What if the biggest threat to your hopefulness is your best friend?
Hope is a set of beliefs. But it can be hard to achieve if we spend all our time in hopeless environments. Here I present 6 things to pay attention to in your life if you want to cultivate hope.
I love hanging out with creative, entrepreneurial spirits. Why? Whenever I hear about someone else's crazy, risky, bold ideas and actions, I get a surge of energy, often followed by a personal leap of faith. And many times, good things come out of those leaps.
Obviously, entrepreneurship is hard, and not all ventures, risks, and business ideas succeed. Some entrepreneurs get lost in the hype of whatever they’re doing. But that’s not the point. The point is the spirit.
To be a person who takes risks and pursues wild ideas, you need to be ready for an adventure and believe in things you can’t yet see.
And that, to me, is hope.
Again, if we look at the theory on hope, as presented by the belated psychologist Shane Lopez, four beliefs need to be true to become a hopeful person:
The future will be better than the present.
I have the power to make it so.
There are many paths to my goals.
None of them is free of obstacles.
However, cultivating these beliefs is not just a decision. It’s also a question of who and what you surround yourself with. An environment is easier to change than a belief system. So why not invest in it?
I call this the Process of Creating a Hopeful Environment. A hopeful environment can be created by evaluating six different areas of life:
our brain & evolution
our friends and family
media and social media
the physical environment we live in
our relationship with faith and spirituality
our daily routines and habits
Let me elaborate.
1. Our brain & evolution
Do you ever wonder, why do you always seem to focus on the negative? Are you great at spotting the flaws, problems and negative signs in the world around you?
The thing is, it’s not just you, it’s everyone.
Our brain is wired to pay more attention to negative stimuli than to positive ones. This is due to evolution (hunters and gatherers and all that) and it’s completely normal. We easily spend our time looking for negative proof about the world around us. And in the process we may become convinced that the world is a bad place.
Also, due to the so-called Default Mode Network (DMN), whenever our brain is not actively doing something, it easily starts to think about the past and the future. This can lead to rumination, i.e. worries about the past and the future.
So unless we teach our brains to be in a state of being, we will always find something to worry about when we get the chance. Or, alternatively, we keep ourselves so busy all the time that we never get to a state of pure being – and this can obviously lead to other problems, such as overachieving and exhaustion.
How to solve this issue? Meditation is one answer because it teaches us to be in a state of being. Another answer is intentionally focusing on the positive to counteract our natural tendencies for negativity.
Our friends and family
Research shows that feelings are contagious. You might have heard about the theory that says you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. This idea can be traced back to a 1960s American entrepreneur and motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, and it relates to his law of averages. It suggests that the outcome of any given situation will tend to be the average of all possible outcomes. In the context of personal development, this theory implies that the person you become is a reflection of the collective influence of the people you spend the most time with.
So, if the people you surround yourself with are all worried about everything or have a cynical view of the world, you’re likely to absorb some of this cynicism and worry.
The good thing is that developing a hopeful outlook on life can be as simple as choosing your company carefully.
Now, I’m not arguing you should surround yourself with people who don’t speak about their life’s difficulties but instead always “try to keep it light” and hashtag all their social media posts with #gratitude. I’m also not saying that you should eliminate people who think differently or who are going through a hard time.
But what I am saying is that it’s a good idea to become aware of your state of mind after interacting with people in your life.
If you always leave a dinner party with your friends feeling exhausted and depressed, maybe you need a breakfast buddy who will make you laugh once in a while. Or if your colleagues are lacking in inspiration and always go quiet when you’re trying to propose something creative, maybe you need to find another outlet, such as a hobby, for your ideas and creativity so you won’t kill them altogether.
Media & social media
I studied media and journalism in uni and learned about the theory of news values, developed by Norwegian scholars Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge in the 1960s. Basically, they put together a list of news values to help journalists pay attention to the types of news that would be worthy of writing about. One of these values is negativity, meaning that an event with a negative outcome is more likely to get reported than an event with a positive outcome.
