What is Your Hope?
I remember trying on the word HOPE after my first husband passed away. I was desperate to try anything. I remember being HOPE for others at the funeral home, visitation, hospital, and with my family. I remember being HOPE for my children when they were too young to understand. I remember being told I was strong. I guess I was showing HOPE in my actions, words, and nonverbal communication. Maybe when I entered into a new relationship after a few years, others saw HOPE. I saw HOPE. My oldest child wanted to know when she could call him “Daddy”. I guess that was her HOPE.
I do remember even voicing HOPE as I was being wheeled into the operating room after my first husband passed away in the car accident, and I was being put back together. I told my daughter that I would do yoga again and I would marry for money the next time. I was on a lot of pain meds. Again, even in my medicated state, I was showing HOPE.
Have you noticed your HOPE? How have you shown HOPE? When does HOPE show up in your daily activities? When does HOPE come to save the day? Have you noticed HOPE?
Do You Have Hope?
While HOPE is undoubtedly a personal experience and one that can be challenging to define, the value and positive impact HOPE can have on human life is widely recognized and difficult to ignore.
People often speak about HOPE strengthening their resolve and accompanying them even in their darkest hour; guiding them through seemingly desperate circumstances.
HOPE helps us remain committed to our goals and motivated to take action toward achieving them.
HOPE gives people a reason to continue fighting and believing that their current circumstances will improve, despite the unpredictable nature of human existence.
As psychologist and renowned hope researcher Charles Snyder (2002, p. 269) stated so eloquently: A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multicolored light in various directions. It lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same – a personal rainbow of the mind.
What is Hope?
According to Snyder et al. (1991), hope is a positive cognitive state based on a sense of successful goal-directed determination and planning to meet these goals. In other words, hope is like a snapshot of a person’s current goal-directed thinking, highlighting the motivated pursuit of goals and the expectation that those goals can be achieved.
While some approaches conceptualize hope in the realm of being, that is acknowledging hope during illness and within palliative care; Snyder et al (1991) emphasized the relevance of hope in the context of doing – that is the capacity to achieve goals.
According to Snyder’s Hope Theory (Snyder, 1991), hopefulness is a life-sustaining human strength comprised of three distinct but related components:
Goals Thinking – the clear conceptualization of valuable goals.
Pathways Thinking – the capacity to develop specific strategies to reach those goals.
Agency Thinking – the ability to initiate and sustain the motivation for using those strategies.
Hope does not necessarily fade in the face of adversity; in fact, hope often endures despite poverty, war, and famine. While no one is exempt from experiencing challenging life events, hope fosters a life orientation that allows a grounded and optimistic outlook even in the most challenging of circumstances.
4 Examples of Hope
1. Realistic Hope
Realistic hope is hope for an outcome that is reasonable or probable (Wiles, Cott, & Gibson, 2008). In this sense, an individual suffering from chronic pain might HOPE for a small reduction in pain, knowing that complete eradication is unrealistic.
According to Eaves, Nichter, & Ritenbaugh (2016) being realistic is a way of HOPING that allows individuals to observe and understand their situation while still maintaining openness toward the possibility of positive change.
2. Utopian Hope
This way of hoping is a collectively oriented hope that collaborative action can lead to a better future for all. According to (Webb, 2013) the utopian hoper critically negates the present and is driven by hope to affirm a better alternative. Consider utopian hope presented by a political movement; a movement that effectively articulates the hopes of a social group to expand the horizons of possibility.
3. Chosen Hope
Hope not only helps us live with a difficult present but also with an uncertain future. In addition to physical suffering, a diagnosis of a serious or terminal illness is a major contributor to psychiatric syndromes and distress. Understandably, multiple factors such as grief, fear, and concerns about loved ones can contribute to experiences of hopelessness within this population.
In the palliative care context, for instance, chosen hope is critical to the management of despair and its accompanying paralysis of action. Garrard & Wrigley (2009) suggested that hope for even the most restricted range of goals within the limits of life is essential to the regulation of negative emotions.
4. Transcendent Hope
According to Eaves, Nichter, & Ritenbaugh (2016), transcendent hope encompasses three types of hope, namely:
Patient Hope – a hope that everything will work out well in the end.
Generalized Hope – hope not directed toward a specific outcome.
Universal Hope – a general belief in the future and a defense against despair in the face of challenges.
Also referred to as existential hope, transcendent hope describes a stance of general hopefulness not tied to a specific outcome or goal; put simply, it is the hope that something good can happen.
Comments