Why Having Hope Sucks (As an Alienated Parent)

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 67 stay tuned welcome to be on the high

road hey guys I'm jumping in really quick like my hair um I'm jumping in really quick to let you guys know that members the this week's study guide your first study guide ever is actually in your library so just go into the new course and you'll find a tab for study guides and then you can download it there and for everybody else if you guys want to get a taste of what it's like to be in the healing and reinvention program or what it's like to coach um basically like the kind of worksheets that I used and what kinds of things that we discuss then you can also download the study guide for today well I mean like you can I'll keep this one out there the study guide I'll

link it down below but it's beyondthe high road.com back slh hope sucks okay all right um so now let you get to the episode okay hi you guys how are we doing today we are going to be talking about hope the emotion of Hope and why I think it can prevent you from creating the life that you want in the now and in the future so here it goes whenever I hear somebody say that hope something will happen that they hope they get the job they want or a parent like us say that they hope something will change that they hope things will be different in the future my heart breaks a little tiny bit for them because it tells me that the person who said it is feeling disempowered whenever

we hope for something it is putting our desires in somebody or something else's hands we're putting off responsibility to the universe if it's supposed to be I used to say this a lot I think I talked about this in one of those episodes right after Nita passed away I was striving to be The Good Wife the good Christian wife who just allowed things to happen like waiting for signs whatever showed up in my life was supposed to happen and anything that I tried to create was imposing my will I look back on that now and it's I I had it backwards I believe I had it backwards now there's a difference between imposing your will trying to force something to happen and creating

your life I think just even the way I said that that's probably pretty evident right if you're forcing something to happen we're trying to change the reaction or the way that somebody else behaves in order for them to conform to what we want and that's not what I'm talking about at all I'm talking about like I'm always wanting to create something new something more improved and better than the last time I created it or the last thing I created right um we're hopefully always striving to get better so when you come at creating your own results for yourself or making your bed in the morning in a confident in control confident and sure way like that you are the one that is making it happen

that is an entirely different feel than hoping that you make your bed I hope I can make my bed today I hope I find the time to make my bed that clearly is not stepping into your power you know what I'm saying hope seems well intended and it seems like a positive and feel-good word but really by hoping you are creating a space for yourself to stay stagnant it's a very passive word very passive em emotion I believe it's actually like an indulgent emotion too cuz we can hope we can wish hope that things will happen differently in the future but when we're there then we're indulging in what might happen in the future and we're losing out missing out on the present moment you know just as

soon as I said that I can hear some of you um listening to this saying well yeah I want to get out of the present moment I need to get there there is better but I just also want to caution you that there isn't always better in fact most of the time there is the same as here when it boils down to it maybe there's different external circumstances factors that are there but the emotions that you're feeling if you weren't happy here you're not going to be happy there so I think that that is something that is I don't know it's just something to consider something to chew on I I don't care if somebody handed you a million dollars today it's still in the end once

you would get tired of spending maybe for a couple few days maybe even for a month you would be happy and whatever but that would be dependent on an external circumstance and when you spent that million dollars and you hadn't learned you didn't make it yourself so that you learned how to make the million dollars so you could go make another million dollars then when that million dollars run out you're right back to where you started do you know what I'm saying you haven't there's no you hadn't done the work in order to create something new for yourself you didn't learn how to make the million dollars you also didn't learn how to be happy with the current circumstances being

crap so therefore you're always dependent on something changing for you on somebody outside some external circumstance to cause you to be happy and that sucks that is a very powerless place to be helpless place to be needy place to be and that is what hope promises you hope promises you that up there things might get better maybe if you're lucky if you pray a lot things might get better for you up there when we hope for change in the future we hobble ourselves in today we prevent ourselves from making the change now today hope separates us from the emotion that we want to feel now when you're hoping for your children to come home find support and healing I was just

talking about this the other day with you guys is that anything we do no matter what we're talking about it's always in the end it boils down to wanting to feel whatever emotion we think we're going to feel by doing or not doing the thing that we're aiming for and so if you want and you're hoping you've been holding out hope for your kids to finally realize what's been happening with them so they can start their road to to recovery and eventually y'all can reunify and things will be back to hunky dory and everything's great right the emotion that you want to feel is likely peace okay there's probably a lot of emotions that you want to feel there you want to feel loved and

