Hope can be a slippery thing. No sooner have you taken hold of it than it vanishes from sight. Yet, hope is essential to life. Without it, the best we can do is survive (hopeless living - not really living at all). Countless times each day we are presented with opportunities to choose between surviving and thriving. All too often we allow the circumstances of life to make that choice for us. And circumstances always choose surviving over thriving. Circumstances first try to gain control of your emotions through fear. This gives it the power to control your decisions and rule your life. Before you know it, you are surviving in a small dark world that your fears have created for you. It doesn't have to be this way. With each circumstance, the ability to choose to thrive is always there (it's just that fear sometimes blinds us from that option). But no one else can make that choice for you. In fact, others will tend to choose survival for you. Only you have the power to say no to your circumstances and find the life you need to truly live. All it takes to overpower the circumstances of your life is courage. In fact, it doesn't require much courage at all - just enough to resist the temptation to cave into the circumstance of the moment. As you resist, fear looses its power and the doorway to thriving is opened to you. Toward the end of your life you may look back over at the circumstances you are facing now. In that moment, you will realize how meaningless they really were. Although they seem all powerful now, they really don't hold any power over you. They do not dictate who you are and the choices available to you (although that is their false claim). The choices before you are not nearly as limited as fear would have you believe. You are greater than your circumstances. You hold the power to break circumstance's control over your life, emotions, and decisions. No matter how bad things get, you have the power to rise above them. No matter how dark circumstances become, hope is always nearer to you than you can see. The challenging circumstances will always be there, but you don't have to allow them to dictate your emotions and choices. As you look back over your life someday, do you want to realize that you lived your whole life in fear when doing so gave you no advantage over you circumstances; indeed, the only thing that fear and worrying can do for you is rob you of life. 
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