Hope: the compass of life

Knowing how to properly manage expectations helps us to get closer to our goals.

There are situations that can give the impression of extinguishing all hope for a better life and future. Losing the people we love the most, unemployment, losing physical functionality, mental illness, the diagnosis of a chronic disease?

All these situations can cause a rupture with our expectations, what we thought about the future. Losing what we consider meaningful and valuable can contribute to us losing our compass, our way of determining what will lead us to our goals. When this happens, we need new paths or strategies to achieve the old goals, often taking a new direction.often taking a new direction.

It is easier to have hope when everything is going well. It is important, however, to continue to keep hope alive. and continue to cultivate it in the bad and difficult moments of life. That is why, in this article I want to talk about hope, the elements necessary to cultivate it, and its benefits.

The vision of the future affects the behavior of the present

Shane Lopez, in his book Making Hope Happen explains that, through his work and research on the topic of hope with millions of people, he has realized that how well we think about the future determines how well we live our lives.. When we have clear hopes for the future we live well, when we do not, we may feel that life is not worth living.

It is therefore important to reconnect with a meaningful future, as this affects the behavior of the present. We may exercise and eat healthily because we want to have a healthy old age, look good or have a new relationship. Others may go to great lengths studying and working to obtain the material stability, freedom or professional development they desire. We save money either for vacations or for other dreams with loved ones. We invest in the present to reap what we envision for the future. Hope drives us to act.

In turn, what we choose to do in the present creates and nurtures hope or plays to its detriment. For example, the constant postponement of important goals can cause the hope of achieving those goals to decline over time because we begin to see the desired future as increasingly distant.

The theory of Hope

For Shane Lopez hope is a state oriented towards the future.. Our thoughts look ahead and tell us what we have to do today. Our feelings lift us up and give us the energy to keep up the effort.

Likewise, consider that hope is a choice, it can be learned and shared with others, it is active and requires effort.. In addition, Shane Lopez describes four beliefs that hopeful people tend to share. These are; thinking that the future will be better than the present and the past, believing that you have the power to make it so, believing that you can find various paths to your desired goals, and understanding that no path is free of obstacles.

These beliefs are key to the elements that make up the hope model described by your mentor, Rick Snyder. The hope process is then composed of:

1. goals

These are the objectives that guide human behavior. They can be short, medium or long term. It is identifying where we are now and where we want to go, what we want to do and who we want to be. Hope is built from the goals that we consider most important, that we are excited about pursuing, that are clear, specific and realistic. It is a balance between thinking positively about the future and recognizing the barriers and effort involved in achieving them. It does not consist of passive wishing.

2. Agency

It is based on believing that one has an active role in achieving goals and influencing how one's life unfolds. It is knowing that through the actions we take we are shaping our lives for better or for worse.. It requires taking responsibility for improving situations and assuming the responsibility to move forward with the achievement of dreams. As we see the connection between our actions and good results, we also develop the ability to motivate ourselves and the capacity to persist on the path despite obstacles.

3. Pathways

It consists of being recursive. It is the perceived ability to seek and generate multiple routes to goals and choose the most appropriate paths, monitoring progress. It also involves being realistic and anticipating that obstacles will arise at any time, so it is important to maintain flexibility and if necessary make changes in plans and/or choose better routes to what is desired.

Each of these elements interacts with the others. A change in any one of them affects the others. When these components are strong, hope increases; when any of them is weak, hope decreases. It is then when it is important to intervene to strengthen this missing or undeveloped element.

When hope is not hope, but something else.

It is important to understand that we are not talking about hope when we cling to the fact that things must be as we believe and want them to be. Obsessing over the persistence of a relationship that is unhealthy or for some reason cannot continue is not maintaining hope, it is a style of attachment. Likewise, it is to persist in projects that have repeatedly failed or that can no longer come to fruition..

Life presents situations that sometimes are not under our control, but hope gives us the message that it is possible to start again, that we have the capacity to do it and that it requires our effort to achieve it.

We tend to think that suffering is badand that is why we try so hard to avoid it, even though it is inevitable. But, just as diamonds, which are pure carbon atoms, under conditions of darkness, pressure and extreme temperature are transformed into the precious stone, the human being is transformed through difficulty, annulling what does not serve him such as excessive and useless fears or arrogance and developing positive qualities such as compassion and kindness.

Benefits of cultivating hope

High levels of hope are associated with better academic, business and career performance and success in sports, business, and careers, increased physical and psychological well-being, and improved mental and physical health.greater physical and psychological well-being, and better interpersonal relationships (Lopez & Snyder, 2009; Lopez, 2013).

Hope has an impact on physical health by facilitating people's efforts to engage in disease prevention activities such as exercise, reducing the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors, and in coping with and recovering from existing health problems. At the same time, higher levels of hope have been found to be associated with positive affect, greater satisfaction with life, greater perception of well-being and sense of life (Lopez & Snyder, 2009).

Hope also influences the appraisal and coping of stressors and obstacles.. Research has shown that people with greater hope are effective in generating and using alternative pathways to goals. This is especially relevant when facing barriers to goal attainment or when pathways are closed. People with low hope are more likely to use avoidance as a coping strategy (Lopez & Snyder, 2009).

Finally, people with high hope are prone to form close connections with other people because they show interest in others' goals not just their own, enjoy interacting with others, and perceive greater social support (Lopez & Snyder, 2009).

In any case, we tend to learn a lot from the people around us and also to influence them. Fortunately, hope is contagious, so we can be touched by the hope of others and also inspire those close to us and thus contribute to the sense of well-being, motivation, and mutual growth in our relationships and spread it also in the world, which well we all know, needs it.

Bibliographical references:

• Lopez, S. J. (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. Second Edition. Oxford; New York.
• Lopez, S. J. (2013). Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others. Atria Books; New York.