How to be more hopeful?

A. What is Hope?

Hope is a state of mind by means of which you believe that you can overcome the current situation and that there is a good future waiting for you. Hope helps your mind to remain, optimist, even when the situation is frightening and there seems to be no way out. Hope motivates you to fight the difficulties in life and keep pushing towards your goal, amidst all the odds.

Hope gives you the strength to work harder towards your goal, even when you do not see any instant and immediate rewards. Hope helps you to create things that still do not exist and gives you the energy.

Hope convinces you that the current situation is manageable and is not all that worst. Hope is not only essential for your mental well-being but also your biological well-being. Feeling hopeless will push you towards depression, and therefore you have to build the hope component of your psychology with equal seriousness as the other things.

1. Hope as Emotion

hope was considered one of the most fundamental of all emotions (Averill et al, 1990). However, James Averill, a social constructivist, believes that hope does the fit and emotional model. Averill bases his conclusion that hope is an emotion on the findings of a study that compared hope to two other emotions (love and anger). Averill and his colleagues found that subjects rated anger, love, and hope as all having the same five features:

1) all are difficult to control,

2) all affect the way you think or perceive events,

3) all affect the way you behave,

4) all motivate behavior, increase persistence, enable one to go on (even in the face of adversity), and

5) all are common universal experiences.

Hope is frequently considered a temporary condition that is specific to a given situation and contingent upon one’s skills or abilities.

2. Hope As Motivation

Hope also seems to be a powerful motivator. C.R. Snyder, a University of Kansas psychologist, posed the following hypothetical situation to college students: “Although you set your goal of getting a B in a class, after your first exam, which accounts for 30% of your grade, you find you only scored a D. It is now one week later. What do you do?”

Snyder found that hope made all the difference. Students with high levels of hope said they would work harder and thought of a wider range of things they could do to improve their final grades. Students with moderate levels of hope thought of several ways to improve their grades but had far less determination to pursue them. Students with low levels of hope gave up attempting to improve their grades, completely demoralized (Goleman, 1995).

3. Hope and Depression

(Psychological Review, 96, 1989, 358 has been the most researched component of hope in the area of mental health. Now the mental health practitioners and researchers alike know, understand, and have proven through several studies that hopelessness is associated with depression.

In fact, hopelessness is a strong predictor of current or future depression. Once a person loses hope that things will be better in the future, the person gives up on his pursuits. His dreams are shattered and he doesn’t want to go out and battle it out anymore. That there is something that somehow will turn the table and that the good days will come is a strong reason to live and stay motivated for many.

4. Being Hopeful vs Hoping

Even though hope is a single word, it is often misunderstood. For instance you live in Sahara, where there have hardly been any rain since 6000 BCE. If you are hoping to see massive rainfall the next year, then that is merely hoping. Hoping is almost like an impossible desire that you think is possible by some miracle.

That you want to become rich, and you are hoping that one day you will win a lottery if you keep buying tickets is also hoping. Because chances of you winning a lottery, irrespective of any number of tickets you buy, will remain 1 in 10 lakh.

Hope, on the other hand is associated more with realism. You have prepared well for an entrace exam and know that you will crack the exam. You have a high hope of getting an investment, because you have taken your startup in a growth path.

So, Hope is positive psychology, associated with your thinking, skills, action, intend, abilities, experience, whereas hoping is more of a negative psychology, that leaves the outcome on chance, or on luck.