Negative news catches our attention, creates a sense of urgency and is a great source of gossip. When you see a negative headline, you want to click it to find out how bad it really is. And every click acts as an incentive to create more headlines like this.
Social media works the same way. The more something attention a single post gets, the more similar posts people try to produce. In the age of algorithms, very little human responsibility is placed on the larger effect of viral negative posts. It’s generally accepted that this is how social media works.
So it’s no wonder you feel like the world is a bad place. That is what the media is convincing you of. The same negative news and people end up in the headlines repeatedly. Even if the actual negative event revolves around five people, reporting the advancement of the issue gets so much space that it easily makes us feel like no other events exist.
However, it’s healthy to realise, what we’re seeing through any single channel or media is not the entire truth abut the world, it’s a fraction of the truth. In the end, we have the power to choose which types of media we include in our lives and how much time we spend with it.
The physical environment we live in
When I lived in London, I didn’t know too many people. Even though I was living in a city of nine million people, I often felt lonely and isolated. The presence of other people gave me very little comfort.
I noticed a huge difference in my wellbeing when I moved to a small seaside town in Portugal where I had immediate access to nature, even though I still didn’t know too many people. Why is that?
Researchers from Kings College London studied data from 756 participants who completed 16,602 assessments to investigate associations between momentary feelings of loneliness, the social environment (i.e. overcrowding, social inclusivity, population density) and the built environment (i.e. contact with nature).
Their results show that overcrowding and population density correlated with elevated loneliness levels, whereas exposure to nature was linked to reduced levels of loneliness. In other words, urban areas are likely to make a person feel lonely unless they include green spaces.
Our environment matters. How hopeful is yours?
Our relationship with faith and spirituality
Faith and spirituality have lost their power over people in many secular societies. As such, we have also lost access to many spaces and places dedicated to meeting fellow community members outside of work-related matters. Where do we go to disucss matters of our hearts and souls? Where do we find that type of intimacy with other people?
Nowadays, many of us look for those spaces within wellness activities. Yoga shalas and retreats have become important locations for meeting people in a more calm and warm manner and spending time together in a way that removes us from the constant grind of trying to succeed in this world.
To others, nature provides a sanctuary where one can feel one with natural elements and feel a connection to something bigger than ourselves.
Some derive comfort from philosophical books and podcasts.
And then some people never actively engage in any of these.
As a coach who helps people identify their next career path and a sense of purpose, I meet many people in search of something. Often, this search results in finding a project or vocation that the person feels is meaningful to them. Other times, I believe, what these people are really looking for is an identity that doesn’t have anything to do with their work — a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, a space to just be instead of do.
And that, to me, often leads to spirituality in one form or another.
I personally don’t feel like spirituality needs to be any type of religion or school of thought. I believe it’s a connection to something bigger than yourself. This might be a cause, a community, or one’s relationship with nature.
This is why a lot of my coaching focuses on helping people identify what they truly care about and where they can be their full selves.
Having a connection to our hearts and souls in our daily lives is crucial for our hopefulness. We shouldn’t disregard that as woo-woo, wellness, or something extra. It’s part of our humanity.
Our daily routines and habits
I’ll end this list with something that connects the dots between all the other areas mentioned above. Our routines and habits are what make or break us.
No matter what kind of fancy visions we have for our lives or projects, they will gradually disappear if we fail to integrate them into our habits and routines.
Cultivating hope needs to be part of our daily lives if we want to stay in a hopeful mindset.
Hope becomes alive
in what you tell yourself when you wake up in the morning
in how you communicate and inspire others
in the approach you take to your work and career
in what you choose to watch and listen to during your day
in where you spend your time
in whom you listen to for advice.
It’s the small things that make the greatest difference.
So, if you want a hopeful life, embrace daily activities instead of spending years thinking about the right vision for yourself.
Become the hope you wish to see in this world.
With kindness,
Aurora