Raw Reflections From The Ruinous Jaws of Loneliness: My Ruffled Road to Audacious Hope

Turn on the news, scroll social media, or just walk down any street in our communities, and perhaps one feeling permeates: despair.

From catastrophic climate crises to rising violent attacks; financial precarity to humanitarian conflicts forcing displacement; political vitriol to public health fracturing, many problems can seem intractable, inevitable, insurmountable.

The magnitude of threats is bringing millions of people globally to their breaking points mentally, emotionally, spiritually. When systems fail people and the future brims with uncertainty, how do we muster motivation? Where can we find hope amid such overwhelming human suffering?

The answer lies within heartfelt human connection and audacious hope.

We’ve become a society of individuals caught up in building our “personal brands” instead of cultivating personal relationships that bring us hope.

I’m being honest.

I bought into this whole “personal brand” thing about eight years ago. During that time, “branding” Paula Smith was an exciting idea; it fed my ego and restless spirit.

When I landed in a business coaching group I had no idea what I was actually getting into. Truthfully, I was just lonely and seeking connection with like-minded professional women.

Loneliness can lead to poor decision making. The loneliness I felt trapped me in a myopic mindset. I felt a deep and pressing need to feel connected and understood, which made it difficult for me to see outside of my own perspective. My loneliness also made me impulsive, which led to making a rash decision to commit to a coaching program under the delusion that building “my brand” into a six-figure business would relieve my pain and loneliness. Of course, not everyone makes self-destructive choices amid loneliness, but most of us become so starved for empathic connection, we lose our objectivity and common sense when navigating such tricky terrain.

I gained useful insights during my time in the business coaching program, but some aspects failed to align me with my primary goal — emotional connection and understanding. I think this was because every woman in the coaching program was seen as either a potential client or competitor.

I was like, Oh fuck! But I had committed in the amount of 6K. So I rode the business coaching marketing machine of online data-base list-building, funnels, video-summits and campaigns to turn my “brand” into a six-figure business.

Here’s what I learned:

First, money and branding does not equal happiness. In fact, chasing wealth and fame undermines happiness. Chasing money fixates on gaining leverage in a broken system, yet it rarely addresses that brokenness.

Secondly, my personal pursuit of money and fame was dependent upon manufacturing an image that was divorced from my essence — thus presenting a two-dimensional façade that was gliding along the surface without resources that would help me plunge into the richer depths of emotional, spiritual and relational dimensions of my life. Which is what I was actually seeking, not building a “brand.”

After some time, I terminated my contract with the coach because the needs of my soul were still feverishly unquenched. It was a thirst that money was not going to fill.

The notoriety and pursuit of money feels innately insatiable for several reasons. First, attaining a level of status feels ephemeral — then the emotional high inevitably diminishes. We adapt to a new normal — whether it’s a boost in income or number of followers. Then, a restlessness for the next level of achievement sets in and psychological hedonic adaptation snatches the fulfillment.

We live in a culture that continually dangles the promise of contentment through higher visibility and ever-escalating prosperity. To an ambitious mind or restless spirit desperately seeking an oasis from discomfort with Self, that mirage forever hovers at the next income bracket.

Worldly validation cannot remedy internal void.

So what’s a “brand” without hope?

What’s it like to be the recipient of someone’s personal brand that sees you as a data point and instrument for profit rather than a person worthy of dignity? What’s it like to be the recipient of someone’s personal brand that is all superficial flash and exploits rather than empowers? What is like to be the recipient of someone’s personal brand that peddles pain-points rather than addressing real human needs or spreading solutions to life the collective whole. It is brand innovation for innovation’s sake — novel vanity over necessary vision.

A brand that lacks hope rarely challenges systems; mostly it entrenches them by maintaining malignant norms. Perhaps most tragically, a brand without hope undermines the imagination from which creative, unconventional solutions arise to address society’s greatest trials. When the only end goal rests on what profits us today — without considering the well-being of future generations — the possibility for hope crumbles.

Such a brand breeds conspiracy, complacency and not aspiration about humanity’s potential. It reframes the possible through status-quo lenses rather than pushing boundaries on equality, justice, sustainability.

Today, I propose a brand rooted in audacious hope. Audacious hope represents bold, courageous optimism based on radical mutuality and moral conviction — and a principal belief that no matter how bleak things appear, positive change emerges when ordinary people like you and I commit to extraordinary vision.

Audacious hope means refusing to abandon ambitious possibilities for society’s flourishing even when cynics and those living in an alternative reality dismiss them as unrealistic.

Audacious hope involves rejecting stagnant complacency about preventable suffering and instead tackling barriers head-on by any unconventional means necessary.

This brand of hope requires exercising imaginative empathy to see human potential beyond current limitations imposed by oppressive systems. It provides a compass oriented toward a view of tomorrow’s upward trend.

Rooted in love for humanity and moral conviction, audacious hope flows from emotional reservoirs deeper than circumstances alone could ever fill. It represents tenacious belief in our collective capacity to redeem society’s brokenness through united commitment to justice, liberation and dignity lifting all of us. Against towering odds, audacious hope persists.

The size of today’s challenges looms so large they threaten to engulf hope entirely. Still, hope lives undimmed inside each human heart moved to extend compassion through action. Our interconnectedness means one empathetic deed holds the power to ripple across communities and even throughout history.

So in this season of global trial and tribulation, let us choose audacious hope. Be the one dropping a coin in an expired meter before anyone gets a ticket; carrying those heavy grocery bags for your elderly neighbor; or checking in via text or phone call on people facing setbacks. Uplift art and music boosting morale. Send encouraging notes to activists. Vote to elect representatives aligned with justice for all.

With peace, love and audacious hope,

Dr. Paula