S1:E14 | How To Strengthen Your “Hope Muscle”

This one is critical to all of us. We need hope. In Destiny’s own experience, the times when her mental health was the worst were the times when she had no sense of hope.

Hope is critical in hard times. It’s something we can lean on. But here’s the thing… How do we get and stay hopeful, especially when times are tough? It’s one thing to tell someone “Have hope!” It’s quite another to have a sense of hope when you truly don’t feel like it.

Good news! In today’s episode of The Destiny Malibu Podcast, Destiny shares some practical tips to help you cultivate hope. Along the way, you’ll discover what hope is, and what it’s not. You’ll also find out about why you want to avoid “toxic positivity.” Sound interesting? Listen to today’s episode!

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Listen to the podcast here

How To Strengthen Your “Hope Muscle”

If you are new to the show, this is a mental health-focused show. We talk a lot about mental health. Mental health is something that is close to my heart. I’ve had my own struggles with it. I’ve had friends who have struggled with it. It’s something that I feel like a lot of times is not talked about as much as it should be. Even though we are in Vegas and this is a party city and lots of fun things to do, we want to make sure you guys are doing well with your mental health as well.

We’ve been talking about the seven pillars of mental health, self-love, the importance of purpose or knowing what your purpose, social life, exercise, and food. In one of our episodes, we talked about therapy and its importance. Now, we are going to be talking about the seventh pillar. After all these episodes, we’re on the seventh pillar and that is hope.

Hope is something that is important to quality mental health. I’ve noticed in my own life, at times when I’ve been low, seeking professional help and not sure where to turn next, that was a time in my life when I had lost my sense of hope. Hope is a lot of times the pillar that holds us together during hard times and something that we can lean on.

What happens with a lot of people is when you lose sight of hope, then it causes you to get to a point where you’re hopeless and don’t know where to turn next. We want to share with you guys some practical tips on how you can cultivate hope, especially in the mental health sphere. You hear things like, “Stay hopeful,” and it’s like, “How do I do that?” We want to share with you guys some tips on how you can cultivate more hope in your life and not lose sight of that because it is so important to have quality mental health.

One of the things that you can do to strengthen your hope muscle if you want to call it, is to focus on your strengths in life. Every single person on earth has a strength. If you’re sitting there right now and thinking to yourself, “I don’t know what my strength is.” We are going to find out together. If you haven’t discovered it yet, you can always discover what your strengths are at any point in life. This crosses over to another pillar that we talked about, which is purpose.

One of the things that you can do to strengthen your hope muscle is to focus on your strengths. Click To Tweet

We talked about another episode of figuring out your purpose and one of those ways to do that is figuring out what makes you tick. What are the hobbies you like to do? Whether it’s something creative or you’re a mathematical person or a teacher, There are so many areas to explore. “What am I good at? How can I give back to the world and how can I share that?”

We want to make sure that you guys are exploring what your strengths are and focusing on that because a lot of times in mental health, we can sometimes have a tendency to focus on what we’re not doing right. If you’re focusing on what you’re not doing right, you’re not going to feel too good. We need to be focusing on what our individual strengths are. I’m an artist and a musician. I love making music. That’s the way that I’m able to contribute back to the world. Desiree is a DJ and she has a lot of strengths.

I like to help everyone in any way I can. I’m a people pleaser and sometimes it gets the better of me and I have a hard time saying no, but I have gotten better at it. I’m hopeful that I can help every one of you as much as I can.

Another thing that we can do to cultivate hope is to practice gratitude. Gratitude is an important part of mental health. A lot of times, something that can help us if we’re having a bad day is to sit and make a list of all the things that we’re thankful for and physically write it down. There’s something about writing things down with a real pen and paper, which I feel like we don’t do a lot. I do this sometimes.

We’re on social media all the time and got carpal tunnel in our thumbs.

Writing things down and making a list of what you’re thankful for is so beneficial to our mental health. When you’re done writing a list, It can improve your mood. It seems so simple, but a lot of the things that improve our mental health are simple. It’s about appreciating the simple things in life.

It’s taking a moment to smell that cup of coffee or the roses in the morning.

It seems cliché, but honestly, your list could be like, “I’m so thankful for my cup of coffee, running water, and the people in my life.” Making a list like that can quickly shift your focus from everything going wrong in your life to everything going right.

It will lead you to that hopeful moment when things are going to get better.

That’s something I want to touch on too. Being hopeful and optimistic are two different things. Sometimes people think optimism is somebody who’ll blindly say, “Everything is great. The world is sunshine and roses. Nothing Is bad.” Being hopeful and understanding what hope is realizing and having a mindset of, “Even if something goes wrong in my life, I’m going to be okay because I am hopeful for the future. I’m hopeful for the next day.” That is something that we have to remember because there are a lot of people who talk about something called Toxic Positivity. I’m not sure if you’ve heard about that.

