After hope, the tough part: making change happen

By Diane Dennis

Boom!, Dec 26, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Diane Dennis is a life transition coach appearing monthly on television’s “AM Northwest.” Contact her at 503-972-3441, Dianeden@centurytel.net or www.coachdianed.com.

As we roll into 2009, many of us are hopeful that this year will be better than the last. I’ve been hearing a lot about hope lately. My friend Marty, a Tualatin spa owner, hopes that the economy will turn around so her customers will return. My boomer friends hope their stock accounts will increase in value before retirement.

Everyone I know collectively hopes that wars will end, our economy will become healthy, and corruption on Wall Street will stop. But how much will mere hoping make a difference?

I learned a great deal about hope from women who use it for survival. Attending a women’s cancer support group for a book project led me to discover that hope is more than wishful thinking, especially when we pin our wishes and dreams on it. Hope is the life-support system for that cancer support group, so they have learned some extraordinary hoping skills. From these brave women I learned that hope alone is not a strategy.

What the women in the cancer support group taught me is that we must do more than hope. Hope without action is more like wishing upon a star. We cannot wish cancer away nor can we single-handedly turn the economy around by hope alone.

There are strategies we can put into place that will make our hopes more tangible, however. I call it intelligent hope. It is similar to the creed: “Change the things you can, accept the things you cannot, and have the wisdom to know the difference.”

The nursing staff at a local hospice facility trained me how to scale the peaks of hope when you are in the biggest climb of your life. I asked what in the world is there to hope for once you have landed at the end of the road on your life’s journey.

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