Step 1 – Befriending your feelings:  Allow yourself to go into feeling hopeless and befriend it, embrace it, and give it a hug like it is an old friend you know well and feel completely comfortable with, someone you love spending time with. Talk to your feelings of hopelessness, either internally or out loud – you can even write them down if you would like, and say to yourself, 

“There you are hopelessness, it is okay you are here, I feel you. It makes a lot of sense that I feel this way.  It is ok, I get it, and I will love myself through this with deep kindness, warmth, and compassion.”

Then sit with your feelings of hopelessness in true compassion, understanding, and love. If feeling hopeless needs more room because there is too much pressure, give it permission to extend within you, outside of you, and as far as it needs to go in order to release the intensity. Stay with this first step till you start to feel calm and comfortable. As a reminder make sure you only show kindness and compassion for your feelings of hopelessness and yourself. It is important to embrace all of you. Stay with this step until you truly have embraced yourself through it. When you feel ready, go to step 2

Step 2 – Release: This step is simple. All you have to do is repeat one sentence over and over again till you actually feel the hopelessness feelings leave your body. This is what you say internally or out loud as many times you need to:

“I clear and release my feelings of hopelessness about (name what you are specifically hopeless about).” or a more specific sentence: “I clear and release my feelings of hopelessness about (name the specific thing you are hopeless about) from within me and around me.”

When you spend some time on releasing the feeling of hopelessness, and you feel it is actually leaving, you can go to step 3.

Step 3 – Choosing: In this step you explore possibilities, positive choices, changing your feelings of hopelessness with baby steps to positive plan of action, or if all else fails find a positive distraction. It is important for this step to be positive to train your brain to transform negative feelings and thoughts into positive ways of thinking, feelings, and solutions. If you want guidance on how to figure out a different way of approaching your feelings of Hopelessness, please click here for the Brain/Gut exercise. After you make your choice make sure you follow up  – Namaste!