Hope and Hard Work

Dreams are fantastic.  I don't mean those night time visions.  I am talking about our day time dreams of what we would love to see changed.  Those kind of dreams drive people to incredible accomplishments.  I have had a dream to bring together the business leaders of Belconnen Town Centre for about 3 years now.  It was one of my goals last year that never got short-listed.  I hoped that it would happen, but it didn't.  I didn't put in the hard work.

It takes hope and hard work to pull off dreams in the social entrepreneur sector.  No matter what you believe about the concept of hope -- that it is drawing upon the power and assistance of a supreme being or it is adding positive thoughts to bring about substantial change -- hope is necessary for the accomplishment of social enterprises.  We believe in the project, we believe in ourselves and we believe that the change we are bringing is vital to the future.  Hope is our mind, will and emotions accepting that belief on  a day-to-day, moment-by-moment, continuum.

Hard Work is as vital to the success of social enterprise.  Any project that has as its goal the meeting of some need or issue in society that has been untouched will require arduous labour.  Presently I am visiting all the businesses in the Town Centre and while it's not killing me it's hard work.  In fact, though people who may know me may be surprised at this, I don't enjoy it.  I don't like doing cold-turkey visits, I don't like, for the 200th time, saying my name, my project, my purpose and my invite, I don't like the feeling of vulnerability that comes everytime I step through an unknown doorway.  But I do the hard work knowing that my dream is being accomplished.  And I like that!

The opposite of hope is not despair.  In social entrepreneur circles the opposite of hope is cynicism.  Cynicism is that which says "this will never work and my dream will not come about and this hard work is useless".  Cynicism are those negative thoughts which attack our dream in all points from questioning motives to declaring futility.  Cynicism says that nothing will work to bring about our dream.  Cynicism makes the hard work even harder.

The opposite of hard work is not laziness.  The opposite of hard work is false hope.  False hope says "I don't really have the time and energy to pull off what I know I must do, I will hope that the project succeeds."  And we actually believe that statement.  We actually believe that for some reason everything we dream about will fall into our laps like a winning lottery ticket found on the street.  The opposite of hard work is believing my hopes, my thoughts and prayers and magical formulas, will bring about the fulfilment of the goals without the struggle and trouble and pain.

So what do we do?  Give up hoping?  Never be cynical or critical of our project?  No, we must find and maintain the balance.  We hope as if that's all there is and work as if hope doesn't matter.  These two, overlapping, will bring us to the place where our projects succeed and our dreams come true.

I'm off to visit more businesses soon.  This is going to work and my dream will come to fruition.  I just know it.

Ronaldo