If you were an orange (stay with me) and I took you to work, and put you on the boardroom table, are you still an orange?
Two weeks before the very first lockdown, I had just finished writing my book How To Be Hopeful and handed it over to my publisher. I had spent a year reading, talking, and writing about hope. A week later, our Prime Minister Boris Jonson announced the first lockdown, and the world changed utterly.
Striking the balance between staying informed without toppling into a well of hopelessness was something I explored whilst writing my book. If you notice that the news is getting you down and eroding your hope, rebalance it by seeking out and subscribing to positive newsletters, social media accounts and news outlet- the good news is that there are loads.
I found that one very helpful and practical way of bolstering hope and finding inspiration was identifying “Hope Heroes”- people who, even if they’d faced adversity themselves, acted on their hopes and triumphed, or found a way of using their talents and expertise to encourage hope in others and themselves.
In the midst of all this seemingly endless bad news, with wars, gloomy economic forecasts, and the climate emergency, not to mention the still present global pandemic, how do we save ourselves from falling into a pit of despair?
