
EVEN IN PRISON HOPE CAN BE LIFE ALTERING
Claritypoint coach, Kristena Eden, interviewed an inmate from the Utah State Penitentiary recently to talk about hanging on to hope (since prison is a place where life often feels hopeless). These are some other key principles that came to light:
1. Keep believing there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Allow room in your heart for
dreaming about better times. It is easy to let our dreams go because we just feel they are
impossible or we are not good enough to accomplish them. But take a look around your world
today. All the amazing technology and the conveniences we now enjoy were at one time thought
to be impossible. If you can dream, then you can hang onto hope.
2. Give sincere encouragement to others. This is a big one. Giving encouragement to others is
one of the greatest ways to validate them and make them feel valued. You don’t have to agree
with what they are choosing in their life, but a few minutes to just ask questions and listen to
them can make a world of difference. When other people feel that you care about them, they feel
better and you do too.
3. Replace destructive thoughts with positive ones. Your thoughts are the building blocks of
your quality of life. Your thoughts become feelings, so you want to monitor your thinking and
recognize when negative thoughts show up, you have the power and agency to embrace them or
replace them.
4. Be an overcomer, not just a survivor. A survivor is still a victim, an overcomer is a victor who
understands it was just a lesson and you were meant to get through. Overcomers don't complain
about the hardship forever because they leave it in the past.
5. Focus on gratitude. It doesn’t matter how bad things seem, they could be worse. There are
always things to be grateful for. Sometimes it’s things you are grateful you don’t have as much
as for what you do have.
6. Keep your confidence, you are meant to overcome this. You are not in this place to fail or be
crushed. You are here to grow and meant to find solutions, courage and strength to get through.
The answers you need are around you somewhere, but they may require work and effort to find
and only when your lesson is done. For now stay solution focused and ask for help from every
resource and person that shows up in your path. Email her: kim@lifeadviceradio.com