Learning to Hope
We learn how to be hopeful through our experiences growing up. It is possible to lose hope along the way, but we can also learn to hope again. It involves the process of making space to be able to hear the soft but steady song of hope, which exists within each of us, even in the darkest of times.
By Meng-lin (Benny) Hsieh, Counseling Psychologist in Taiwan
Definition of Hope
Hope Theory is the American psychologist Charles Snyder's formulation of hope. He describes hope as a largely cognitive process involving "goals", "agency" and "pathways". Goals are an integral aspect of hope, specifically long-term achievement goals, rather than short-term avoidant goals. Agency, or willpower, refers to the belief that "I can do this." Pathways refers to knowing how to actually execute a plan to reach a certain goal, or problem solving. Hope as a cognitive concept, rather than an emotional experience, is important. Because this implies that hope, like math and science, can be taught.
When a person has hope, not only are they more likely to report higher overall well-being, better health and better performance in general; because people with higher hope believe that their actions have a causal impact on their environment, they are more likely to engage in efforts to try to make it better to suit their needs. Because of this, people who are hopeful are more likely to experience favorable outcomes to their efforts, which increases their sense of agency. Hope begets hope.
How to Nurture Hope
To get this snowball rolling, mindfulness meditation may be helpful. Mindfulness is defined as "the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment." Mindfulness has been shown to be highly effective at regulating stress, and by reducing emotional stress, people are able to free up the mental capacity to focus on generating solutions to their problems, rather than engage in worrying or rumination. In other words, one way to help us become more hopeful is to practice mindfulness.
It's important to make the distinction between paying selective attention and suppressing emotions, or even denial. When we're talking about enhancing hope through decreasing stress, it's more about allowing space for the experience of hope, which denial does not achieve. The more we try to suppress an experience, the more likely it is to come back and impact us in surprising ways.Think about a pressure cooker. If we don't find ways to relieve stress somehow, it just builds and builds until the pot can't possibly contain the force from within. Rather, mindfulness involves acknowledging the experience, but deliberately choosing to not react to it. In this way, we get better and better at letting our emotions pass through us, rather than allowing it to build and fester.
Barriers to Hope and How to Overcome Them
There are also many factors that block the development of hope. Losing someone you love, past abuse and neglect, poverty etc. may all diminish a person's capacity to hope. Trauma and adversity almost forces people to go into survival mode, setting short-term avoidant goals (e.g. "Where do I sleep tonight?" vs "What do I want to do with my life?"). Hardships also reduce a person's willpower, as well as their capacity to solve problems due to attentional restriction associated with the stress response.
That is why, one of the most important goals of therapy is to reignite the spark to hope again. The American poet Emily Dickinson described hope as "the thing with feathers":
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
We learn how to be hopeful through our experiences growing up. It is possible to lose hope along the way, but we can also learn to hope again. It involves the process of making space to be able to hear the soft but steady song of hope, which exists within each of us, even in the darkest of times.
Chan Hellman, a psychologist who studies hope at the Hope Research Center associated with the University of Oklahoma, experienced a series of life adversities in his teenage years, including homelessness. At one point, he had even been considering when and how to end his own life. Until one day, his middle school teacher noticed his hopelessness. He sat by Chan's side, but didn't say anything for a few minutes. After several moments, he told Chan gently: "You're gonna be ok." As the date drew closer and closer, Chan kept hearing his teacher's voice, and in the end, that day came and went. Turns out, just like other subjects, learning is the most powerful when it happens in the context of meaningful relationships.
So in order to enhance our learning of hope, let's try to be more intentional about the relationships we build with those around us.
References
Snyder C. R. (2002). Hope Theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249-275.
Photo by 祝 鹤槐: https://www.pexels.com/zh-tw/photo/544917/