Strengthen Your Hope Muscle, is the name of today’s episode. What is hope anyway? What does that word mean to you? Hope can be defined as a feeling, state of mind or belief that something good will happen. Whether it's in the future or right now, hope has many benefits for your mental health. On this episode, I'll explore some of these benefits and then talk about some specific ways you can train your brain to operate with hope!Hope is a powerful emotion; it’s a feeling that can inspire and motivate you to get up, keep going and not give up. Hope is what keeps us alive when we’re fighting a battle that may seem senseless. But where does hope come from? Is it something we create for ourselves or is it something that exists in the world independent of us? Hope can have different meanings depending on who you are. Hope can definitely affect your mental health. Listen & Subscribe on: iTunes / Stitcher / Podbean / Overcast / Spotify There’s a phrase you might have heard, especially if you’re in business or you’re an entrepreneur. It’s Hope marketing is when you see what others are doing in your marketplace or in another marketplace and you try and repeat it. You try to take what you see others applying successfully and copy it with the hope that it will work for you.This is an example of where the word hope has a negative connotation. Hope marketing is a concept that’s frowned upon and I think it has given the word hope a bad rap.So what does hope mean in your world? This is a question that we all should ask ourselves.Here are some of my favorite quotes about hope: “The soul cannot live without hope” (Thomas Aquinas), and “Hope sees best in the dark” (Robert Burns). Although the word hope isn’t in the quote, I think this quote by Thich Nhat Hahn is relevant: “In order for one to have true peace of mind, he or she must be able to let go of everything—to give up any attachment whatsoever.” Jon Kabat Zinn says that “hope is not an emotion but rather something more active and engaged-a way of being present in life.” Science has shown that hope helps with mental health, and there are statistics on how hopeful people live longer lives than those without any hope at all!In a 2017 study, psychologists found out that hope protects the brain against anxiety and expanded our understanding of how that may be happening. Because hope is considered a stable personality trait, they reasoned, they might be able to figure out where in the brain they can find hope functioning. They were able not only to pinpoint where hope might potentially reside within the brain, but realized how hope may be shielding the brain from the effects of anxiety. The scientists defined hope as an important topic in positive psychology, referring to an individual's “goal-oriented expectations” that include both agency (desire to achieve goals) and pathways (finding ways to achieve them).The researchers used fMRI imaging on 231 high school students [from Chengdu, China] who were tested according to questionnaires using the DHS hope scale and the Stait-Trait Anxiety test. So sit with the word hope for a minute. What does hope mean to you? Is it a feeling, a state of mind, or something else? How do you know when someone is hopeful? The word “hope” comes from the old English word for ‘to desire' which means that hope could be seen as a longing for what might happen in the future. It's important to find out how people define this abstract idea because how you define the word is crucial as to whether it carries a strong, positive connotation, or a more negative connotation.I think back to when I read the book, Man’s Search For Meaning, by Victor Frankl. He was a prisoner in a Natzi concentration camp during WW II, and he decided to remain hopeful, even though most people would agree, he was not in a very hopeful place. A lot of people around him had given up hope. He didn’t. He stuck to his theory that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud maintained,