Kickstarting the Year Emotions: Hope + Despair 🥹 😩

Background

Emotions create unique experiences for each of us, and I find it ever-mystifying how some of us connect to certain emotions more readily than other emotions. When I lived and worked at Kalani Retreat Center on the Big Island, I co-led an Emotional Intelligence workshop series that ran weekly for 6 months, and it grew some beautiful connections. Our workshops aimed to creatively and experientially allow for the exploration of different emotions—and we did that through introspective and somatic practices, art and film. The idea was to inspire meaningful dialogue and surface rich internal conversations, co-creating this in a way that allowed everyone to learn from and with each other.

New: From Home Introvert’s Edition!

While the in-person experience can be lively, interactive and memorable, I’ve wanted to find a way to bring the introspective activities to more people. We focused on two emotions at a time in our original series. Continuing that format, we’ll focus on two emotions that feel especially tied to this time of year, and you can join us now from your couch, backyard, or wherever your wifi connection allows.

Diving into Hope + Despair

The transition to a new year can reveal expectations we have for ourselves, our relationships, our communities and perhaps also the country we live in. This early time of year has the potential to inspire renewed optimism in some aspects of our lives or to succumb to a feeling of powerlessness over those things that don’t appear to be going the way we desire. Now, one month into 2026, we’re experiencing the cumulative effect of whichever path we’ve leaned more into: optimism or powerlessness. And in this world at this time, a strong on-ramp to either one feels accessible at any given moment.

Let’s segue to Hope + Despair. Each of these reveals our mindset toward factors that are happening presently or that we believe may happen to our benefit or detriment. 

Hope is defined as “a cognitive process, not just a feeling, involving three key elements: setting realistic goals, figuring out multiple pathways to reach them, and believing in your own agency (ability to do it).”

Journaling prompts for contemplating hope:

Find a quiet place to think and spend a few minutes writing on the following:

• What gives you hope?

• What are you actively doing to cultivate hope?

Once you’re finished, take a moment to reflect. What did you notice about the difference between those two and what came up for you? Which of these lists came easier to you?

Esther Perel, a globally renowned psychotherapist specializing in relationships, shared her 4 Practices for Hopefulness in the New Year, which includes some thoughtful ideas, including creating a Record of Resilience. She invites us to “look back at what you have survived and write it down.” There are more layers to add to this for those interested to read her article. She suggests each of us “make a record of these stories that you can return to when you need an extra shot of hope.”

Brené Brown reminds us that “hope isn't developed in easy times but through challenges, disappointment, and vulnerability. In practice, hope is about action and thinking, not just wishing; it's the ability to create positive change.” So hope is proactive, a generative response to meeting hardship.

Despair, contrastingly, is defined as “a claustrophobic and heavy emotion, fundamentally characterized as the belief that ‘tomorrow will be just like today.’ It is a deep, systemic sense of hopelessness, distinct from anger or grief, that often leads to feelings of powerlessness and the urge to blame others."

Here’s an activity for meeting despair (if you’re feeling daring):

1. Bring to mind a time in your life when you felt despair, specifically a time that has already passed, and you’re now on the other side. If this feels like too much, it’s okay to take a pass. 

2. Find a method to draw. Maybe you have a pen handy, or love an excuse to bust out some markers or colored pencils. Please, artists, go as crazy as you like.

3. Draw the energy of despair, how you visualize it. It can be literal or abstract. Reconnect to the feeling enough to give it a shape.

4. Reflect on what you’ve created. What does this tell you or show you about despair that you didn’t know before or couldn’t fully see until now?

5. Take a moment to remember what got you through that time. What gave you strength when you needed it? Are some of those pathways or practices still available to you, should you need them in the future… or is there a chance to reconnect to them in your life today if you’ve lost touch?

My hope is that these small exercises offer a small dose experience of the types of open-ended questions that can reveal what’s happening in your inner landscape. If you try either of these practices and would like to share about your experience, feel free to drop me a line. 

May we cultivate hope when we can, and meet despair when it arrives with self-compassion and support. Thank you for being here.