[excerpted from, 9 Keys to Optimism: Positive Psychology, ©2023]

Hope is a good place to begin.

Hope can seem fragile. We must consider that it’s not the temporal emotion we mean in this case, but the character strength – the capacity for hope that we all have. It can be severely impacted by circumstances; we can all too easily, it seems, lose hope. And then – sometimes through hard work – we can become hopeful again.

Many people these days find it difficult to remain hopeful about the future of our very planet, and of humanity. It can seem that the damage done to the environment over the past couple of centuries we call the Industrial Age, and by our behavior to this day, is irreversible and the climate on a crash course with collapse. Coupled with the fact that this is also a natural cycle of earth, that another ice age was always inevitable even as we’ve undeniably altered and accelerated its timetable by our actions, many express despair not for the future but for the lack of one.

And yet–

Living without hope isn’t the answer – it’s not living at all, and doesn’t engage us to solve problems, create change, or otherwise do whatever we can for an improved outcome. Hope and motivation are intrinsically connected. Hope is also correlated with our sense of meaning and purpose in life. In a study of young adults aged 18-24, Taruna et al. (2022) found that hope – especially when in combination with gratitude — leads to greater levels of subjective wellbeing. In order to fight for the wellbeing of our planet and our future, we must first strengthen our personal wellbeing – by increasing our hope, and our gratitude.

But how do we retain, or regain, our hope? And how closely do hope and optimism link?

The CSV handbook (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) includes hope in a chapter together with optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation, although time and again throughout the book, hope and optimism are referred to as two distinct concepts. In a follow-up article based on scholarly reviews of the handbook, Park et al. (2005) clarified the concept of hope; on further analysis, they found it to be among the most robust predictors of life satisfaction, along with gratitude, love, and zest. This is borne out by later research, as in the previously mentioned study by Gander et al. (2022).

The character strengths of positive psychology, when referenced elsewhere, often equate optimism with hope. Indeed, when an adjective – I’m optimistic / I’m hopeful for X – they’re commonly used in the same manner. However, optimism as we saw is generally conceived of as both trait and state, our general nature as well as a short-term mindset about a particular topic, while hope is specifically of the latter. For our purposes, then, we will separate them out and focus on hope as a key to optimism.

Dursun et al. (2020) put this succinctly in discussing optimism as a general expectancy of positivity, while hope is described as a cognitive and motivational element. Gasper et al. (2020) define optimism as one’s broad outlook, and hope as rather a wish, more tenuous. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain’ is less certain than ‘I’m optimistic that it won’t rain’, for example.

More importantly, how does hope relate to optimism?

In a study by Tras et al. (2021), the combination of hope and perceived social support were predictive of optimism. Rand et al. (2020) demonstrated that the combination of hope and optimism predicted academic performance of students. Hope has been directly linked to subjective wellbeing across all age groups (Long et al., 2020; Murphy, 2023); hope and optimism, combined with gratitude and overall life satisfaction, were predictors of subjective wellbeing in a study by Kardas et al. (2019), while D’Souza et al. (2020) found that hope, optimism, and self-efficacy were significant predictors of same. And in a clear distinction between the two, Shanahan et al. (2020) demonstrated that hope was a predictor of circumstances with a perceived sense of control, while optimism predicted conditions in which the person had no sense of personal control over outcome.

So, how can we increase our innate character strength of hope?

For a start, we can focus on all that we do in fact feel hopeful about. While certain aspects of one’s life, and even the future of our planet, may not seem hopeful in this moment, there are many others about which we do in fact remain hopeful. If a student, you may hope to do well on tomorrow’s exam. If in the workforce, you may hope to do well at your duties, on that new project, or in your petition for a promotion – or efforts to get a new job. We can hope that our sick animal will soon get well, hope that it will be sunny for our picnic tomorrow, hope that our candidate wins in the upcoming election. And in a million other ways.

It’s when we become overwhelmed by what seems hopeless, as well as in the face of depression or chronic debilitating illness, for example, that we may find it difficult to connect to our sense of hope. In order to keep this spark alive, and to fan it into a conflagration, we need first to identify all those areas in which we remain hopeful.