I’ve heard of it, but not too familiar.

I’ve heard a lot about it and it is people who are pushing being positive and suppressing emotions. When we’re talking about hope and the importance of hope, we’re not promoting toxic positivity. We want you guys to feel and express your emotions. We are human. There is nothing wrong with having a bad day.

We all have them. I do.

Me too. None of us are immune to that, but the important part is to recognize, “I’m having a bad day.” Let yourself cry it out if you need to and take a moment to do what you need to do to get those emotions out. Maybe go for a walk or go dancing. When we focus on hope, it is the ability to come from that negative space or dark place and come back into this concept of hope of, “I’m going to be okay.”

We don’t want you guys to suppress your emotions. We want you to feel them, but then we want you to set up a limit for yourself for a few hours and say, “I’m going to cry for an hour and listen to some sad Adele songs. I’m going to let myself feel this, but then after this hour’s done, I’m going to re-shift to my strengths and gratitude. I’m going to give this day the best that I can.” That’s an important one.

Another thing that we can do is sometimes limit media exposure. A lot of times nowadays, we’re scrolling so much online and getting fed so much information on a constant basis, especially with TikTok. One second, you’re seeing a puppy getting rescued and you’re like, “A puppy is getting rescued,” and then the next episode talking about the pandemic or something. All of these emotions that we’re feeling so quickly because of social media are not natural for us. There’s not a natural ebb and flow like when you watch a movie, there’s a building point for the stories, whereas now, we got 30 seconds for each reel and it’s all a different topic.

Our brains are overloaded. Sometimes limiting media exposure can be beneficial. I’ve done social media breaks before but it’s hard. It’s addicting. Scheduling that into your life, especially if you’re having a stressful day, sometimes getting off of social media or not turning on the news if you’re already stressed is something that’s going to improve your day. It help you to refocus and spend time with nature.

It helps you get back on that hopeful track.

A couple more ways we want to share with you guys of how you can cultivate more hope is by seeking inspiration from others and surrounding yourself with positive people. It’s surrounding yourself with people in your life that are going to add to your life.

They’re going to help you look for that silver lining in that negative situation.

I do have a song Silver Lining, so check that out. It’s important to surround yourself with people who are like-minded and want to improve and grow every single day because that’s the goal of what we want to do. That’s a good one. Also, helping others is a good way to cultivate hope in our lives and hope for another day. Desiree did some community service.

Helping others is a good way to cultivate hope into our lives. Click To Tweet

Me and my ex at the time, back in Tampa, Florida decided to make little lunches, beans, rice, and protein. We cooked for 4 or 5 hours and made all this food. We made twenty lunch meals and got the disposable paper plates, silverware, and napkins, and wrapped it all up into little baggies. We went around downtown Tampa and found people who were in the dark corners of the streets or wherever they were. We found them and we’re like, “Would you like a hot meal this morning?” They’re like, “That’s so nice of you.” We were able to give out all our lunches that day. It wasn’t for us, but we wanted to reach out, help others, share that love, and give that hope that, “Today is not the worst day because we’re going to bring you this lunch.”

That’s so nice. It’s so important to get involved with your community and look to help people who are in need. I’ve done some community service as well. It’s like connecting with people and connecting with the world and reminding each other that you’re not alone, which is something we say on this show a lot. You’re not alone and we’re all in this human experience.

All of us have bad days. Some of us are going through tough times, but we can be there for each other. Seeking inspiration from people who are also focused on sharing that kindness and love is helpful. We wanted to remind you that cultivating hope in your life is understanding that there’s no guarantee that things are going to go the way you want, but regardless of the outcome, you’re going to be okay.

Everything is going to be all right.

That’s what hope is. Hope for a better day. We want to share that with you and hope that you can incorporate this into your life. We love you so much. Our mantra, if you guys don’t know it already, it is, “If you hate me, I love you. If you love me, I love you even more. You are not alone and we are in this together.”

We want to remind you guys to enter the giveaway that we have going on with Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. We’re so thankful. All you have to do to enter the giveaway to get a free weekend at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is subscribe, rate the show, and leave a review. You’re going to want to take a screenshot of that review before you hit send. Email it to Contest@DestinyMalibu.com because it does take 48 hours for the review to go live. You could win a free getaway to Vegas.

Who doesn’t want that?

Come hang out with us. We hope you guys enter the contest and win. We love you so much and see you on the next episode.