I don’t have to tell you, hope is a rare commodity in the world today. Its opposite, despair, seems to have gained the upper hand.

Yet everything good starts with hope. This country was founded on hope; it has endured because of hope; our greatest leaders in every sector are those who give us hope.
 
 With hope everything is possible. Hope breeds optimism and positive energy; positive energy breeds the kind of resolve that causes heroic effort. Heroic effort creates results - even miracles.
 
Many of us are tired of feeling beaten down, tired of being right about how wrong it is, tired of the mindset that relentlessly demands to know, "How bad could it get?"  We’re ready to ask that all-important question: "How good could I make it"?

Of course, it’s hard. If it weren’t hard, we’d already have done it. But as it turns out, this is exactly the right time – not a moment too soon or a moment too late –  to give a wink and a nod to hope as we cross the threshold into a new year.  Here are just a few thoughts to give a little spring to that first step:

1. Tap into the power of positive expectations. When we expect good things to happen, they do. When we expect good people to show up, they do. When you expect good news, it comes.
 And that holds true whether you're going for a job interview, pitching a new idea or meeting that guy from eHarmony.  If you walk in with a "this is gonna be great; you're gonna love what I'm selling; hey, maybe we can work some magic together" attitude, you can change the outcome from skeptical to sold. Sure, hard stuff, bad stuff happens, but in the end, we get pretty much what we expect from people – and from life. Expect the best.

2. You deserve it to be good, not bad. This is the perfect time of year to remember how good you are; that you really are worthy of the best things happening; not the worst. To prove it to yourself do what our family does every New Year's. We take a look back at our "defining moments" from the year before: those times when we pulled it out of the fire, when we said "yes" when "no" would have been easier, when we fell down and got back up – or when we  just kept going. You'll find you've got the energy and optimism you need to move forward.

 3. Don’t wait! You’ll love this story: A woman recently wrote a blog on throwoutfiftythings.com where she described how she'd been traveling in the southwest and had driven past a lovely, old church. In front of the church was a sign that read: "If you've been waiting for a sign, this is it." It hit her straight in the heart. She couldn't wait to get back home and start doing all the things she'd put off while she was waiting for "things to get better," of for "light at the end of the tunnel" or yes, for the "sign" to get herself out of the stands and back onto the field.

Maybe you've been waiting for a sign, too. If you have, this is it. It's a brand new year and anything is possible…with hope.

Gail Blanke’s Lifedesigns©2009 All Rights Reserved