B. What happens when you are more hopeful or when you are hopeless?

1. Your Energy remains high and your body and mind function at the top of the game.
2. Your body produces less cortisol and stress hormone because the mind doesn’t allow the current difficult situation to become a threat.
3. You get better sleep because you want to get up and struggle it out tomorrow, as you are hopeful of a good result.
4. Not being in the ideal and desirable situation is perceived as a life threat for the brain, which develops anxiety. Thus being more hopeful reduces your anxiety level.
5. Anxiety is a prime cause as well as risk in cardiovascular events in a hypertensive individual. Hope helps reduce anxiety, which in turn reduces cardiovascular risks.
6. Being in a hopeless situation causes mental depression. Depression is a precursor to several comorbidities including Diabetes. Therefore being hopeful reduces your risks of hyperglycemia. 
7. Being in a hopeless situation makes you sad, the important Neurotransmitter Serotonin release is impaired. Serotonin regulates several important functions in our body, including appetite and sleep, and maintains homeostasis with Histamine. Reduced Serotonin leads to excess Histamine expression, leading to more allergy and reduced overall immunity.
8. Excess immunity response causes inflammation at the cells, resulting in cellular edema(fluid retention) and insulin resistance. 
9. Edema at the cellular level has distinct roles in the pathogenesis of Pulmonary embolism and early-stage kidney disease. Hence being more hopeful reduces your risks of Edema and therefore lowers the risks of lungs and kidney diseases.

In short, being more hopeful keeps your mental health better, and reduces the risks of various illnesses.

Measure How Hopeful You Are Currently

Hope is an Emotion, that has several components including the way your mind functions, your skills, environment, perceptions, desires, abilities, people in life and so on. It is therefore important to do a self assessment of how hopeful you are. Do you self Hope Assessment using Our Scientifically Validated Free Online Questionnaire based Mental Health Screening Tool (Adult Hope Scale).

Done? Take the screenshot of your test. Is your score relatively lower than you them to be? And now I shall share with you the method to change your thinking process to become more hopeful and to develop a positive psychology.

C. How to Improve Hope?

So far, we know that hope is a mental state, where your mind believes that there is a better future and a good outcome waiting. 

Therefore, hope has the following components:-

1. there is a belief,
2. a vision,
3. a challenge to overcome,
4. a situation and stress to deal with, 

1. Vision

A vision or a goal in the future that you expect. For example, if you are a founder, you may want your company to be a well-funded company. Or, if you are dealing with a chronic disease, you may see a future where you are disease-free.

1. Well-defined future.
2. Visualization of the future(even if it doesn’t yet exist, you are imagining). Your imagination generates a similar hormonal profile if you were experiencing the situation in reality. Hence, a good imagination and visualization would attribute to a better positive state.
3.  Dividing the goal, or the future into small attainable milestones with a timestamp, so that you can measure your progress and improve hope.
4. Forming strategies and methodologies to execute each goal.
5. Visualizing the entire journey of reaching the desired end goal from today, by executing the steps and reaching the milestones.
6. Plan for the execution of each strategy, and prepare. Read, research, discover how others have done.

2. A Challenge to Overcome

Obviously, your current situation is a tough situation. You may have been going through financial losses, you might be going through a hard disease, or maybe suffering in the relationships and you think that there is no way out. That is hopelessness. When your mind sees that you are stuck in a bad situation forever, that is hopelessness. This is a survival threat to your mind. Hence, you have to convert this hopeless situation into a challenge to overcome and throw the challenge into your mind.

1. Convert the hopeless current situation into a solvable challenge and give the challenge to the mind.
2. Convince the mind that there is a reward when it solves the challenge.
3. Gather the necessary skills to execute the strategies that you developed in the vision forming.
4. Do small experiments and see if the strategies are working or not.
5. Target a milestone and execute.
6. Enhance your skills of execution, and constantly measure and learn the changes. 

3. Dealing With The Situation

1. Past exposure to similar situations.
2. The knowledge that others are dealing with the situation.
3. understanding that your situation is not all that bad, in comparison to others’ situations.
4. The knowledge that you are still not in all that bad situation(This is just an early stage).
5. Having a support system to deal with the situation.
6. Relaxation by discussing the situations with others, who have overcome the situation.
7. Measuring the current progress, and knowing that you are moving towards the desired situation. 

