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    How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World: The Art of Cultivating Enduring Hope
    How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World: The Art of Cultivating Enduring Hope
    How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World: The Art of Cultivating Enduring Hope
    Ebook253 pages2 hours

    How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World: The Art of Cultivating Enduring Hope

    By Sue Patton Thoele and Donna Ashworth

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    About this ebook

    Your Reminder for Enjoying Life

    Practice these recommendations by Sue Patton Thoele on loving yourself first to live your best life.

    Don’t let self-doubt keep you down. Recovering from negativity can require a lot of effort. Whether from sudden changes or constant feelings of hopelessness, you’ll need practices that are effective and meaningful for you. That’s why bestselling author Sue Patton Thoele offers How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World, a positive-thinking book that reevaluates self-doubt into the motivation you need to achieve happiness. With insightful advice for finding and practicing positive change, you too can rediscover peace of mind during difficult times.

    Find your balance again with transformative thinking. Changing hopelessness into gratitude doesn’t only take emotional work, it requires being practical. By exploring the importance of love and acceptance in your life through a new, logical perspective, you can combat those strong negative feelings no matter what. That way, you can get back to enjoying life and the beautiful moments that come with it.

    Inside How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World, you’ll find:

    • The power of transforming your pain into enduring hope
    • Why you should trust and appreciate yourself
    • Self-care affirmations to refuel your positivity
    • How to share your empowering journey with others

    If you liked Build the Life You Want, Donna Ashworth’s Wild Hope, or The Mindful Woman, then you will love How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 11, 2024
    ISBN9781684815418
    How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World: The Art of Cultivating Enduring Hope
    Author

    Sue Patton Thoele

    As a psychotherapist for over twenty years, Sue Patton Thoele never envisioned actually writing a book. But at forty-five, a writing muse grabbed her by the scuff of the neck and would not let her go. By the time her first book was published, a passion for writing had taken root in her heart. Now, she is a successful mentor, speaker, and author of over a dozen encouraging and empowering books that deal with issues similar to those both she and her psychotherapy clients deal with every day. Titles include Strength, The Woman's Book of Courage, The Woman's Book of Confidence, and The Courage to Be Yourself. Learn more about Sue and her work at www.suepattonthoele.com.

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      Book preview

      How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World - Sue Patton Thoele

      Chapter 1

      GROWING HOPE

      Hope is the

      sweet butterfly

      of peace

      Whose wings restart

      My heart

      when it falters.

      —Sue

      Hope is in short supply these days. We look around and don’t necessarily see a lot to be hopeful about. But the truth is, each of us carries within our hearts the seeds of enduring hope. Like anything worth cultivating—happiness, success, peace of mind, a loving family—hope requires conscious effort and committed action to be able to grow deep roots in our heart and soul. Even the most resilient seeds fail to sprout when buried in the harsh soil of pain and fear. But I’ve found that with love, intention, and a little help, we all have the ability to create a fertile field within us where hope can grow, flourish, and eventually spread outward to inspire and uplift others. Happiness, serenity, and circumstances can help bolster our feelings of hope, but they don’t create them. We do. I can just hear some of you murmuring, Bummer.

      I know, because I fell into a self-dug pit of hopelessness when first contemplating writing this book. Nagging internal voices filled me with doubt: "What a huge and important subject. What can I possibly say that would help? No matter what I write, it will be a mere drop in the bucket…"

      Stymied, I began consciously courting hope by practicing many of the ideas, attitudes, and activities I planned to incorporate into the book if and when I ever managed to start writing it! To get myself started, each morning I would look in the mirror and assure myself, You can do this. You don’t have to go it alone. Relax and let whatever needs to be said come through. I also devised a simple ritual to do before sitting down at the computer. I invited my angels and muses to be with me, and asked for my little self to get out of the way so that my higher Self—or God’s energy—could flow through me to be of service. Thankfully, hope eventually took root, and inspiration and excitement began to replace fear and lack of confidence. One of the greatest boosts I received came from a well-known Gandhi quote I accidentally found:

      "Almost anything you do seems insignificant.

      It is very important that you do it. You must be

      the change you wish to see in the world."

      And that’s it, in a nutshell, isn’t it? We need to create, within ourselves, the changes for which we yearn.

      If we want a world filled with hope and kindness, a world lopsided

      toward love, we need to cultivate and nurture those qualities

      within ourselves.

      WHY THE EROSION OF HOPE?

      "Those who are animated by hope can perform

      what would seem impossibilities to those who

      are under the depressing influence of fear."

      —Rachel Robards Jackson

      So many people these days have the feeling that an apocalypse of one sort or another is marching up their front steps, about to knock on—or in—their door. It’s tempting to belabor the difficulties in our world, personal and collective, and to berate those we think are responsible, including ourselves. However, I am convinced that both of these actions are detrimental to our sense of well-being and inevitably lead to a more profound loss of hope. In my heart of hearts, I know that, in lieu of dwelling on the negative, it’s advantageous to accentuate the positive.

