How does one stay motivated when there’s no hope?

No hope suggests that no path to peace/happiness seen by the person and the reality of the situation has not been accepted as it is. The primary reason of feeling hopeless is not the situation itself, it is the subjective reality of the person.

Another usage of no hope for example is as in no hope for survival, no hope for project success, no hope for some specific outcome to happen.

In life, sometimes the outcomes we expect happen, sometimes not. What is important is we are able to discover the peace and happiness within ourselves whatever life is throwing at us.

When we look at life from a place of separation, thinking that we are our body and we are the separate being that the story in our minds keep telling us; there really is ultimately no hope for the body, one day it will die and there really is ultimately no hope for the ego, this separate sense of self, one day it will die also.

But, this is not the whole reality. We are not limited to our body and our ego. When we can go to the depth of it we begin to realize our oneness with life.

The body may die, but the body of life continues to exist. We can get another body if we desire. And ultimately we are entire life, the entire body of life.

The ego will die, but we are not the ego. We are the totality of life. There is no separation. We can make peace with the fact that the ego is finite, mortal. Then we can experience peace even when the ego is not yet fully removed.

We are mortal from the perspective of the ego. But we are eternal from the perspective of our true selves.

When there is utter hopelessness, surrender to existence, surrender to truth, surrender to God. I am saying utter hopelessness, because eventually, it will come for the ego. When surrender happens, when truth starts to be experienced, hope will not be needed any more. The experience of truth will suffice on its own.

The desire for hope is a desire for peace and happiness at its core. The experience of truth, the experience of who we truly are, the experience of awareness and unconditional love satisfies these desires.

So, when there is no hope, just be accepting, just hold the space of awareness for whatever is happening, just be unconditionally loving. Hopelessness will be released from you when you are able to truly experience this, because hopelessness is something that you had created within yourself in ignorance, and now you are removing your ignorance by allowing yourself to experience truth as it is.

As for achieving specific outcomes such as survival or achieving something in life, these happen only when the conditions are there for them to happen. Plant your feet on the ground and truly work to create the conditions of what you truly desire to create. Only then you can achieve the results. And even when you can’t, when you haven’t yet developed the mastery to create the conditions, you will always have the experience of your true self and be able to experience peace if you keep focusing on your true self. And you can always try again (not always in a single lifetime, but from a Soul level)