You really need to make this trip, just like you really need to live your life, so you organize your emotional approach and go for it.

The degree to which hope is present in the perspective is determined by the experience of the past. In the three-part model of memory, intellect and will, memory is the place where all experience is contained and "remembered." Remembering can be actual remembrance, but more often it takes the shape of unnoticed thought patterns or behavior. It's the impression or echo of past experience repeated in our current interactions with reality. 

Distortions of the memory fall into two categories. First, the memory can be filled with actual negative or damaging experiences. More insidious are the potentially neutral or even positive experiences that were distorted as they came in through the cluttered intellect and stored in the memory as negative. In this way, self hate begets self hate. Self doubt begets self doubt. This ongoing distortion is an after effect of genuine negative experience. It's like a reverberation taking place in the perspective and it continues to run on until we do something about it. 

Hope is the discipline by which the clutter of the memory is cleared out. By exercising hope you can redirect the energy of your mind in a positive direction, a constructive direction that leads to peace and prosperity. In this respect, hope pertains to the past, because your outlook is based on past experience. 

It's very important to distinguish hope from hopes. Hope can save your life. Hopes can kill you. But hope is there to keep you grounded with respect to particular hopes because it's a means of relating to distinct possibilities. If you're trying to get a job, you have a particular hope. If you don't relate to this hope in a constructive way, you'll not only be devastated if you don't get the job, but your experience of life up until that moment will be grounded in an illusion, and therefore pass you by. By applying the discipline of hope, as opposed to entertaining hopes, you take stock of your attitude and ensure that it is not being influenced by past experiences. You hope for the best, for a particular outcome, without investing in it your identity or sense of well being. 

Where faith is like a method for navigation, hope is more of a particular point on the map. Where faith is a preparedness and willingness for whatever comes, hope pertains more to the specifics, it's a response to a particular detail. So, for example, when taking a road trip, you would exercise faith because you don't know how to get where you're going, and you would exercise hope because you've only got a quarter tank of gas. You really need to make this trip, just like you really need to live your life, so you organize your emotional approach and go for it. 

And that's what this three-part model is for: organizing your emotional approach, clarifying your perspective, knowing where you're coming from, working with what you've got. Of course there is a lot of overlap between faith and hope. You can always use the butt of a screw driver to drive a nail, or the claw of a hammer to open a paint can. But regarding faith and hope as tools, each with their own best use, can be amazingly helpful. 

Although hope is a means of organizing your relationship with the past so that it does not hamper your future, it does this by helping you reenter the now. The future does not flow from the past. The future flows from right now. That's why it's so important, more important than anything, to be grounded. No matter how bright your prospects all you really have is right now. The truth is, the future does not exist no matter how well you prepare for it. 

Real preparation, really aiming for your targets in life requires a clear understanding of who you really are. With the discipline of hope you can remove the hinderances of the past that clog the memory with fear and doubt. This takes a burden off the future. It will leave you focused, undistracted, quick to respond to opportunity and able to recognize it when it comes. It will allow you to genuinely believe that the best can happen and will leave you open to extraordinary possibility. And it is not possible to be open to possibility, except through hope in the now. 

Ever forward.