Moving from Hope to Enthusiasm:

I’ve heard it said that hope is a beggar. Why? Because it keeps your desire in the future rather than in the now. We need hope. For if we lose it, we stop aspiring and give up. Hope catalyzes us toward greater things. If we stay in hope, however, we can hover in stagnation and a learned powerlessness.
 
The question is, what are you hoping for? And is it time to shift to claim it, know it and become it? 
 
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs correlates to some degree to the 7 most commonly referenced energy centers, or chakras, of the body (we have many chakras). Our need for safety, protection, a sense of home, and belonging and more, correlate to the root chakra or first energy center, which correlates to Maslow’s idea of our needs for safety, shelter, and nourishment in order to grow into higher forms of being.
 
However, you don’t encounter safety development only as a child. You can experience it in subtle ways all along the journey when you aspire to a greater life, to growth, to greater versions of yourself. 
 
For example, when you’re intentionally challenging yourself along new lines of development—6 figures to 7, meeting your life partner, elevating the relationship you’re in, quitting your job to travel around the world, divorcing and starting a new life, learning to fly, writing a book, getting healthy-er—you may encounter feelings that challenge your safety until you can lean into it and become your intention. 
 
Your conscious mind knows your safe. You’re looking for the subtle cues or not so subtle cues from your subconscious mind telling you you’re not safe in your next endeavor. This is where hope may seem positive, but may stagnate your elevation. Logic and analysis alone will not dismantle it. 
 
Are you ready and willing to step into a new reality? Whether your intention is a lean body or new business systems, hope can rescue you out of deep places, but its purpose isn’t to take you into your new reality.
 
Enter enthusiasm. How do you move from hope that hangs out in your root energy center at the base of your spine to move that life force up the spine into the enthusiasm that steps you out of erroneous safety fears and into your exciting new reality?
 
When you are practicing in your mind each day who you are as the published author, the pilot, the partner and lover, the multimillionaire, the adventurer, the happy individual, the athlete, the retiree, you are becoming that person. (Remember, the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined). 
 
When you are practicing in your mind and energetically eliminating who you are not, you are teaching every cell of your entire being that it’s not only safe to go there, it’s exciting, that it IS your reality.
 
Feel for a few seconds what hope feels like. When you have the feeling in your body, then feel what enthusiasm feels like for a few seconds. Can you feel the difference? Enthusiasm says, I’ve stepped into my new reality and I’m willing and ready to shift, shed, move, embrace, do it what it takes to live there. Hope says, I’m waiting for it, wondering when and if it will show up.
 
Imagine then, that instead of questioning your emotional safety to be vulnerable, to trust yourself with a new relationship, that you felt completely enthusiastic–which literally means en-theos, in spirit. What if you got excited imagining yourself with your true partner or where you would like to go with the relationship you’re in and felt enthusiastic about trusting someone with the deepest aspects of yourself?
 
What if you were buzzing with enthusiasm to let go of old ideas of financial security and quit your job to find work as you adventure around the world? What if enthusiasm was your primary feeling on your way to multiple 7 figures in your job or business? What if enthusiasm is what you feel as you sit in the pilot seat?
 
Hope is like the rope we grab to pull ourselves up in a rescue. Once you are safe, hope has done its job. You wouldn’t climb back onto the rope to live your life. You’re safe on deck. It’s time to grab the wheel to go beyond hope and perceived danger to claim your life with enthusiasm. 

Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley