Before there is change, there is hope for change. Hope taps into
yearnings to alter our lives, to realize our dreams, end our despair, assure our
luck, achieve our desires, validate our ambitions, or confirm our trust. The
meaning of hope can, for some, also be stretched to include wishful thinking,
greedy obsessions, lust, gullibility, blind faith, false promises, or ignorance
of unwanted consequences. Hope, when expressed in these extremes, can hurt
others when it disregards realities, overlooks pain and sacrifice, or blocks
flexibility. The importance of hope in our lives is that it is one key to
personal change. We rarely seek change without some expectation of a positive
outcome.
More About Hope
- Hope is a positive forecast, an opening to the future. Hope is the
oil that greases the skids of change by posing the possibility that we can
improve on our lives. Hope is an attitude, belief, mood, or strategy in
which we overestimate the future, affecting our judgments about
uncertain situations so that we anticipate movement in a positive
direction.
- Hope offers a prophesy of success.
Positive overestimates are often
self-fulfilling because hope tends to produce action in the direction of
realizing the forecast. Hope stimulates us to bring energy and commitment to
situations that, in turn, tend to tip the scales in the direction we want
them to go. It may even offer us a head start by suggesting concrete
pathways and options for change.
- Hope springs internal.
While our personal needs, values, and
beliefs engender hope, hope gains form and direction through our
relationships and life circumstances. We base the likelihood of realizing
hope on information we gather to make informed decisions.
What Fosters Hope?
Action is the handmaiden of hope. Just as hope can lead to action, action can
lead to hope. Realizing hope requires that we move from thinking and observing
to acting. Nurturing hope is a way of reducing the risks involved, so that
anxiety does not inhibit action.
Though becoming more hopeful is easier said than done, people have been able
to raise dim hopes in the following ways:
A goal is a purpose, motive, or reason for
the use of time or for the justification of an activity. The simplest way
to foster hope is to examine the goals that emerge from our desires and
ambitions. The more these goals are:
- concrete (rather than vague),
- achievable (rather than lofty),
- challenging (rather than easy), and
- appealing (rather than dreary),
the more we are likely to believe that acting on them will make a
difference in our lives. Developing goals begins with asking, "What
do I want?" Goals may also emerge from values clarification exercises
(for example, writing your own epitaph), imagining our "possible
selves," considering our self-care needs, or identifying the tasks
that emerge from our attempts to meet these needs. The test of a useful
goal is its ability to motivate constructive action.
Accept losses and limits: Action to change something in our lives
inevitably means there will be a loss of something we value. This could
include the loss of an important relationship, a skill, an opportunity, a
future, or a dream. Loss often leads to sadness and anger. Our willingness
to talk honestly about the loss and to own these feelings represents the
initial steps in mourning the loss. By grieving, we acknowledge the loss as
something "that simply happened," open ourselves to learning
something from t
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