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One of my favourite quotes is from Maya Angelou. She says,

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Doesn't it feel great when someone genuinely asserts, "I love you!"? My favourite, though, is not love, it is belief. When someone says, "I believe in you!" I feel like doing even more 'stuff' for them to believe in!

My mission, nowadays, is to make people feel great in three specific areas:

Faith

Hope

Love.

I'm told the greatest of these is love, but I choose not to tell everyone I meet that I love them! What I do want to do is make sure I leave them feeling loved – or at least valued and respected.

If I can have an encounter with you where I leave you convinced that I believe in you, that's an awesome achievement. Several people have given this gift to me over the years, and it's the main one I love to pass on. People are amazing, and, even more amazingly, they so often don't see this! Helping the scales fall from their eyes so that they can recognise their potential is the best vocation on the planet!

Then there's hope. This is such a precious gift. Again, for me, it's about convincing someone that there is a better, brighter, bigger, and bolder future ahead of them. The way is unlikely to be easy, but the results will be worth it. It's what many people call 'faith' – a belief in the future – but it's really the accurate definition of 'hope'. Faith says, "I believe in you now." Hope says, "I believe you have a bright future."

Of course the older we get, the tougher the hope challenge can be. Let's be fans of realistic hope. I may 'wish' I had the health of a 20-year-old, but that's not realistic. True hope isn't wishful thinking. Rather, true hope is a compelling vision to do with the yet unseen (in the evidential world) and future.

Moodscope is a powerful means to a hopeful future. Those of us who have travelled together for a few years have seen one another survive and even learn to thrive. It's a rocky road with many diversions, valleys, and tough hills to climb... but we've survived so far!

Hope is a vulnerable area for those who are feeling despair – hope's opposite. We can go a long, long way toward helping one another if we can alleviate many of the fears of the future that are the enemies of hope. Our blogs can be a channel of comfort into one another's lives.

Why am I sharing all this? I'm sharing this because I think focusing on how you leave others feeling is a worthwhile and noble way to invest your time and energy.

If we can leave others believing more in themselves, hopeful about the future, and loved, respected, and appreciated – well then, that's a great purpose to pursue.

Let's try it today, and notice what happens. I'm going to make it my goal to leave at least one person more hopeful about their future, confident in their abilities in the present, and loved regardless of their performance.

Lex

A Moodscope member.