When new clients get in touch with me I always offer them a free sample session, to see if I can help them and if we’re a good match. For the ones that feel a good fit, there’s this really special moment in the session when the emotions change and the energy shifts. And what causes that shift? Quite simply: hope.
Clients gain an injection of hope that their life, or the relationship, can change. It can improve. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s my most favourite moment because when you have hope, magic can happen.
I don’t really do much coaching in the sample session as it’s more fact finding and seeing if I can help the clients. And yet, because they leave with hope, I often notice a change by the next time I see them. The couple might have softened towards one another or started acting slightly differently. An individual client may have taken small steps to get back on track or be viewing their situation in a different way.
I googled a definition. “Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.”
If you don’t have hope and you don’t believe things can get better, you stop trying. You just give up and assume this is it. And when you do that, often nothing can change.
What causes that hope to ignite? With couples it’s partly because I help them to recognise their strengths and what’s going right in their relationship. It’s all too easy to be fixated on what isn’t working, what our partner is doing ‘wrong’, how fed up we are etc. With individuals it’s similar but often looks at their own strengths and what’s possible, gently questioning with them how the status quo can be changed. In both cases hope also comes from hearing that what they’re going through isn’t unique, others have overcome it, and it’s normal for life, or our closest relationships, to sometimes feel really hard. A reminder that real Humans don’t have lives that we see in the media or on Facebook.
I was already pondering the importance of hope over the last couple of weeks when my Orchids bloomed. I have a history with Orchids of them turning into sticks and never recovering. But having invested in 4 Orchids at the start of the year, and taking advice from friends on their care, mine were glorious all year. Right up until the heatwave struck in July and they all lost their flowers, over a couple of weeks, and turned into sticks. Usually then I would have given up, assuming they were done for. But this time I had hope. I knew that if I kept caring for them they could recover. So I kept watering (sparingly), I chatted to them, I encouraged them and ta da, my first one has re-bloomed and I am delighted. The others are also budding and well on their way.
And the subject of hope then popped up in another way when I was watching the Stand Up to Cancer program. The two ladies who run the Big C podcast, along with Rachael Bland before she sadly died, were being interviewed. They said ‘never take hope from someone with cancer’. Again the message was you need hope to keep believing you can get better.
I wonder if there’s an aspect of your life that you’ve given up on, assuming it can’t improve? And how would it be to ignite some hope and wonder what’s possible? Please like / comment / share. Sue x