About a year ago, on NPR’s “This American Life,” I heard the story Louann Mims, a 78-year-old Hurricane Katrina survivor who floated through her flooded home for eight days on an extra firm Sterns and Foster mattress. Before the levees broke, she went out on her patio to have some cereal and a banana. After two bites, she saw water seeping toward her patio. She rushed into her home and discovered that murky water was also surging through the front door.

She was trapped. She soon realized that her mattress was the only thing that would float. She grabbed her ladder and climbed up onto the mattress, paddled into her kitchen and got herself some juice, cheese and raisins. She had a just little bit of each every morning, and in the afternoon, when she felt hunger pains, she tried to ignore them. It wasn’t much food, but it was enough.

When she was asked if she ever felt like nobody was going to come for her, she said that she just knew somebody would eventually find her. When asked how she kept her spirits up as she floated through her demolished home, she admitted that she was an avid fan of HGTV.

As she floated through her ranch home, she realized that not much could be saved.

So she started to mentally redecorate. She imagined herself replacing her Formica counters with marble, and her carpeted floors with hard wood. As she envisioned her transformed home, she said to herself, “Ohhh, that looks pretty good.”

Later, as she reflected on her eight days of redecorating she said, “I was motivating myself.” She held onto hope by dwelling in possibility.

Although many of us haven’t braved such extreme circumstances — all of us feel helpless from time to time. Here are a few ways to coax hope from hopelessness.

Focus on the Cans

In every circumstance — even the most difficult ones, there are things that we can do, little things that can make a big difference. When we can’t actually change our circumstance, we do well to adjust our perceptions and expectations.

Louann Mims may have survived the flood simply because she kept her mind focused on what she could do instead of what she could not. Even from her soggy mattress, she could make decisions about how to ration the little food she had and she could take concrete steps rooted in her goal to survive.

Sometimes we have ambitious goals — we tell ourselves, for example, that we’ll write an entire paper this evening. Or we plan to file our taxes in a stretch of two hours. But then, our throat begins to feel a little scratchy, and our head is begins to pound. After a quick online search we diagnose ourselves with the Bubonic Plague and resign ourselves to bed for the next week.

Instead of becoming overwhelmed by goals that were too large to begin with, we can focus on the things that we can do in any given situation. Maybe we can’t write an entire research paper in single sitting, but could we write a few pages? Could we tackle 500 words? By focusing on small, manageable goals we’re better able to stay focused. After tackling the small ones, we often find the courage to take on the larger ones.

Laugh at Yourself

After surviving her ordeal, Louann Mims was able to laugh at herself. During those long days of floating on the mattress, she comforted herself with the thought that if nothing else, her raisin, cheese and orange juice diet would help her lose a few pounds. When she had a physical, she chuckled at her own disappointment over the fact that she hadn’t lost an ounce.

Our own lives offer lots of opportunity for humor. For me, this ninth month of my second pregnancy has vacillated between comedy and a tragedy. Recently, I was juggling several work deadlines. I really wanted to chip away at them, but there was an unanticipated glitch in my plan — my 5-year-old daughter was home sick with a cold. Not a sleepy kind of cold, of course, but the less preferable wide-awake needy strain. For about 48-hours, she summoned me to her bed every ten minutes with a shrill, “MAAAA-MAAA.” She was like an alarm clock set to snooze; only I never could find her “off” button.

In light of these interruptions, I had to adjust my expectations. I decided to try to focus on something I could do instead of all those things I could not do. I prepared a bill for the mail, feeling relieved that I was at least accomplishing something. But as I headed for the door, envelope in hand, I looked down and saw that I had neatly affixed postage stamps to both the upper right and left corner of the envelope.

As I stared at that envelope I began to laugh — for the first time in a few days. It was like taking a deep breath after several shallow ones. As I gently pulled one stamp off, I reminded myself that as long as I can keep laughing at myself life will always be amusing. Then, I flipped the envelope over and realized that not only had I used two postage stamps, but I had attached them to the bottom of the envelope.

Open Your Eyes

Louann Mims kept hope by seeing possibilities where others would only see murky water. Often, the more painful life becomes, the more prone we are to retreat into ourselves and to see only our own difficulties — they can obscure our view of all that is hopeful.

But as we open our eyes and see what surrounds us, we are sometimes able experience bursts of gratitude, even when we feel most hopeless and alone. Sometimes, when we really try to see what surrounds us, we find little things to rejoice in. Today I bought a latte at a coffee shop. As I waddled down a busy downtown street, freezing wind whipping my hair, I kept glancing into that coffee cup. The barista had managed to create a fernlike swirl in the froth — turning a mere latte into drinkable art. That little spot of beauty and the warm coffee in my hands helped as I struggled against the wind and my late pregnancy breathlessness and aches.

Learn to Sit

Louann Mims was forced into a kind of stillness that few can imagine. But stillness is something we all need more of. As Mother Teresa wrote, “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grow in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence … we need silence to be able to touch souls.”

As we struggle to find our way through situations that make us feel helpless, we need to take time to rest in God. Those silent moments can become a source of strength and clarity. As it says in Isaiah 30:15, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”

The article was originally published on Boundless Webzine (link) - and the article image is provided courtesy of Boundless.