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