the Universe, the directions to make it so.
Unfortunately, if you are cynical and believe your world and your life is going down the tubes, you are giving that supercomputer the directions to destroy everything. It will work 24/7 to make real what you expect.
The most important thing I can give to my clients is the knowledge that a power greater than your will, greater than you, will go to work instantly to make real what you imagine and what you expect. If it is cynicism you practice, expecting everything to go to hell in a hand basket, that’s what it will work to make happen. When you hope, you automatically imagine the outcomes you need and your supercomputer brain/mind, the Universe within and without, instantly goes to work, 24/7, to make real what you hope for.
My experiment gave me the ability to believe in that power within me. Before that, I could not believe. In that moment I changed the way I thought. The minute you hope and imagine the best, that power goes to work on the outcome. It may take some time for it to materialize, but it starts materializing it the minute you start hoping. If you are cynical and instead dread and imagine the worst, that’s what it will be working to bring about. That’s why hope is so important. Everything depends on it.
We can solve our problems. With the science and technology that exist today, we have the capability to meet all the challenges that we face today. We have medical science and technology like never before to survive diseases that don’t even exist yet. Throughout our history we’ve survived terrible diseases, though suffering badly, even before we had the science. We are much better off now.
We can create all the renewable energy we need if we only decide to get to work on it. We can stop polluting and degrading the environment and killing the planet, if we want to. With our technology like computerization and robotics, we can manufacture everything we need to live in luxury on a fraction of the labor it took to simply survive a few generations ago. We already have the capability to feed all the people on earth. We have the knowledge of how to control our population growth so that we do not overburden the resources of the earth. All of those things are possible. We know that. We have only to figure out what must be done to actualize it. And we all have access to the world’s greatest supercomputer in our heads, if we only use what’s known about how to put it to work on our goals.
Today, we are faced with threats and conditions as dangerous as any that mankind has ever faced. It’s easy to be cynical and negative, to let the bad guys win. You can expect and imagine the worst, and you’ll feel rotten immediately. The power within you will get to work on it. Or, you can hope and pray. You’ll feel better immediately if you can stop and imagine what good can come. And when you do, something bigger than your fears will start working to create what you hope and pray for. I know. I’ve seen it.
Hope. Hope and pray. What have you got to lose?
William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, the author of “The Anderson Method of Permanent Weight Loss” (paperback and Kindle at Amazon, audiobook at Audible). He was obese until his early thirties when he found the solution. He lost 140 pounds, has kept it off for 35 years, and has taught thousands to successfully manage their weight.
