Fear drains the colour from our world, hope paints it back.
Fear is used in such a controlling way in our world…..it’s the major tool used to produce conformity, uniformity, compliance, and obedience. Yet no life can be lived without hope.
Every day that’s my job….to help dispel fear, and instill hope.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Thank you, Andrea
Love this, How do you sell this philosophy in healthcare? By example?
Another gem in the same genre – a notice seen in a Doctor’s surgery -“Destroying hope is malpractice please tell us if this has affected you.”
Yes, I guess I’d say, by example…..but I do find a significant number of people I see are stuck in despair, and showing them how change is inevitable, and how they can engage with creating change, increases hope. I also find that teaching people to turn their attention to the present and away from the future what if this, what if that, reduces fear.
But mostly I think focusing on health making as opposed to disease control or disease avoidance cracks wide open the fear/hope issue, firmly shifting the agenda to hope
Perhaps we also need to emphasize the Health Service not the Disease service. As you say Bob, focus on health making; maybe stop wholesale advertising of disease symptoms? Advertise healthy emotional lifestyle? Not easy!
I’d like to explore that “Not easy!” – can you say more? Can you say what the difficulties are, what the obstacles are, to shifting from a focus on disease to health in health care?
I read this today, an extract from Anne Frank’s diary, written just before her death in the Bergen Belsen Camp: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news.” Painting hope where people are afraid, which each of us in our own way can do.
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