Most of us see hope as something that gets us through difficult times but psychologists are discovering that in fact it can help us succeed in our everyday life. And we can learn how to cultivate it!
Do you recall looking for your perfect home here in Spain and viewing over 40 properties and feeling you have spoken with every estate agent in the town as well as those out of town? Taken advice from colleagues, friends, relatives as well as strangers on the street in attempt to find what you are looking for. You feel exhausted and are beginning to believe that what you require actually doesn’t exist. You are about to throw the towel in and stay where you are, as you begin to convince yourself the alternative was just a dream. But despite this, there remains a nagging doubt, just a fault line flicker, an avenue unpursued – maybe hope – you give it one last shot. You do one more search and there it is! Just what you have been looking for!
Hope means many things to many people. To some it is an incantation, to others it is fate or superstition; whilst to others it is a religion, culture or outward belief to keep on believing despite the odds. Psychologist CR Snyder states “It’s exhilarating when you meet high hopeful individuals, how they think about life is infectious and they leave trails of energy and positive feelings wherever they go.”
We all know someone like that and possibly all aspire to be like that. Maybe the only difference between these inspiring, uplifting and positive people and Joe Average is they never give up on hope. On a personal level I believe high hopers procrastinate less, have less depressive symptoms and according to studies, have a higher pain threshold (twice in fact) than their less hopeful peers.
It’s important to remain realistic whilst being hopeful and that means facing the obstacles that might come up and formulating a plan to deal with them. As Snyder states, hope has two components: a map or pathway to get what you want and the motivation and strength to follow that pathway. Winston Churchill wrote: “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm,” I say to my clients, not that I compare myself to Winston or Snyder, but there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. I believe the difference between getting stuck and getting there is only a mindset. It has also been suggested that hope is different to optimism, which is a generalized expectancy that good things will happen, whereas hope in fact involves having goals, along with the desire and plan to achieve them.
Hope therapy focuses on looking at individual’s strengths and how to build on them in order to help people live up to their full potential. It differs from other therapies in that it looks more on simply learning to change a mindset, without much examination of what caused the negative mindset in the past.
The good news is that hope is something that can be developed in all of us. It involves learning from people who are doing very well and figuring out what hopeful people are doing right. And the great news is it seems to work – we can teach people how to be more hopeful.