The importance of being hopeful

As far back as the Greek myth of Pandora, hope has been seen as the beacon of light fighting the ills of the world. Hope is energising. The belief that the future can be better than the present is the fuel that makes change possible. I’m the first to admit that hope takes a bashing when the going gets tough but the great news is that there are ways to actively rebuild our hope stores and use them as a driver for the changes we want to make in life. 

The hope circuit

In the 1960’s psychologists Martin Seligman and Steve Maier developed the concept of learned helplessness. This theory essentially said that events can teach us that nothing we do matters and thereafter we can become passive and lack control. This remained a popular theory for decades. 

More recently, Maier re-examined that initial work using modern brain monitoring techniques. He concluded that the initial theory was backwards – that actually the default response of mammals to prolonged troubles is helplessness. We instead learn control and mastery and can thus override the default route to helplessness. 

In his 2018 biography, Seligman named this the hope circuit: ”… a top-down structure that learns mastery over bad events. We can learn – and teach – that future bad events will be controllable, and this will buffer us against helplessness and anxiety.” 

Building hope

Psychologist Rick Snyder’s hope theory suggests that hope is essentially goal oriented. He terms it “the essential process of linking oneself to potential success”. When we are hopeful, we have a goal, believe we can make things happen to move towards it and are more able to identify multiple paths to our target destination. We also have more energy and perseverance on the journey towards it.

Shane Lopez built on Snyder’s work in his book “Making Hope Happen” and describes three basic steps for building hope:

• Envision a specific goal in detailed technicolour. This provides direction and an endpoint for hopeful thinking. Visualisation techniques, journaling or vision boards may be helpful here to really make the goal come to life.
• Create the pathway to your goal. Brainstorming is a useful tool here. Design a route to success with mile markers and check-in points to keep you on track. 
• Plan for setbacks. Consider potential barriers and alternative pathways. Create when/then scenarios – if X happens you will do Y. If you commit to one path, one route, one solution then when roadblocks appear it can be the end of the journey. Adaptability, flexibility and seeing multiple routes to your end goal is key.

Hope is not a finite resource. Snyder found people with high hope: Minimise negative issues; look outward and problem solve; call on friends; laugh; and take care of their health. This suggests lots of concrete actions that less hopeful individuals can take to build hope levels and thus make that positive future more likely to become reality. 

“If we have a vision and plan for the future, we can’t help but be pulled forward by life, even when our present betrays us.” – Shane Lopez