Hope Forward: Recent Episodes
w/ Matt and Pat
In this episode, Matt and Pat talk about hate and how it is appearing in families, cultures, politics, and societies today.
In this episode, Matt, Pat, and Ashton discuss "signs". Each shares their perspective on where they look for hope, and what signals they interpret indicating things are always going to end up ok.
Matt and Pat explore the path of wondering what is next, and how they think through moving forward into a hopeful place. Matt challenges Pat to think about "when" his fulfillment will arrive instead of "if" it will arrive. Matt suggests to listeners to challenge themselves to choose hope, and make baby steps towards what they find fulfilling.
In this episode Matt and Pat talk about the concept of Truth, how it relates to one's perceptions and also to factual evidence provided in situations.
Matt and Pat discuss shame, and how it's permeating through our American society due to a series of tragic events that have occurred recently and in the previous years.
This week Matt and Pat chat about wounds. When it comes to living your life to the fullest, it often means seeing your wounds and scars as things that shape you. As Matt describes it, "wounds are like chips off a stone block in the process of making a sculpture." However, not feeling through and exploring your wounds can sometimes hold you back, make you feel permanently injured, and feel hopeless to have or do more.
False pressure can just burn you out and keep you down. In this episode Matt and Pat talk about good pressure, false pressure, and how false pressure can keep you tired and make you feel hopeless.
In this week's episode Matt and Pat talk about Burnout, and not the kind that comes from going "full send" in a fancy sports car. Matt and Pat will dig into the feeling completely exhausted, unmotivated, and basically just hopeless about everything. To tie the episode off, Ashton (Matt's wife) joins the conversation and chats about what burnout looks like as spouse of someone who encounters burnout frequently.
Matt and Pat talk about rejection, how it eats away at your energy, hope, and purpose. In this episode Matt and Pat will share some of their personal stories, and dig into the various ways rejection has shown up in family systems, their religious communities, and day to day work.
In this episode Mat and Pat talk about Resilience, what it looks like, and how it feels in the moment of struggle. Resilience is substance, energy, and a state of being that helps you come back to your core beliefs... your purpose. Put short, resilience helps you fight for hope and keep it when you have it. Undoubtedly, we all will fall, fail at something, and be subject to unfair treatment. Resilience is what keeps you from deciding to stay on the ground, and instead get back up and endure. To be hopeful, you must be resilient.
A lot of times, the key to preventing feeling hopeless, or getting back on track with your purpose, is by revisiting your boundaries with others and your environment. Boundaries help push out toxicity, or other types of influences they may keep you in bad mental/emotional state. In this episode, Matt and Pat will talk about how they have used boundaries in their life to improve their mental state, lifestyle, and built healthy habits to keep themselves motivated and focused on what is most important... living a hopeful life.
A lot times when you feel hopeless or feel like you have lost your purpose, you are out of touch with yourself. As you move through life there are notable failures, misses, unjust treatments, and situations where you feel what Matt calls being "boxed in"; what you know as being trapped. What we fail to realize though is that we often put ourselves in that situation, or we slip into feeling like "everything is happening to me" and we give up our ability to influence/change our situation. Self-reflection is a tool that helps you sit with your situation, your pain, and your hopelessness. It allows you to draw into yourself, get in touch with the root cause of why you feel that way you do, and ultimately find ways to move yourself out of your hopelessness. We often forget that we have complete control over our hopelessness. That doesn't mean we always have immediate control to turn it on/off, but it does mean we have control on how we navigate ourselves out of it and into a more fulfilled and purpose focused life.
Purpose is one of the foundational elements of a happy and fulfilled life. For some purpose is a journey to achieve an end goal, serve a cause, or complete a mission. For others, it is simply just living out a high quality life. When you lose purpose, or feel like you do, often you end up feeling hopeless. In this state, daily living can become hard or frustrating. It can become difficult to make decisions, or to focus on the good things right in front of you. You may have lost your motivation to do even do small things you used to find enjoyable. In the worst case, all you see is life as a struggle. In these moments of deep exhaustion and despair it's important to develop mental fortitude.
In Hope Forward's first episode Matt and Pat discuss the concept of purpose, what it means, and how it applies to having hope. A lot of times when people get stuck, they start struggling with defining their "why", or ask questions that resemble a search for the "point" of things. Matt and Pat will dig into their experience in struggling with purpose, how they have either used religion or logic to help refine the meaning of their lives, and how they have redefined their purpose to move forward in life.