Need Hope? You Can Build It
Need Hope?
We are heading into year three of the biggest challenge we, as a global community, have faced in most of our lifetimes. The last couple years have been tough.
But let’s not stop there.
You want more out of life than to stay anxious, frustrated, feeling hopeless and blaming others, right? Let’s dig in and explore one of the most powerful concepts that offers a twinkle in the darkness of this dark night.
Hope.
Worth exploring.
Worth the effort of practicing.
Keep reading.
Want to know some hopeful truths about hope?
The best news is that adversity is where we learn how to flex our hopefulness muscles. That’s right! The struggles we are facing right now may, in days to come, help us realize that we can get through another challenge. Hope is a thinking process that we access when we are faced with a challenge. This thinking process can be learned. Once you have trained your brain, it is a superpower that has amazing benefits including resilience, courage, relationship and reduction of perfectionism, anxiety and fear.
Hope has three essential elements; a goal, a pathway (how we get to to the goal) and agency (the belief that you have the means to move towards the goal). Learning these three elements of hope has the potential to change the way we can lean into adversity.
I’d like to paint a picture for us to explore this idea. Picture a river bank. You want to get across to the other side. You need to find a pathway and determine whether you have the capacity to get across.
What do you want? What outcome do you most desire? These are your goals. This is getting to the other side of the river.
Creating goals that are useful is an art! Ever start an exercise plan and make the goal too lofty and unattainable?
One of the unspoken conversations that happens in our head with unreasonable goals is that we often attach our self worth to the future state we desire for ourselves. “I will be worthy when….”
Sadly, our internal conversation often erodes our hopefulness and resilience with this kind of internal chatter.
This kind of goal is like trying to get across the mighty Bow River by building a bridge with rocks that we throw in. Attempts to cross the Bow this way will be futile. We will lose hope before we start.
Exploring goal-making through the experience of one of my own personal struggles has been surprisingly useful.
In 2011, when I suffered a compound fracture of my leg, I learned the intense power of attainable and challenging goals. There were days when success was putting weight on my compromised leg. Previous measures of success, the list of things that got done, were entirely outside of my grasp.
Many of us are measuring and determining success based on what was possible before Covid. Sometimes a minute by minute vision of what is possible is all we have. When systems are in flux, we may need to adjust our expectations of ourselves and others and set smaller, more manageable goals.
Sometimes, all we have is the next right thing.
Crossing a stream by throwing in rocks for a footpath is doable and can be fun.
Another important distinction here is the difference between a goal and a desire.
A goal as something that I can personally accomplish ie: I plan to clean my room today.
If this is attainable with my own resources, then it’s a good goal. This helps me maintain hopefulness. If what I want involves another person’s choice, behaviour or property, it’s a good desire and a bad goal. I can ask my child to clean her room today. This is a good desire and a bad goal.
If we attach our hope to a bad goal, a desire, we are going to be frustrated, anxious and angry if someone doesn’t comply with our goal. It may not be their goal. If we make it ours, we lose hope.
This doesn’t mean that desires are bad. We just have to understand the difference between the two for hope to remain in play.
Is this a good goal or is this a desire?
Once we have a good goal, our attention shifts to the pathway. It is sometimes helpful to toggle our attention between goal and pathway for a while until we have clarity with our goal. Where will you place the rocks in the river to get to your goal?
We have ways of doing things that previously worked. Unfortunately, in a world that is affected by a pandemic, a lot of those systems and processes have been altered or entirely broken.
Before I broke my leg, I could get exercise pretty much any way I wanted. Now I get to be more creative. It has required some out-of-the-box kind of thinking.
What systems and processes are altered or broken in your world? Do you have creative ideas for how to solve the challenge? Can you work together with others to solve the problem?
If the goal is to build a bridge across the Bow, it’s going to take time, resources, minds and muscle.
Again, sometimes all we have is just the next step towards the goal.
Agency is a fancy word for our belief in ourselves and ability to move toward what we want. Without agency, the path across the river is a dream or idea, not a goal.
Do you believe you can accomplish the steps to get across the river?
Seeing ourselves as individuals is important, but a lot of goals are not attainable by ourselves. For us to have agency, we need to see the people around us who are willing and available to put effort toward goals that matter. There’s nothing that builds hopefulness than feeling connected with others as we work towards a common goal.
What do you want? How can you move towards your desired outcome? Who might come along on the journey with you?
Remember that you are capable, resourceful and whole. Need help exploring a useful goal? Exploring a pathway? Finding your power? I help my clients navigate tactical, relational, and skill development challenges.
You’ve got this!