Hope: the Compass of Life

There are situations that can seem to extinguish all hope for a better life and future. Losing the people we love most, unemployment, losing physical functionality, mental illness, diagnosis of a chronic illness…

All of 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 misplacing our compass, our way of determining what will take us to our goals. When this happens, we need new paths or strategies to achieve the old objectives often taking a new direction.

It’s easier to have hope when everything is going well. It is important, however, to continue keeping hope alive and continue cultivating 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 The way 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 can come to feel that life is not worth living.

It is then important to reconnect with a meaningful future, as this affects behavior in the present. We can exercise and eat healthy because we want to have a healthy old age, look good, or have a new relationship. Others may work hard 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 the ones we love. We invest in the present to reap what we envision from the future. Hope drives us to act

In turn, what we choose to do in the present creates and nourishes hope or plays to its detriment. For example, the constant postponement of important goals can cause the hope of achieving those objectives 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 maintain the effort.

Likewise, consider that hope is a choice, can be learned and shared with others, is active and requires effort Additionally, 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 that way, believing that you can find several 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 model of hope described by his mentor, Rick Snyder. The process of hope is then composed of:

1. Goals

They 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 to pursue, 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 is not about passively wishing.

2. Agency

It is based on believing that we have an active role in achieving goals and influence how our lives go. It is knowing that Through the actions we take we shape life, whether for good or bad It requires taking responsibility to improve situations and assuming responsibility for moving forward with achieving your dreams. As we see the connection between our actions and good results, we also develop the ability to motivate ourselves and the ability to persist on the path despite obstacles.

3. Paths

It consists of being recursive. It is the perceived ability to search for and generate multiple routes to goals and choose the most appropriate paths, monitoring progress. It also involves being realistic and anticipate that obstacles will arise at any time, which is why it is important to maintain flexibility and if necessary make changes to plans and/or choose better routes to what you want to achieve.

Each of these elements interacts with the others. A change in one of them affects the others. When these components are strong, hope increases, when one is weak, hope decreases. This is when it is important to intervene to strengthen that element that is missing or that has not been developed.

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. Obsessing over the persistence of a relationship that is unhealthy or that for some reason cannot continue is not maintaining hope, it is an attachment style. Likewise, it is persist in projects that have repeatedly failed or that can no longer come to fruition

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

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

Benefits of cultivating hope

High levels of hope are associated with better performance and success academically, athletically, in business and in the profession greater physical and psychological well-being and better interpersonal relationships (Lopez & Snyder, 2009; Lopez, 2013).

Hope impacts physical health by facilitating people’s efforts to engage in disease prevention activities such as exercise, reducing the likelihood of engaging in risk behaviors, and coping with and recovering from existing health problems. Likewise, it has been found that higher levels of hope are associated with positive affect, greater satisfaction with life, greater perception of well-being and meaning in life (Lopez & Snyder, 2009).

The hope It also influences the assessment and coping with stressors and obstacles Research has shown that people with higher hope are effective at generating and using alternative paths to goals. This is especially relevant when facing barriers to achieving objectives or when there are paths that 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 forming close connections with other people because they show interest in the goals of others, not just their own, they 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 influence them. Fortunately, hope is contagious, so we can be touched by the hope of others and also inspire those around us and thus contribute to the feeling of well-being, motivation, and mutual growth in our relationships and also spread it in the world, how good We all know, he needs it.