“Without faith, hope and trust, there is no promise for the future, and without a promising future, life has no direction, no meaning and no justification.”  Adlin Sinclair

Hope, faith and trust can bring up many different meanings for different people.  There could be a religious, spiritual or institutional significance, positive or negative.  There could be a family, friend or relationship association, again positive or negative.

I would like to focus on our personal connection and use of hope, faith and trust as it can support a more healthy family experience and a positive view of life’s challenges.

Hope

To have hope is to see more for you in the future.  Hope allows you to dream, then apply deadlines to these dreams and create goals.  Hope allows you the belief in yourself, others and the world that more can be out there for you and your children.

Having hope is the feeling, having the dream is the vision and having the goal is the action. 

We all hope for a better future, this is, I believe, an automatic response created in ourselves to encourage us to use our strengths to overcome challenges and learn from them, so we may reach our full potential.  The feeling of hope encourages you to look at the bright side, and while you are doing this you can draw this into your experience.  Life is hope, life goes on, everything grows and changes and hope allows you the mindset to accept this and believe in the future.

Faith

Faith in one self is a very important thing and/or action you can give yourself.  Having faith or believing in yourself inspires you into action.  You develop an ‘I can do it” attitude.  You begin to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and when you need to, can easily forgive yourself for errors in judgement and move on.

True faith encourages honour and integrity, loyalty and devotedness.  To have this sense of responsibility within you, allowing these traits to project on your actions and your experience of the world then you can only have a more fulfilling existence and expand the experience of others in your life. 

Having faith in your children’s abilities and processes, having faith that they are exactly where they need to be, whilst always encouraging their ‘I can do it” attitude will truly bring about affirmative experiences in their world too.

Trust

When you think of trust, you usually relate it to who you trust, or put your trust in something or someone.  Very rarely do I hear people saying they trust themselves or trust that they will make the right choices and/or decisions.

This surprises me as without trust in yourself and your own judgement, how can you put others in a position to see things through for you, the way you want them to turn out.  Also, if you have little or no trust in your own decision making process, how do you know you have appropriately allocated the situation to someone who is best suited to be trusted?  

I often hear parents say that their children have abused their trust, or that they trusted them when they felt they shouldn’t have.  That is, in my opinion, a big weight to put on a child.  If you trust yourself first you can then know what you can trust in from your child and start to build a trusting relationship based on wins, not let downs.

Trust takes a firm belief in your current abilities.  Trust also lets you take that ‘leap of faith’ into unknown circumstances, knowing that your actions and efforts are enough to see you through.  To trust yourself is to tell yourself that you are good enough, you know yourself well enough and you are trustworthy.

The most empowering thing I have learnt in my life so far is that the only thing I can really control is me and my actions and re-actions.  With hope, faith and trust in myself, I know that even if I make a wrong decision it will lead to a right decision next time.  I have also found that by having hope, faith and trust in me, I am more committed to my personal choice in beliefs, philosophies and the way I choose to live my life.  The flow on effect is that I genuinely accept and respect others beliefs and choices, as they do mine. 

I feel inspired every day to do my best, find reason in situations so that I may improve and expand.   This all comes about due to feeling resourceful because I trust me, I have faith and most importantly I have hope.

Exercises:

To do these exercises you may find it helpful to have a notepad or journal at hand to jot down your thoughts and plans.  When we write things down it has been found that it allows us to clearly understand our thought processes and where we can make improvements. 

• Take time now to re-read the above information.  Use your notepad or journal to write down how you feel about allowing yourself to have hope, faith and trust in you.  What does this mean to you?  Do you feel overwhelmed, or inspired? 
• If you could do one small thing or action in each category to hope more, have more faith in your abilities and/or trust yourself and your actions more, what would that one thing be?  How would this change the way you and/or your life experience is now?
• Think about some recent events when you felt it was difficult to feel hopeful, have faith in yourself and trust yourself.  Write about these in detail.  Now imagine you found it easy to feel hope in this situation, see your dream and create and accomplish goals.  Imagine you have faith in yourself and your abilities, in this situation.  Imagine you trust your decision making process and you feel trustworthy.  How could the situation of turned out?  What are you doing differently?  How are people reacting around you?  How are you behaving?  You may like to do this exercise for different situations or even on future events.  It will allow you to plan to make it easier for yourself from now on and you can feel more in control and confident.

In closing, we all feel hopeless, lack faith and untrustworthy or let down at times, but by building on these skills in yourself, knowing you are definitely worth it, believing you can do it, you give yourself permission to be happier and  more in control.  Then when you do make choices on trusting others, having faith and looking for hope in the world, you will not only see it clearly but choose the right one, thing or person for you.

Author Profile:  Kirsty O’Callaghan is the Owner and Founder of Unity-Qld.  Kirsty specialises in helpful programmes and toolboxes for Parents. The techniques and strategies Kirsty uses focus on a holistic and individual basis; knowing we are all capable of greatness, with the right knowledge, tools and support.

Website:  www.unity-qld.com.au.

Phone: +61 7 3482 4295 Mobile: 0402 889 648