How to Find Hope in a Hopeless Situation - By Tony Ogunlowo

New Year, new wahala!

Everywhere you look its doom and gloom: politicians come and go promising Heaven and Earth but fail to deliver leaving the average person on the street still hungry as ever, despondent and doubtful about things will ever get better in their lifetimes.

We are all, currently, living in difficult times: the cost of living has skyrocketed and there is uncertainty everywhere you look. The Hope we all believed in is fast dwindling into nothingness.

So, we carry on, toiling on, hoping for a miracle, hoping for a change event though, deep down, we know it may never come.

“As long as belle full and we have a place to call home…”, said a wise old man I once bumped into,”…everything else go sort out”. And in sorting things out he wasn’t referring to the ‘dream merchant’ pastors, all-promising Babalawo or sugar tongued politicians rescuing us but the indomitable spirit of the Human Being. When properly programmed any human being can survive whatever Life throws at them, survive and live.

Hope is the keyword here. And while Hope, itself, is not a strategy it can be a powerful ally in the absence of anything else – it gives you something to go on with. Without a doubt you need to have Faith first developing Hope as you go along, one supports the other.(-N.B – I tend to use the words ‘Faith’ and ‘Hope’ interchangeably, perhaps I’m wrong).Hope, itself, is the same dream your Pastor sells to you, as Faith, under the guise of religion.

But the question of how long you can keep your hopes up before you lose it remains. And this brings us to positivity.

It is difficult trying to remain hopeful when there seems to be no sign of change ever occurring so now comes the time to empower yourself with positivity: you’ll get nowhere in Life by being negative. Even if you are surrounded by negativity you must be able to see that pin-prick of light at the end of the tunnel. If you can’t its game over: hope, or faith, or vice versa, and maintaining a positive attitude go hand in hand. This is where a lot of people get it wrong. Faced with their current predicament, where things are not going according to plan, it’ll be difficult for them to maintain hope, faith and a positive mental attitude. Stay away from negativity as much as possible and there’s a lot of it in the world today especially on SM.

And this is where patience enters the game. We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day so why do we expect all our problems to miraculously disappear overnight? Logically speaking that’s an impossibility: only an act of God can do such. I’m not going to get all Biblical here and start quoting texts from the sacred book primarily because I’m rubbish at that kind of stuff! But I will say that tough times don’t last but tough people do! (- which is the title of an 80s bestselling book) and no condition is permanent. But I will say be grateful for what you’ve got and use that as a springboard.

Next, we need to address our expectations: set them too high and you’ll crash, set them too low and you’ll sink faster than the Titanic. It’s about finding the right point to achieve balance and then use that as a stepping stone to climb higher. Set realistically archivable targets and not outlandish ones. We already have the basics: at least a meal a day (- hopefully!), a roof above our heads (- hopefully!) and fresh air to breathe (- obviously!). These are the basics required to keep Body and Soul working.

So once the Body and Soul is taken care of riding out the storm is feasible, Hope is still in the background, not forgotten, and so also will be the dream. For now, you’ve taken a sabbatical from it all. Circumstances have deemed that that path can’t be followed for now but can be in the future, not abandoned. You need to keep on goi…

#TonyOgunlowo