Inspiration has a very close relative called hope. The two are inseparable; they go everywhere together.

This is important because when we feel stressed or overwhelmed with work or life, hope is the antidote. Going further, hope is also the solution to helplessness, resignation and despair.

If it was really possible to tap into an endless supply of hope, how much difference would it make to you?

In its most powerful undiluted form, hope is much more than wishful thinking. To have hope means ‘to expect with confidence’ – in other words, to count on a certain outcome. But given our inability to predict the future, how can this be?

Before we get to the answer, we need to remember where the experience of hope comes from. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ll notice a recurring theme: every experience we have comes from the thoughts we are thinking at the time. So the experience of hope must come from our thinking. So where do our thoughts come from?

Well, there’s no doubt that many of the thoughts you think are those you have thought before. Some are welcome, others less so. Either way they spring from your accumulated knowledge and experience. But what about new thoughts, thoughts you have never thought before?

Some people claim they bubble up from the unconscious mind but this is not very convincing. It implies that every new thought we have ever had and will ever have is already there.

Another attempt to explain where thoughts come from rests on the description of how the brain works by making new neural connections. But while this explains the biological changes that take place, it does not account for the origin of the content of thought.

In contrast, many spiritual traditions describe some kind of universal source of thought. They use different words – such as collective mind, universal intelligence, life energy, God – all of which attempt to point to the ever-present but formless source of thought.

Such a source is infinite and therefore gives us the potential for unlimited new thoughts. This is where we come back to hope. When you are not stuck on old thinking, new thought will always flow into your mind. You can be sure of this – you can count on this outcome.

Can you remember a time when you have had just the idea you needed ‘out of the blue’? It happened when you were not busy thinking about the problem but rather when you were thinking about nothing in particular, hence ‘out of the blue’.

So whatever problem or challenge you face, there is always the assurance that you can have fresh thoughts about it at any time. And these fresh thoughts are how solutions will unfold to you. This means that the potential solution is only a thought away. This is how you can be full of hope – hope-full. You are not on your own – you have an unlimited source of new thought to draw on!

All you need to remember is that new thought will automatically flow into your mind when you are not busy with the thoughts that are already there. A quieter mind is all it takes.