“The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate
Generally, we know the word “hope” as a feeling that things will work out or that an event or experience will turn out for the best. Many people characterize hope as an emotion.
Hope, the concept of having hope and living in hope are also strongly represented in most major religions and holy books. Many teach their followers that there is always hope and the possibility that things will change when you call on a higher power.
Join Us for Our MTtalk Chat on Twitter
What: #MTtalk
Where: Twitter
When: April 22 @1pm ET (5pm GMT / 10:30pm IST)
Topic: Hope: Motivator, Comfort or Curse?
Host: @Mind_Tools
Hope: Doing or Feeling?
A Story of Hope
I love stories about people who have overcome adversity or, against the odds, survived life-threatening situations. The common thread that runs through all these stories, is hope.
Recently, I heard the story of four American rock-climbers – Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, John Dickey, and Jason Smith – who were taken hostage in Kyrgyzstan in August 2000 while on a rock-climbing expedition.
During their six-day ordeal, the climbers thought during one incident, that soldiers from Uzbekistan saw them and their hostage-takers. Beth Rodden, only 20 at the time, was convinced that the soldiers had noticed her. She thought they’d realize that they were being held against their will, and would come and rescue them. That single moment gave Beth hope – and the strength to carry on when she was weak, dehydrated and numb with fear.
After the climbers had tried to plot an escape from their captors for days, two of the captors left to find food. Seizing the opportunity, Tommy Caldwell pushed the third captor off a cliff (he survived the fall), they escaped and were then rescued by Uzbek soldiers.
Our Relationship With Hope
During my post-graduate studies, I learned to use ecometric assessments as a diagnostic tool in therapy. Many people are familiar with psychometrics – the measure of personality for diagnostic purposes. Ecometrics has to do with the quantification of the degree of balance between people and their environment. It focuses on the way people adapt to their environments.
All elements in an ecometric assessment are measured on two levels: how a person feels about it on the inside, and what they display externally. One of the constructs we measure is the degree to which a person feels hopeful or hopeless, and how much it reflects in their behavior.
Balancing Hope and Hopelessness
Here’s the interesting thing: there needs to be a balance between the two. If hopefulness (positive expectation) is absent or very low, we know that a person is in danger of becoming depressed and/or experiencing feelings of despair.
However, if a person’s hopelessness (negative expectation) scale measures zero, it’s very likely that the person has unrealistic expectations or that they’ve disconnected from reality.
One part of the equation keeps us grounded, the other gives us buoyancy. In the case of the rock climbers, having hope kept them going. Not having an unrealistic hope that they’d escape unharmed while being guarded by three armed men with nothing to lose, kept them alive.
Defining Hope
I mentioned earlier that many people understand hope to be an emotion. But is it purely something we feel? Or does it perhaps equal actions driven by certain emotions?
The concepts of hope and forgiveness intrigued the positive psychologist, C. R. Snyder (1944 – 2006). He published numerous articles and six books about the impact hope has on people’s lives.
Snyder’s Hope Theory posits that hope consists of three parts, namely: goals, pathways, and agency. These parts all have one thing in common: an element of doing. Let me explain:
- Setting a goal means deciding (not wishing) to achieve a particular desired result within a certain time frame. It usually entails writing it down in detail, drawing up action plans and deciding how to measure your progress.
- Pathways refer to figuring out different ways to achieve your goals. This implies having a flexible mindset so that if one way doesn’t work, you’ll think of and develop an alternative way of reaching your goal.
- The ability to make choices that will help you to achieve your goals and feeling that you have control over your actions and their consequences, gives you agency.
Although this shows that hope is mostly a cognitive function, there is also a part of hope that can’t be boxed and labeled so neatly.
I’ve often described the intangible feeling of hope as “the champagne bubbles in my heart.” There’s nothing logical about that! That has, in part, been learned, and I’m probably also genetically programmed to be hopeful and optimistic.
The four rock climbers had to have had the feeling of hope. However, they did not sit back and just hope that a miracle would happen. They had a goal, pathways and agency – even in the face of a situation that they had little control over.
