Hope for the Holidays

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been feeling like there is a lot of bleakness in the world. Hurricanes, an ag economy full of negative predictions, H5N1, famines around the world…I could go on, but you get the idea. There’s lots of bad news out there.

With all this darkness, it is really hard to feel hopeful sometimes.

The problem is, hope is essential to all of us. It is a key ingredient in being a productive, caring human being. Without hope we don’t have any motivation to keep going. Research has shown that people who are hopeful have better health, emotional well-being, and social well-being.

So how do we get more hopeful?

It helps to first understand what hope it. It isn’t blind optimism or wishful thinking. Hope is the belief that the future can be better and that we have the ability to make it so. Not “pie in the sky” but “I know things can be better than they are right now, and I have the power to make things move in a positive direction.”

According to Dr. Chan Hellman, found of the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma, there are 6 things we can do to build hope.

1. Give yourself permission to be hopeful, and look forward to positive things in the future;
2. Set at least one meaningful goal—something you want to do that’s important to you, not a chore you have to do;
3. Think about all the different pathways you could use to get to this goal and brainstorm solutions;
4. Call on your trusted support people to help you build motivation and the confidence that you can make things better;
5. Look for success stories. Instead of reading or listening to doom and despair stories, find stories about people who have overcome challenges and been successful—remind yourself about the possibilities of success and the good in the world;
6. Use your imagination. Dr. Hellman calls this the “movie in our heads.”  If we can see ourselves in a positive future, it is much easier to be hopeful.

This year, for the holidays, instead of a tie or another sweater, let’s give each other (and ourselves) the gift of hope. Let’s be someone’s support person, their cheerleader, and build up their sense of hope.  Let’s collect and share success stories—if you want some ideas check out Live Life Happy  or just search “stories of hope”.  Let’s use our imagination and picture a future where there is building, and growth, and kindness.  

And of course, my hope for each of us through the holidays and always, is that we keep thriving.

For more ideas on hope, check out this article or read through the site of the  Hope Research Center.