Flourishing After Adversity

S2:E19 You Don't Have to Feel Hopeful to Choose Hope

• Laura Broome

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0:00 | 13:11

Choose Hope Before You Feel It: Taking Action After Adversity

Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and offers a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for managing negative thought loops after setbacks. Using a gardener watering bare soil as a metaphor, she explains that waiting to feel hopeful often keeps people stuck because action typically precedes motivation. 

She distinguishes hope as a conditional feeling versus a deliberate choice, then provides a framework to identify waiting patterns (listening for “when” language, noticing how long you’ve been waiting, and asking what you’d do if you already felt ready). She shares steps to choose hope through a tiny unconditional decision, consistent “watering” before results appear, and tracking daily instances of choosing action over feelings, plus tips like a “Before I feel like it” alarm and a proof-of-choosing list.

00:00 Waiting To Feel Ready
01:02 The Gardener And Hope
02:38 Hope Feeling Vs Choice
04:01 Spot The Waiting Pattern
06:20 Choose Hope In Action
09:20 Reflection Prompt
09:57 Everyday Resilience Tips
11:26 Recap And Encouragement
12:29 Closing And Resources

 Have you ever found yourself waiting to feel ready before you took a step forward?  Waiting to feel motivated before you made the call, started the plan, or tried something new?  Today's episode is for you.

Welcome to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Mangum Broome. If you've been knocked down by life--grief, illness, loss, or unexpected change, you're in the right place.

Here, we turn setbacks into stepping stones because healing, growth, and joy are not out of reach. They're available to you even in this season. 

 Before we begin, if you ever feel overwhelmed by negative thoughts after a setback, caught in loops of worry, self-doubt, or mental exhaustion, I created a free resource for you called Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. You'll find the link in the show notes.

The Gardener And Hope

I want to start today with a picture. Imagine a gardener standing over a patch of bare soil in early spring.  To anyone passing by, it looks like nothing, just dirt, not a single sprout, not a hint of color.  But she's out there every morning watering, tending, showing up, even though she can't see a single sign of life yet.  She planted those seeds weeks ago, and here's the thing. She's not watering because she feels hopeful. She's watering because she chose hope.

She decided the action was worth taking before she had any proof it would pay off.  This image stays with me because I think it describes something most of us in hard seasons experience, but rarely have words for.  We're waiting to feel hopeful before we act.  We're waiting for the sprout before we pick up the watering can, and that wait, it can go on for a long time.

Here's what most people struggle to understand. Waiting to feel hopeful before we act is one of the most common ways people stay stuck.  And the frustrating truth?  The feeling rarely shows up first. The action has to. 

Today, I want to give you a real practical framework to help you understand what's happening when hope feels out of reach and three concrete steps to start choosing it even when the feeling isn't there. Let's get started. 

Hope Feeling Vs Choice

Let me give you a distinction that changed the way I think about hope.  There are two very different ways people experience hope.  Hoping as a feeling says, "I'll start when I feel better, when things are clear, when I know it will work out."  It makes hope conditional. It puts your next step on hold indefinitely until the feeling shows up.   And for people who have been through real loss, real illness, real devastation, that feeling can feel like a long, long time coming. Maybe it stopped coming at all. 

Hoping as a choice says, "I don't know how this turns out, but I'm going to do one thing today that moves me forward."  It doesn't require certainty. It doesn't require confidence.  It doesn't even require that things feel okay. It just requires a decision.  Both can look the same from the outside, but one keeps you waiting.  The other gets you moving.  So the real question isn't do I feel hopeful right now? It's am I willing to choose hope even when I don't feel it?  That one shift from a feeling to a choice is the whole game, and once you see the difference, everything starts to change. 

Spot The Waiting Pattern

These three steps will help you figure out where you are.   

Step one: Listen for "When" language.  Pay attention to how you talk to yourself about moving forward.  Do you hear a lot of when I feel ready, when things settle down, when I'm in a better place, when I have more energy, when I know it's going to work?  That's the feeling holding your choices hostage.  It's not a character flaw. It's a very human pattern. But it's important to name it because you can't change what you won't identify   The next time you catch yourself using when language about moving forward, pause and ask, "  Am I waiting for a feeling or am I waiting for permission I can actually give myself right now?"

Step 2: Notice how long you've been waiting.  Think about one area of your life where you've been meaning to take a step,  a conversation you've put off, a habit you've been meaning to build, a decision you've been circling for weeks.  Now ask yourself honestly, how long have I been waiting to feel ready? A week? A month? A year? Longer? The longer the wait, the more likely you're waiting on a feeling that simply won't come until you move first. That's not pessimism, that's neuroscience. Motivation follows action far more reliably than it precedes it.  You don't find your footing by standing still. You find it by taking the next step.

