This is very near and dear to me – proof of hope.  I think hope is such, not only a wonderful thing, but an essential thing.  During a lot of experiments they’ve done with animals, specifically the ones I’ve read are with dogs and mice, they have studied this issue of hope.  They have given dogs rewards for doing certain things.  They’ll be in a metal cage and they’ll reward them with food for doing certain things.  What they’ve found is that if they change that paradigm and change the reward structure so that the dog can’t predict it, they’re not getting the reward when they think they should be, eventually the dog will lay down in the cage, on the metal cage and will be shocked.  Before they lost their hope that would get them to do something.  Once they lose their hope they just lay on the cage and are shocked.  Even if they open the cage the dog still will not move once it has lost hope.

When my wife was depressed, most of you know that’s how I got into The Healing Codes was through my wife’s very severe depression, that was one of the huge issues with her is that she had lost hope.  It’s interesting – a while back she changed her name to “Hope” because that was such a big issue for her and now she has her hope back.

Let me try to give you something you can apply this week that I call   Proof of Hope.  The opposite of Hope, a lot of times is worry and anxiety.  It’s worry over things that might happen.  The problem is we’re told by experts who study these things that well over 90% of the things that we worry about never happen.  Think about that.  Over 90% of the things we worry about never happen.  That’s speaks to a lot of different issues.  Number one, we’re wasting all kinds of time by using that energy and time to worry about something that the odds are more than 9 out of 10 that it’s not even going to happen.

But we’re doing much more than that.  By imagining the bad outcome in the future – that’s what worry is, imagining – by imagining that bad outcome in the future we are literally creating memories of that bad outcome having already happened.  How can that be?  It can be because your heart, your un- and sub-conscious do not differentiate between what is real and what is imagined.  They treat it exactly the same.

When I first went to see the original movie, “Jaws”, during one of the really scary parts, John,  the friend I attended the movie with, was sitting beside me and in one hand he had a jumbo Coke and in the other hand he had a jumbo popcorn.  This really startling place occurred in the movie.  John went “AhHHHH!”  While he screamed he threw up and back both of his arms.  The couple that was sitting behind us was absolutely wiped out with 44 oz. of Coke and a tub of popcorn.  He apologized profusely, but why did that happen?

It happened because your heart does not differentiate between what is real and what is imagined.  Even though with his intellectual brain John very well knew that he was sitting in a movie theater, totally and completely safe and what was happening was just made up, being shown on a screen, even though he knew all of that, his body still reacted as if it was real to get him out of there and save his life from being bitten by a shark.

When you imagine the bad outcome happening in the future, you are literally creating that outcome internally in your heart.  What that will do is those new memories will resonate out the fear, the anger, the frustration, the grief and despair as if that thing you’re worrying about in the future had already happened.  For one thing that dramatically increases the odds that it will happen.  It programs you, literally, to have that event happen in the future.  You’ve just programmed it in, to dramatically increase the odds that it will happen.  It makes it much more likely that the event will happen.

Another thing it does is put your nervous system into stress mode.  When your nervous system goes into stress mode it does a number of things.  It dumbs you down so you don’t have the use of all your wonderful intellectual capacity to try and do what you can do to solve the problem that you’re worried about.  Now you have a diminished capacity to do that because you’re dumbed down.  It also causes you to come at everything from a negative perspective, fear, anger, low self-worth.  “This is never going to work out.”  “The worst thing is going to happen.”  And it makes you tired which decreases the ability you have to take action to have the desired outcome in the future happen rather than the one that you’re worried about.

Here’s what I recommended starting a number of years ago to people in my private practice to do with this issue in order to create hope and a positive outcome, to program themselves for the positive instead of programming themselves for the negative.  Here’s what you do.  Remember 10 things that you have worried about in the past that never happened.  Write them down.  That’s step one.  Next, just write down under that, this would be number two, “there is a 90+% chance that the worst outcome will not happen according to statistics.  The thing I’m worried about will not happen according to statistics 90+% chance it won’t happen.  Number three, create the positive programming about that issue.  Instead of worrying and creating the memories that are interpreted by your heart as the negative thing already having happened, which programs you to go in that direction of failure, imagine the positive outcome happening.  Imagine the best possible response.  Imagine God intervening and causing good things to happen instead of the bad.  Imagine multiple events all like a long string of dominos, occurring to bring you a better outcome than you can see now.  Really experience that and envision it.

The next one, keep in peace mode.  How do you do that?  By focusing on the positive and not the negative.  It keeps your body in peace.  If you’re in a positive place you do not go into fight or flight which is stress mode.  That means you’re not dumbed down.  You do not come at everything from a negative perspective.  You can come at things from a positive perspective.  And, your energy is not drained.  You can have the energy to do something about it.  This is doing something about it.

The next thing may sound a little bit weird.

The next one is realization that the bad thing you are worried about may be the best thing.  I know there are certain things like horrible traumatic things happening to children and car wrecks that would not fall into that category.  For the most part those are not the things we spend our time worrying about.  So write down there, “The thing I’m worried about (excluding those kind of universally horrible things) that the thing I’m worried about may be the best thing.”

Let me give you an example.  Twenty years ago when my wife, Tracey, kicked me out of the house and said, “I can’t stand to live with you any more.”  And by the way that’s the very best thing she could have done.  She was exactly right in that.  At the time I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.  I was angry.  I was depressed.  My self-worth went through the floor.  I thought “My life will never be the same.”  On and on and on.   Now, when I look back on my life, that might very well be the best things that ever happened to me.

I can tell you about 8 or 10 things like that where at the time I thought they were bad, but in hindsight I see that they were really good.  As I’ve talked with people and counseled with people, I can just tell you universally that we learn more and grow more from the things that don’t go the way we want them to go than from the things that do.  Write down there, “The thing I’m worried about or some version of it may be the best thing.”  In hindsight, maybe a week or year or five years later I will realize that it’s the best things.  You don’t know the answer to that one yet.  Be open to it.

The next one, relax.  You have done what you can do.  If you go through these steps, you have done what you can do.  Relax.  Leave it up to God.  Let go and let God.

Then trust that the best thing will happen.  Whether it is necessarily the thing I think is best or not, trust that the best thing will happen.

Then the last one – and this really should be the first one, because in my opinion it’s the most important.  Pray.  Instead of worrying pray.  Then go through these steps.  What I believe you will discover is that things will start to go much better for you.  You will worry less.  Your body will get out of illness and disease and stress state into peace.  Better things will start to happen.  You will experience a state of rest.  The more you do that, the better and better things will go.  Even the things that do not turn out the way you like, you will learn and grow from them and in hindsight see that God was working there, too and that was what needed to happen.

I believe if you go through these steps, and I’ve done it with person after person after person, you will see your hope return.  In that analogy of the studies they’ve done with the dogs and the electric shock in the cages, you will be able to get up and walk out of that room, walk out of that cage that you had yourself in, the cage of worry and be able to change your life in a positive way and you will start to see things happening the way they need to happen from a place of peace and rest and hope.