reunified and blah blah blah blah blah but let's just pick one of those for right now because we can do it with every single emotion that you want if you're looking to feel peace in the future by hoping for that by wishing it away in the future you take away your ability to create the peace that you want to feel up there now right and so instead of creating peace for yourself in the now which is entirely available to you now right now as you're listening to this you end up creating the opposite emotion you end up creating Discord inside of you you end up creating a feeling of helplessness of disease unease because things aren't right now in your mind right this is not how

things are supposed to be life has been derailed and I'm going to hope my life away for the future for the chance that maybe this will happen and we will reunify and things will great and I'll feel peace then I will wait for peace until that happens I'll hold out until then and so you create all of this Discord in the now and all the way up to the time when hopefully it will happen here's the thing though because you're wishing away and hoping for that up in the future the way that you show up in your now and all the way leading up to this hopeful event you're going to show up in a way that is disempowered and not productive and when you show up in a way that doesn't produce what you want all

the way leading up guess what happens to that event that event either gets keeps getting pushed off pushed off pushed off or you're not as present for it as maybe you would be if you would have taught yourself how to feel peace in the now because you can it's not binary it's not one or the other you it is entirely available for you to feel peace now and also Trust that things will be okay and that your child will get exactly what they need on exactly the time that they need to get it and that you guys will reunify or that you can rebuild your relationship with your child this entire time while they're doing the work to prepare themselves for whatever their

road is with you their relationship with you because relationship exists in each one of our minds yes you may be missing out in your mind missing out on experiences and making memories with your children all of this time right but you hoping isn't going to get you there anyway do you know what I'm saying so your hope really actually it's not just a passive like benign emotion or mindset it actually can cause more damage than good because if you're holding out hope you're putting everything else on pause at least in that portion of your mind when you're focusing on Hope for tomorrow then you miss entirely miss out on showing up fully in today you see so hope is it's it's a promising emotion

and it doesn't ever produce right it doesn't ever it it doesn't it's false marketing right the idea of hope it's dishonest marketing it's like making an ad for a Porsche but actually when you get to the car dealership and there's a beat up BW it's not the same thing so that is really pretty much of my thoughts on hope I I just want to introduce the idea that because hope is so passive and dependent on so many external factors that places all responsibility elsewhere and causes you to give away all agency as alienated parents we already feel helpless hopeless disempowered this is really why so many of us feel so stuck is because we're constantly waiting on the

attorneys the judges the DS regarding items we're waiting on our ex our children you name it our family members the money to come in for whatever all of the things outside of us and because we're so busy or we've been so used to sort of I don't know if delegating is the right word yeah in a way delegating in your mind that's their responsibility to take care of then you end up sitting twiddling your thumbs doing nothing in a very passive helpless place you give all of your power away so I want to offer that you trade in that word that emotion of Hope and start picking mindsets of confidence of certainty peace now and if I know the question is probably for some of you yeah but Shelby

what if I am waiting on XYZ to happen and I can't do anything about it now well in that case then acceptance is a good one to learn and I guess that begs the that just opened up the idea to share with you guys that if you're in a place where you're telling yourself that you can't be happy until XYZ happens then you need to find your power in that look for find your choices be very certain about your plan moving forward and that plan should not be dependent on whether so and so does their job or whether your child shows up at the next parenting time or the next counseling session the plan of action that you put together for your 2024 or for whatever it is that you're doing make sure that

these are steps that you can take that are not dependent on anybody else's actions if you've been feeling uninspired not motivated no Drive stuck helpless hopeless look and see where you're not taking action in your life right now and the actions that you are taking are they contributing to your end goal like where in your life are you spinning because you're taking action that doesn't really contribute to what you want to be ultimately achieving a lot of times what we'll do is we'll be in Hope for the future oh I hope that this happens and we'll sit and kind of waste time and busy ourselves with stuffff but it's really just biing time wasting time keeping us it's buffering

right we're in this like place of like not wanting to do the things that will actually get us the results because we're holding out hope and then we're sitting here busying and tiring ourselves out with some other Behavior tolerating our current state of our lives and this my friends couldn't be more unproductive busying yourself and wasting your energy on doing whatever things to avoid your current state the current situation hoping that your end result will just show up at your doorstep like I was talking about a couple of episodes ago right come knocking on hi everything's fine now it won't happen that way you have to make it happen and if it's the result that