      That doesn’t mean we can totally eliminate what we experience as negative. Of course we can’t. But before we can begin to emphasize the positive, we have to better understand what’s driving the erosion of hope and the growth of despair. I see four factors:

      1. Personal Pain

      Although some of us retain our sense of hope no matter what happens and seem to glide through personal setbacks and tragedies as gracefully as professional ice skaters, many of us find personal pain depressing, even debilitating. If you fall in the latter category, please know that psychology and medical science are proving that becoming depressed by pain isn’t a sign of flawed character or wimpy constitution; it is a matter of destructive thought processes, aggravated by variations in our fundamental chemical and physical makeup. On the flip side, the sister discovery is that we can alter our natural inclinations and learn coping and thriving skills that can lead to peace of mind, personal fulfillment, and increased happiness.

      With this in mind, I wrote How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World to help you make a friend of your mind, create constructive responses to stress, and strengthen your resilience, while continuing to honor your innate sensitivity. I know these ideas work, because by using them I’ve surrendered my title of Grand Duchess of Worry, Resistance, and Impatience and become only an occasional visitor to Impatient Worryland. And what a relief it is.

      Restoring hope and regaining a sense of balance and rightness within yourself may not be easy tasks—No way!—but they are simple. As spring trees and flowers teach us, the ability to bloom anew is always present. And it brings incredible rewards, both to you and to those you love.

      2. Negativity Bias

      A few years ago, my son did a swim-with-sharks scuba dive. As you can imagine, it was not a trip my mother-self enthusiastically endorsed. He told me it was perfectly safe because the vast majority of the sharks ignore the insignificant little humans in the water and zero in on the dead, bloody stuff called chum that the dive guides spread in the water. The resemblance to media—social and otherwise—with its penchant for provoking anger, fear, sadness, and disgust is hard to miss.

      Negativity bias is our inclination to be more attracted to and stimulated by the bad rather than the good. And negativity bias in consumers is a motivating force for the shark-like choices news and social media make. While most of us say we prefer good news, studies show that catastrophe and clicks go hand in hand. People get more of a jolt out of the negative than they do the positive. Maybe being shocked by the latest unbelievable shenanigans of well-known people gives us an adrenaline rush and we feel more alive for a moment. Perhaps the horror of a natural disaster gives us a surge of gratitude. Whatever the reasons, our autonomic nervous systems react more strongly to bad news than they do good. Which can be addictive. Sugar is also addictive, and we are well aware that a steady diet of it is extremely unhealthy. So is a steady diet of bad news.

      Every kind of news under the sun is available to us instantly. The choice is ours. We can doomscroll (a thank-you to journalist Karen Ho for that scary term). We can abstain from all news, or we can choose to take in whatever we want wherever we find it. As journalist Dylan Matthews puts it, the plethora of choices leaves consumers at the mercy of their own impulses.

      Impulse is one thing, awareness is another. Being aware of how much, and what kind of news, keeps you upbeat and positive gives you the information to make good choices. Appropriate choices allow hope to grow in your heart, mind, and soul. Only you know your personal negativity biases and how to balance them with what is healthy and uplifting for you.

      3. Uncertainty

      The other day I overheard a woman at the grocery store saying, "My 401K is not okay! One reason for this may be that Americans are pulling money from their 401(k)s at an alarming rate to pay bills. Meanwhile, Americans are piling up record credit card debt and falling behind on those payments," as CNN’s Allison Morrow recently reported.¹ All of us who go to the supermarket, have kids whose shoes wear out quickly, or want to buy a house know prices are high! Experts claim the economy is stable and the job market is good, but many people are struggling. Uncertainty reigns. And that isn’t taking into account myriad heart-rending wars, the climate crisis, healthcare, and political maelstroms that, at best, resemble runaway circus trains. And, at worst, look like integrity-less, helter-skelter, dishonest insane asylums.

      Rarely able to hang our hopes on external circumstance, we need to enhance our ability to nullify fear and create a sustainable haven of hope within, an inner sanctuary of peace and positivity. From that place of personal certainty and balance, we can plan for the future while not living in fear of it. Plus, from a stable center, we are better able to make conscious and constructive contributions to the challenges facing us and our world.

      4. Sandpapered Senses

      The effects of personal pain, media madness, and uncertainty on our sense of hope are readily apparent. Less obvious, but no less draining, is the bombardment of unrelenting stimuli hailing on us wherever we turn. Babies know their limits and, when overstimulated, are not at all shy about sharing them with whoever is available. We recognize the signs in little ones and act in their best interest by removing them from chaos, comforting them with rocking and crooning, and, best of all, encouraging them to nap. Few of us adults are as consciously aware of our own needs. The omnipresence of loud music, cell phone shouting, loss of personal space, miles-long to-do lists, the assault of sugar and caffeine, and our own internal demands for performance and personal perfection have caused us to lose track of our saturation points. Not honoring our sensory and emotional limits is causing us to numb out and anesthetize ourselves before we blow a fuse and strike out or stroke out from an overload of energy.

      When we’re at the mercy of overwhelming stimuli, none of us has the ability to tap into our well of inherent hope. In fact, instead of taking gentle care of ourselves when signs of overstimulation surface, we often push ourselves harder and castigate ourselves about imagined failings. I know, because that’s exactly what I used to do to myself.

      Well into adulthood, I was ashamed of the over-sensitive label some significant others had given me, and as a result, I added a few equally unflattering labels of my own. I thought I should be able to tolerate the involuntary auditory assault of loud music at home and in public places, and chastised myself for the bitchiness that arose when I said yes too often, didn’t get time alone, and ground my teeth to the bone when people chewed loudly. Sandpapered senses were a huge factor in my own erosion of hope—and still are, when I don’t pay

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