Hope can get you through those days boss is screaming at you.

Hope keeps you humming while you are walking down road because your car ran out of that last 50 cents worth of gasoline.

Hope keeps you in a good mood when other person got promotion, or raise that you really did deserve.

Hope provides an inner warmth when you are in cold scraping ice off your windows to get to work.

Hope provides a smile, even when only a dollar is left after paying essential bills, and kids want to go to McDonalds.

Hope gives you a spring in your step as you work at job that promised long lasting rewards, but only delivered a lifetime of bondage.

Hope takes you into a blissful state, when you feel 4 walls closing in from house that has held you captive with domestic duties.

Hope is a healthy drug, provided by our creator(s) that provides relief from physical, mental, and spiritual pain.

Hope is a comforter, when love of your life leaves you.

I have experienced all of these situations, as have most of you. But hope I held for my future helped to bring me through them. I want to help you have hope, this magical ingredient of life.

I will not provide promises of instant wealth and independence, because I cannot provide that. I know that you receive many offers of business opportunities that promise overnight riches. But even if that were true, I do not believe it is natural and good.

Studies of shown that 90% of all persons that come into immediate wealth are worse off financially, emotionally, and mentally after 5 years than before they received wealth. Why do you suppose this is?

I believe that nature must teach us self-discipline, self-respect, respect of other persons, respect of power, and many other things before we are given responsibility of wealth or independence. I have read dozens and dozens of biographies and autobiographies of successful persons, and I have learned that those that were happy and healthy with their wealth, obtained it over a period of time, not instantly.

They provided a product or service that was worth more than money they were charging, and they believed that what they were doing was for good of society. The main motivation was not money, but what they would be able to do to help, improve, build, and solve problems.

Because of experiences they had building their business they learned important character qualities that were necessary to handle wealth as it came naturally. The hard lessons were a blessing in long run, preparation for greater responsibilities.

But wealth that was provided almost instantly, was hope for future. Hope for a better living. Hope for recognition. Hope for love. Hope for many things important to them.

Did you know that our brains are full of cow paths? Robert Fritz begins his book _The Path of Least Resistance_, by explaining how streets of Boston were laid out; they do not seem to be result of any planning.

Long, long ago in Boston, grazing and wandering cows walked easiest paths they could find and, with each passing cow, these paths became more clearly defined and easier to follow. These cow paths became “plan” for Boston’s streets.

Fritz says, “As a result, city planning in Boston gravitates around mentality of seventeenth century cow.”

The thoughts that we have over and over form cow paths in our brains. Each repeated thought makes path more defined and easier. We think about not enough money frequently and not-enough-money path becomes easiest one to follow -- our thoughts just follow same old cow path. Same with thoughts of sickness and irritability and judgment and all breeds and brands of scarcity.

Perhaps your thought planning gravitates around mentality of old twentieth century you.

Once those cow paths get formed, they call to our thoughts, and lead them to places where our dreams can’t be seen. Our brains are riddled with deep furrows meandering through hard, caked, crusted dirt. How do we loosen up dirt into pliable, rich, fertile mud? We need to rain on our brain.

Mud, Marvelous Mud

Gratitude is rain that smoothes way for new paths. When storms of gratitude fall upon our brains, dry, stuck paths dissolve leaving mighty, moldable mud of potential. We can form new paths where our thoughts can dance on down new grooves of health, wealth, love, and creativity.