you want is involving another person or some external circumstance then ask yourself what is the result that you're hoping for by the external thing happening and then whatever that emotion is that you're looking for in the end from the external thing happening how can you create that for yourself right now today because it is available to you right now today I'm going reiterate it because I think it's very important when we're hoping for something to happen in the future whatever that is I use example of our kids coming back and what we really want there is peace then we're wishing that away in the further future and we're creating the opposite of peace

in our life right now and for as long as we keep hoping wishing it away so we end up missing out on the opportunity due to our own behavior and our own mindset of trying to do the right thing by keeping hope holding out hope we've been sold this idea that hoping for a better future hoping for World Peace tomorrow we've been sold this idea that this is positive thinking positive affirmations whatever it is so damaging to think that because and if everybody in the world was hoping nothing would ever get done somebody's got to stand up and if it's something that you want nobody else is going to stand up for you and do that thing you have to do it you're the best

fit to make whatever it is that you want to happen in the now okay so that was hopefully that's hopefully that made sense but yeah what else did I want to say about it the opposite of Hope is certainty confidence peace and acceptance when you cannot change the circumstance you cannot change the other person which you can't you've done all the things that you can and and it's not changing at the moment like you have no more moves to make with this situation then this is when you practice acceptance and acceptance can be very empowering because when you accept your the current state of your life which already is right if we're talking about changing something something in the

future changing the y'all your relationship with your kid you do all the steps to show up in the way that you want to show up no matter what the other person's response is whether it's your kid or whoever right you act that way and you love and you do all the things ahead of time doing them because of who you become on the way to what your goal is how they show up or what how anybody responds is their business the person that you become and the love that you feel and demonstrate during all of that is so worth it but when we're hoping it's like placing an expectation on the world around us on whatever it is that we're hoping for and you know and I know that expectations can bite you in the

butt if we have an idea in our mind of what things are supposed to look like and however long up there nothing will ever measure up to that expectation rarely sometimes people exceed our expectations but that's the bonus that's like woohoo thank God but if you're always expecting things to happen holding out hope hoping wishing waiting you're going to be very disappointed and feel very disempowered okay so if you cannot make any moves then that's when we practice acceptance because if it's here it's already here and you're resisting it and you're trying to fight it or hope your life away you miss out on so much life and you've heard me talk about that before where I woke up one

day like not literally well maybe literally too but and I realized I was sitting on my couch and I was like everybody's out there living and I'm here I've been here on my couch for like three years three years and the world has been going by and all of this time I I just wished and hoped away nothing got done nothing got done I mean some things got done but none of the those things that I did were contributing to the end goal the things that I wanted to accomplish all of the things I was doing were just like I was talking about just a few minutes ago spinning my wheels and just wasting energy doing things that didn't matter I don't nothing that I can remember today that that made a

difference during that time no I don't think the Price Is Right watching The Price is Right or Days of Our Lives drinking craft beer on my couch counts I don't but even like when we're we say that we're being productive we think we're being productive but if it's not contributing to your end goal or what whatever it is that you're hoping to happen then you got to ask yourself if it's worth it to you is it worth it to keep doing whatever thing that is obviously if it's your job that you have to go to in order to produce money then that's not something that you have to do that's actually something that you want to do because you want money okay now I'm getting like in the weeds so many

things that have come out yeah I have so many thoughts actually about Hope and how it doesn't work for you and also to I do need to do a whole episode on acceptance so maybe that'll be I'll work that in I have a schedule already but acceptance would be a really helpful one for a lot of us I think shied away from that one in the past because I know it's a jagged very large pill to swallow when we're talking about accepting our situations of alienation but I also know and I feel very strongly about this is that when we're not accepting our situations we're not accepting of or willing to open our minds to the the recognizing acknowledging that it's here we can be filled with anger and

resistance against something that's already here anyway so it's pointless and you end up creating sickness disease within your body so the smartest thing to do the most efficient thing to do like we're just looking at this logically is to allow it what already is to be so acceptance is actually necessary in order to stop suffering so when you can accept to your current circumstances even while you're taking making steps to change the thing that you want to change or working towards a goal it works to your benefit if you can be in acceptance and work on actively accepting then now while you're taking your steps if you're trying to push away and resist what currently is you're

causing a lot of friction for your own self in working to change the situation okay all right so it's going to have to do a lot of editing because I went off topic like a million times during this but hopefully hopefully I can make it it work but anyway okay so I have a client coming in right now and I will talk to y'all later bye thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the Concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life

even while experiencing the grief of alienation for more information go to beond the high road.com see you

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