When and Why We Need Hope
In life, all of us will experience two types of events: situations we can control and situations we can’t. We mainly become acquainted with hope through adversity – we get to know it intimately when we struggle. But that doesn’t mean that it has no function in good times.
When things are easy and we feel in control, having hope increases our intrinsic motivation, enhances our performance, and helps us to view setbacks as temporary challenges, not permanent roadblocks. It also has a positive influence on our overall life satisfaction and general wellbeing.
Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor imprisoned in four different death camps, wrote about his relationships with hope in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
One of the messages I took from this book is that in difficult and desperate times, you must find a) something to focus on that will help you feel purposeful and, b) something you can control. Having purpose gives you hope, and having hope increases your will to be purposeful and your ability to make meaning of what is happening to you.
If you don’t have hope in difficult times, there’s a real danger of moving into a zone of hopelessness, helplessness, and despair. If today is horrible and you believe that all your tomorrows will be the same as today, what’s the use of trying to think or do differently?
Hope will make you look for a way to overcome this despair and escape the bad situation you find yourself in. What, for example, would have happened to the four climbers if they sank into total despair and had no hope? Would they even have tried to make a plan?
Bad Hope
Hope is to the heart what oxygen is to the lungs, so how then can there be “bad” hope?
“Good” hope is a realistic feeling of belief and optimism. “Bad” hope is an unrealistic, broken crutch that supports magical thinking.
Giving another person false hope because you don’t want the truth to hurt them or giving yourself false hope by being in denial will only cause more hurt and confusion down the line.
In his book, Viktor Frankl wrote about prisoners who believed that the war would end at a certain date – without any logical reason or evidence. They gave themselves and others false hope. He witnessed, more than once, how the passing of these mystical dates and the continuation of war, caused some people to give up all hope and die within a few days.
Giving and Getting Hope
We give others hope by sharing the good parts and difficult parts of our own stories and how we overcame adversity. We gain hope by listening and understanding what’s possible for ourselves.
Offering your support and letting a person know they’re not alone is another way of giving hope. You gain it by showing vulnerability and allowing yourself to rely on others’ support.
Sometimes, simply holding space for someone and sitting with them in their pain, will give them hope. You can gain hope by accepting the connection and space that you’re being offered.
Giving hope can be taking one step at a time to achieve a goal. Gaining hope can be completing that next step you need to take to achieve your goal.
What Hope Means to Me
Hope is the first drops of rain on parched earth after a searing drought.
Hope is remembering how, in a painful experience, I dropped to the floor in anguish, crying – hoping that things would get better. They did (eventually).
Hope is having a head full of ideas – it’s making plans, asking for help, learning new skills.
Hope is smiling through my tears.
What Does Hope Mean for You? Motivation, Comfort or Curse?
In our upcoming #MTtalk Twitter chat we will be exploring the topic of hope from different angles. So please come and join us in our safe discussion space!
In our Twitter poll this week, we wanted to know which one of the given words people most strongly associate with the word “hope.” Seventy percent of participants voted for “optimism,” while only fourteen percent voted for “adversity.” To see all the options and results, please click here.
We’d love you to participate in the chat. The following questions may spark some thoughts in preparation for it:
- What do you see in your mind’s eye when you hear the word “hope”?
- How does hope motivate you?
- What are the dangers of hopelessness?
- Why shouldn’t you give someone false hope? Or is it sometimes justified?
- Which people, places, or things give you hope? Why?
- What has made a difference for you: feeling hope, or taking action because of it?
Useful Resources
To help you prepare for the chat, we’ve compiled a list of resources for you to browse. (Note that you will need to be a Mind Tools Club or Corporate member to see all of the resources in full.)
Top 10 Personal Morale Boosters
Gable’s Four Responses to Good News
How to Join the Chat
Follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the action this Friday! We’ll be tweeting out 10 questions during our hour-long chat.
To participate, type #MTtalk in the Twitter search function. Then, click on “Latest” and you’ll be able to follow the live chat feed. You can join the chat by using the hashtag #MTtalk in your responses.
The post Having Hope: Motivator, Comfort or a Curse? – Join Our #MTtalk appeared first on Mind Tools Blog.
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