Hello everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about hope in recent days, as we navigate an uncertain political path here in the UK, and as we come to the end of another year of our Professional Coaching Course. I don't mean hope as in the certainty that everything is going to be just fine: it's certain that many things in life won't work out as we'd like them to. I mean hope as that imaginative capacity that human beings have: the way we can invent and live into new possibilities for ourselves and others, and envision new ways to bring ourselves to the very same circumstances with renewed commitment, care, openness and creativity. 

The Professional Coaching Course is itself an enormously hopeful endeavour. It's based on the premise that people can and do change, if given sufficient community, truthfulness, love and support, and I always find it intensely moving and hope-inspiring to witness the courage, care and wisdom that develops in participants over the course of an entire year. 

I'm inspired in all this by the way Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic, wrote about hope during his years as a political prisoner in the 1980s. Havel wrote that hope “is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

And what we come to learn again and again through coaching others, and through the Professional Coaching Course, is that hope - like all human qualities - is not something we just have or don't have, but a quality we can cultivate with practice and attention.

Below are some resources that I hope might support you in your own inquiries on this topic.

Warmly, Justin

on behalf of us all at Thirdspace - Amanda, Justin, Lizzie, Neena and Sue

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