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Exercises:

And so, let’s begin there. To re-establish your connection to hope or to strengthen and expand it, try various ways to discover all the things about which you are in fact hopeful. Make a list. Keep a ‘hope journal’. Begin each day, before you hop out of bed, by reciting whatever comes to mind for which you feel hopeful – and do the same when you lie down to sleep at night.

Whenever you feel despair, aka hopelessness, threatening to overwhelm you – when that dark cloud comes – take a quick mental break as a method of self-care and recovery. Close your eyes, picture yourself in whatever environment represents paradise and deep peace to you (on a beach? in the mountains? a meadow filled with wildflowers? a forest? the park near your home? your own garden?), take a deep breath as you feel yourself there, then identify in your mind 3 things that you still feel hopeful about. As with stress, it’s critically important to relax our minds and fill them with hope in tiny increments throughout the day – thereby circumventing the accumulation of despair.

Engage with art, music, literature, beauty and excellence. (More on that later, as our 7^th key.) Beauty is not only calm and refreshing, but also has a capacity to expand our sense of wellbeing, and our hope. As well, get creative. Being creative, developing something new – a painting, an idea, a tune, a garden – also helps to restore hope.

Plant a tree. Or a few. Take care of nature in some way. Pick up litter on the beach, Reinforce a small tree struggling to stand upright. Plant some flowers. Feed the birds. Taking care of our natural world, even as we worry about her, also engenders hope – and when we plant a tree, it’s for future generations.

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References:

D’Souza JM, Zvolensky MJ, Smith BH et al. (2020). The Unique Effects of Hope, Optimism, and Self-Efficacy on Subjective Well-Being and Depression in German Adults. Journal of Well-being Assessment 4, 331-345. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41543-021-00037-5

Dursun P (2021). Optimism, Hope and Subjective Well-Being: a Literature Overview. Çatalhöyük Uluslararası Turizm ve Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi 6, 61-74. Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/cutsad/issue/63565/946124

Gander F, Wagner L, Amann L, et al. (2022). What are character strengths good for? A daily diary study on character strengths enactment.  Journal of Positive Psychology 17:5, 718-728. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.1926532

Gasper K, Spencer LA, and Middlewood BL (2020). Differentiating hope from optimism by examining self-reported appraisals and linguistic content. Journal of Positive Psychology 15:2, 220-237. http://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1590623

Kardas F, Cam Z, Eskisu M, et al. (2019). Gratitude, Hope, Optimism and Life Satisfaction as Predictors of Psychological Well-Being. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research 19:82, 81-100. Retrieved at: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ejer/issue/48089/608137

Long KNG, Kim ES, Chen Y, et al. (2020). The role of Hope in subsequent health and well-being for older adults: An outcome-wide longitudinal approach. Global Epidemiology 2:100018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100018

Murphy ER (2023). Hope and well-being. Current Opinion in Psychology 50:101558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101558

Park N, Peterson C, and Seligman ME (2005). Strengths of Character and Well-Being: A Closer Look at Hope and Modesty. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23:5. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.5.628.50749

Peterson C and Seligman ME (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press; American Psychological Association.

Rand KL, Shanahan ML, Fischer IC, et al. (2020). Hope and optimism as predictors of academic performance and subjective well-being in college students. Learning and Individual Differences 81:101906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2020.101906

Shanahan ML, Fischer IC, and Rand KL (2020). Hope, optimism, and affect as predictors and consequences of expectancies: The potential moderating roles of perceived control and success. Journal of Research in Personality 84:103903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103903

Taruna, Singh S, and Shikha (2022). Psychological Well-Being of Youth: The Role of Gratitude and Hope. Journal of Psychology and Behavior Studies 2:1, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.32996/jpbs.2022.1.1

Tras Z, Sunbul MG, and Baltaci UB (2021). Investigation of the Relationships between Optimism, Perceived Social Support, and Hope. i.e.: inquiry in education 13:1. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ie/vol13/iss1/11