4. Belief

When you string together all the above, your brain starts believing that getting out of the current situation and the desired outcome is possible. All you have to do then is to keep increasing this belief. Positive psychology will keep you positive and out of depression by a lot of Dopamine. The belief has two components

1. That current situation is manageable
2. That future is achievable 
3. That achieving the desired future has a higher purpose

4.1 Current Situation is Manageable

1. All the regular activities are to be carried out in a disciplined way.
2. More positivity and energy have to be given to the body by means of exercise.
3. Invest in intimacy and get the Oxytocin hormone of love to fill you with positivity. 
4. Go out of home and meet people, get your social connections and relationships elevated. That gives you the confidence that you have people standing by you.
5. Read and try to remember things. Work on memory enhancements. They improve the overall area of the brain dealing with the situations and reduces the stress(Stress=Force/Area, so more neurons, less pressure)
6. Eat healthy and non-junk foods. You want your body to be at the top of it, along with the mind to take the toll of the situation. Naturally cooked food is the best in this situation.
7. Find small tasks and do them every day. It may be as simple as making tea, cooking some simple foods, writing poetry, or anything.
8. Keep the room clean and organized. Nothing disturbs the brain as much as filthy unhealthy surroundings.  When the brain sees that things are great around you, it becomes less fearful and feels good that you are living a good life and that it is contributing to it.
9. Cut all the negative people off life. Go away if you are living with them. The last thing you need is for anyone to remind you that you are in a hopeless situation.
10. Stay as little in-home as possible. Going out has several positive biological, neurochemical, and psychological benefits that are beyond this article. You just have to do it.
11. If you are sitting or sleeping in the bed for long, then get up. Lathergicity just elevates the hopelessness.

4.2 Future is Achievable

1. Measure, measure, and measure. Always measure the progress. You need the right vitals to target and measure. Find the most standard vitals and parameters that others have measured and find the gold standards.
2. See how you are doing in comparison to the standards. Improve your parameters and vitals which would give you satisfaction and a positive sense that your mind is solving the problems.
3. Focus on winning small milestones and celebrate them.
4. Target a bigger milestone when you successfully reach one.
5. By continuous focus on smaller achievable targets and goals, you convince yourself that even the larger goals like the perceived future is achievable. 

4.3 Higher Purpose

Reaching the situation that you want to reach is just a desire. Because that is so hard, your brain would stop believing you, when it faces the roadblocks. You will give up. You have to convince the brain that it has to reach where you want to because there is a purpose. That purpose has to be larger than life, has to be for larger people, society, and country.

1. Define a purpose
2. The purpose should be like leaving a legacy so that you are remembered even after your death.
3. Part of the purpose has to be the future that you want to see. 
4. Integrate the purpose with your identity and the reason to live for.

D. Take Actions By Changing Your Mental Model

Reading an article has no meaning if you can not take actions based on the learning. Read this article many times, and try to change your mental model based on the methods suggested. See if you are experiencing a positivity. Once you implement the methods, try again to measure your hopefulness.

Scientifically Validated Free Online Questionnaire based Mental Health Screening Tool (Adult Hope Scale).

If you have improved your hopefulness, would you consider gifting us a pen?

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E. Build Positive Hope With Lyfas

Irrespective of whether you are struggling with chronic clinical conditions, financial loss, anxiety, or joblessness, the first component towards healing is Hope. People use God as a primary mechanism of hope. Miracle, Luck are other components of hope. However, hope is more of a structured mind phenomenon. This needs proper guidance and monitoring to elevate your hope. Lyfas, with its amazing successful mind counseling coupled with diagnosis and monitoring tools, provides you an entire framework to build the foundation of hope, from the vision to planning to execution to belief.

We use proper scientific methods and proof to empower you with the tools and techniques you need in your journey.

Those who want to live on luck, and continue to suffer would anyways live on luck. Those who really want to achieve the goal(Healing, Loss from financial loss, relationship conflict, or any life situation) would take professional help. Read how Lyfas has changed the lives of those who have availed of our services.

Suffering, or healing, Science, or just destiny, the choice is entirely yours.