Step 3: Ask, "What would I do if I already felt it?" This is the most revealing question of all. If you did feel hopeful, confident, and ready right now, what would you do differently today?  Would you make the call? Send the message? Start the project? Take the walk? Book the appointment? Whatever your answer is, that's your next step. You don't need the feeling to take action. You just need to know what the action is. Write it down. Right now if you can. What's the one thing you would do if you already felt ready? That's your move. 

Choose Hope In Action

Once you can see where you've been waiting, you're ready for the most important part, making the choice.

Recognizing the pattern doesn't automatically break it,  but it gives you the right starting point. These next three steps will help you move forward even when the feeling hasn't shown up yet. 

Step 1: Make one tiny unconditional decision.  Pick one small action, something that takes ten minutes or less, and commit to doing it today regardless of how you feel when you wake up.  Not when you're motivated, not when you feel ready. Today. This isn't about the result.  It's about proving to yourself that your choices are not at the mercy of your feelings. One small unconditional act builds more resilience than a hundred intentions.  The woman who laces up her shoes and steps outside, even when she doesn't feel like it, is practicing something far more powerful than motivation. She's practicing decision.  And decisions repeated over time build a different kind of person.

Step two, water the ground before you see the sprout.  Like that gardener, your job isn't to manufacture results.  Your job is to show up consistently for what you've planted, even when there's no visible proof it's working.

That might look like journaling when you don't feel like it, taking a walk when you'd rather stay in bed, reaching out to a friend when isolation feels easier, praying or sitting in gratitude when it feels hollow,  doing one small work task when everything feels pointless.  You're not watering nothing.  You're watering something that isn't ready to show itself yet. The gardener doesn't dig up the seeds to check on them every day. She trusts the process. She trusts that the soil is doing what it's supposed to do, even in the silence. That trust is hope in action.

Step three, track the choosing, not the feeling. Here's a practical shift that makes a real difference. Instead of checking in each morning with, "Do I feel hopeful today?" Ask instead, "Did I choose hope today?"  Keep a simple daily tally, one mark for every time you took action before the feeling arrived. You don't need an app. You don't need a fancy journal. A sticky note with hash marks will do. Over time, that tally becomes your evidence, and your evidence becomes a foundation that real lasting hope is built on.  Because hope that's rooted in evidence is far more durable than hope that's rooted in emotion. The feeling follows the track record, not the other way around. 

Reflection Prompt

Before we move into our tips, I want to give you a reflection prompt to sit with this week.  Write one sentence.  I have been waiting to feel,  (fill in the blank) before I, (fill in the blank).  This week, I'm choosing to (fill in the blank) anyway.  That sentence is your commitment. Not a commitment to feel a certain way, a commitment to act a certain way before the feeling arrives.  That's what choosing hope looks like. 

Everyday Resilience Tips

I'd like to give you three tips to strengthen your everyday resilience. Tip number one: Set up "Before I feel like it" alarm.  Pick one action you've been delaying, a walk, a phone call, a journal entry, and schedule it for tomorrow morning before your brain has time to negotiate. Label the alarm, "Before I feel like it."  The label itself is the reminder. The feeling isn't the green light, the decision is.  Tip number two: Replace, "I hope things get better," with, "I choose one thing today."  When you catch yourself in passive hope language, "I hope this gets easier. I hope things turn around," pause and reframe it into one specific action. "I choose to text one person today. I choose to step outside for ten minutes." The language shift is small. The momentum it creates is not.  Tip three: Create a proof of choosing list. Start a simple list in a notes app, journal, or on a sticky note, and add one entry each day you choose action before the feeling showed up.   Not what you accomplished, just what you chose.  After a week, read it back. That list is your evidence that hope is already at work in you, even on the days it didn't feel like it.

Recap And Encouragement

Let's recap what we covered today.  Waiting to feel hopeful before you act is one of the most common ways people stay stuck.   Hope is not just a feeling, it's a choice you can make before the feeling arrives.  Listen for "When" language and name the pattern.  Notice how long you've been waiting  and ask what you'd do if you already felt ready.  Make one tiny, unconditional decision. Water the ground before you see the sprout. And track the choosing, not the feeling. 

If you're in a season where hope feels far away, I want you to hear this. You don't have to feel it to choose it. You don't have to have the evidence before you take the step.  You just have to pick up the watering can. The gardener didn't see a thing in that bare soil, but she showed up anyway, and spring came. You're right where you need to be. Growth happens one step at a time. 

Closing And Resources

Thank you for listening to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. If this episode helped you, please share it with three friends in need of hope. Leave a review or connect with me online at iCope2Hope.com. The link is in the show notes. And don't forget to download your free guide, Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. The link is also in the show notes, along with other free resources.  Until next time, remember, adversity can make you bitter or better. Choose better! You've got this!