Tracking Hope During Dark Times

As we approach 2022, many of us will be thinking about our goals for the future. And after two rough pandemic years, we may be looking at those goals with more skepticism than in the past.

While talking with clients, I’ve noticed many are rethinking how they approach goal-setting this year. One business owner I spoke with is setting her business goals for next year with the intention to avoid the “hard work” ethos that nearly drove her to burnout. An account manager is setting goals with his team designed to ensure they’re enjoying their work.

I’m not surprised to see this shift; after all, the rampant change and unforeseen challenges over the last two years have many of us rethinking our priorities, our jobs, and even the very nature of work.

In an excerpt from their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, journalists Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen note that “the pandemic has created an opportunity to reconsider and reimagine the structure of our lives.” How much, they ask, should work be the epicenter of our lives?

Maybe you’re asking the same question. As we navigate this new world of work—and the questions that come with it—we need to harness a key ingredient of goal setting: hope.

Hope is more than just an optimistic state of mind: It is a proactive, action-oriented vision. In fact, in my body of research, hope is one of wonder’s six key facets or sides. Tracking hope in challenging times can open us to meaningful surprises and insights that can keep our minds open and our moods buoyant.

When hope is part of your goal-setting process, it can give you a sense of agency in your life and work and keep you on the trail of your goals even during times of challenge.

Understanding the science of hope

Dr. Chan Hellman, and his colleagues at the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, have studied hope in a number of groups that seem at first to be in hopeless situations, such as children with incarcerated parents and survivors of intimate partner violence. Their findings show that hope is not only the single best predictor of well-being.

Hope also is a learnable skill.

Dr. Hellman identifies three main tenets of hope: goals, pathways thinking, and willpower. When you are hopeful about the future, you set goals to help bring that future about, identify pathways that let you strategically plan how to achieve that goal, and maintain the mental willpower to follow those pathways.

I review other current literature on hope in the book Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility. The science of hope shows that hope is not the same as wishful thinking. Researchers at the Hope Center at Arizona State University have been studying hope in college students and found that first-year students with high hopes were more likely to enroll for a second year, as well as having more positive civic attitudes and increased engagement in their communities.

John Parsi, executive director of ASU’s Hope Center, notes that hope requires a person to not just wish for good things to happen but to take responsibility—and to take action. “Optimistic people see the glass as half full,” he said, “but hopeful people ask how they can fill the glass full.”

Harnessing hope for your goals

As a world-renowned expert on the psychology of hope and author of Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others, Shane J. Lopez defines hope as “the belief that the future will be better than the present, along with the belief that you have the power to make it so.”

He notes that to truly access hope, you need an optimistic view of the future, a sense of personal agency, and a plan for how you will act to bring about that better future.

Try these hope-building practices while setting your goals for 2022.

• Engage in deliberate daydreaming: Imagine the end result, as well as how you’re going to get there. When you imagine the specific details, hope helps you chart a course.
• Surround yourself with hopeful people: Hope begets hope. When you share your goals with people who are also hopeful and proactive, you’ll reap the encouragement.
• Set your sights on a simple pursuit goal: Start by limiting the scope of your goal to three weeks or less. Setting long-term goals can make them seem out of reach—and therefore forgettable—if they’re not combined with doable, achievable goals in the short term.
• Stay open to tiny beauties to keep on track: Tracking wonder and interest is important for hopeful resilience. Wonder can be a surprise visitor in challenging times, letting you know you’ll weather this storm and the next.

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That last piece is essential. It points toward how hope is a side of wonder. In Tracking Wonder, I detail stories of how wonder helped musician Nick Cave endure the grief of losing his teenage son in a tragic death, how a surprise visit from a snail helped a writer endure a mysterious and debilitating brain disease, and how an unexpected encounter with an alpaca helped a single mother build a farm family for a young son atop a mountain.

Finally, spread hope to others. Remember that when you track hope, it can send ripples through your community and out into the world.

You can share your hopeful vision with your peer group or team. Ask others to share their celebrations and how they’ve overcome challenges with you.

With hope, you have the power to create a better world. And with shared hope, we can create one together.