from Ken Hamilton, MD

I write this “how to” manual for you who would help others by serving as a guide to health and wellness through the way of HOPE It will help you develop the ability to perform the task for yourself, and to be able to share with others the belief that this way is open to all human beings. As I hope that this text will guide you, I hope that you will see yourself as a guide to others—not an expert—a guide.

I intend for you to learn how to help people to discover their own sources of health. As I learned to encourage people to share those discoveries, I became a guide for them... not a coach or therapist, but simply a guide—one who lives in a house by the side of the road and is a friend to all. I intend for you to be able to develop an atmosphere of heartfelt connections and hopefulness about all life that you can share with others. I will share with you the experiences of over eighteen years of working with groups of people looking for that which would give meaning to the rest of their lives.

You will learn how to use the hopeful words that all of us have learned to use. You will learn how to listen. You will learn how to be active and encourage activity—to draw people out. You will become a fellow-traveler; for, as a guide, you must be on the same journey as the others in the group. You will learn that this is a very important distinction between being a HOPE guide-coach and being a psychotherapist.

I intend this work to complement rather than to replace other therapeutic conventions. I do not expect you to become a therapist after reading this Guide. It is more reasonable to expect that you will learn to recognize a need for therapy when such a need exists, and you will encourage visits to the appropriate therapists. You will bring support to those who want to get out of the muck of their lives and learn ways of being more hopeful and healthy. You will become a coach in these ways, which come to us from the lives and practices of all successful people.

If you are a therapist, I encourage you to feel free to use this information in your work. However, should you decide to start a HOPE Group, I encourage you to leave your degrees and licensure at the door and enter with nothing other than your human experience.

The HOPE Group experience will help you to learn more about the wonderful diversity of life. It will confuse you with some new thoughts and ideas. That confusion is intentional because HOPE’rs have found that a root cause of their ills is “stuckedness,” and becoming confused about the value of those things we are stuck to leads to healthy changes. The seeming chaos of confusion is always the opportunity for an entirely new order of thinking and action to appear.

You will learn how to reframe and rephrase adversity—to create the new order. You will see that each one of us is a one-of-a-kind work of art; a once-danced dance, a once-told tale, a once-read poem, a once-sung song. You will become a duet with the other—an artist, a dancer, a storyteller, a poet, a singer—all by becoming a listener.

You will discover that failures exist only in the mind of the observer, and that all errors, failures, and mistakes are simply lessons. You will see that the answers to all problems do not exist at the level of the problem, but from above it. You will find out how to rise above problems into the realm of the answer. In this way, you will come to see how serious problems can become springboards to opportunity. You will learn, by personal and vicarious experience, the excitement of becoming committed to life not death or disease. You will learn how to check out the value of your own life commitments and direct them to be nurturing, developing forces in your own life. Enjoyment, peace, serenity, and bliss and happiness are parts of this process, and you will find them; so enjoy, please, and thank you for being here.