Why hope is the new success
And how creative generalists can use this to their advantage.
When I first started writing this newsletter at the beginning of 2024, my intention was to create something that would ignite a sense of hopefulness in my readers. Something that would get us high on hope.
This intention was born at a time when it became clear to me that hope is what sets a good life apart from a bad one. The same – even miserable – circumstances can appear very different when viewed through a hopeful lens.
Similarly, our current world with all its chaos may spark positive action in some, while it can paralyse others from taking any action at all.
If we experience and practice hopefulness, we will find reasons to move forward in life. If we don’t, we remain stuck and scared.
As such, hope, a word that is often associated with religion or spiritual practice, is also a concrete measure. It’s not something that is given to us, but it’s created within and by us.
Hope is a choice we make every day.
Looking at hope this way sparked my curiosity. It made me ask:
If we break hope down to a practical level, into actions and practices, what will we find?
How could we use hope as a primary driver for our careers? If we did so, could we find more fulfilling, more balanced and more motivating careers and lifestyles?
What if the success we’re looking for in our lives is actually a sense of hopefulness because it’s the sense of hopefulness that will keep us trying, creating and improving?
This exercise in curiosity took me on a deep dive into the psychology and philosophy of hope and made me want to share what I learned.
In this letter, I’ll summarize my main findings.
For a more in-depth experience, you can also take my free online course, Get High on Hope, where you’ll find four chapters: understanding the theory of hope, creating a hopeful setup for ourselves, seeing ourselves as hopemakers, and taking concrete action to spark hopefulness in the world around us.
This body of work exists to remind ourselves that our perception of the world is the ground on which we build on. No matter what tactical strategies we have, if we don’t have hope, we’ll likely run out of fuel at some point.
Elevating our sense of hopefulness is not just about goodwill.
Focusing on our hopefulness will also help us direct our careers to a meaningful direction, perceive our challenges as opportunities, and find an approach that will make us succeed in our efforts.
This strategy can be especially beneficial for those of us who have multiple skills and passions and who struggle to find cohesion. Because maybe that cohesion is found not in your skill set, but in your hopeful attitude and in the causes that inspire you?
Let’s dive in.
1) Hope is not just a fluffy feeling but an undercurrent that tints our perception of the world.
According to Shane Lopez, a psychologist who devoted a large part of their career to studying the psychology of hope, hope is a collection of beliefs:
1) The future will be better than the present.
2) I have the power to make it so.
3) There are many paths to my goals.
4) None of them is free of obstacles.
A person who holds these beliefs is considered hopeful.
They can identify positive actions in their lives and believe that taking those actions can make a positive difference. As such, a hopeful worldview isn’t a result of external circumstances, but rather of internal belief systems. We can choose to believe that our actions have significance in the world we live in, no matter how big or small they may be.
According to Lopez, true hopefulness is based in realism, i.e. accepting that no matter which paths we follow in life, they won’t be free of obstacles. Even the dreamiest opportunities come at a cost and the more prepared we are for them, the better we’ll manage them.
2) What we surround ourselves with matters more than our current circumstances.
Have you ever spent time with someone inspiring, someone who made you dream a bit bigger and reach a bit further? Or, have you hung out with someone who left you feeling low and cynical?
Our social environments can be a source of hope or a drain on it. And by social I mean the people we encounter on a daily basis as well as the online environments we spend time in: the news we read, the social media we follow, and the Netflix we watch can all impact the way we feel about our lives and the world around us.
To simplify: if we wanted to make a career as an actor, it would be a good idea to surround ourselves with others who have already succeeded in doing so. It might also be a good idea to limit our exposure to those who failed and feel resentful about it. It might be wise to avoid the news about how AI will eliminate all acting jobs and focus on reading opinion pieces about the opportunities that may arise from an AI-centered entertainment industry.
Avoiding and limiting the types of exposure that make us feel like we shouldn’t try doesn’t mean we’re living in dreamlandia. We can be aware of the harsh realities of our industry without being completely consumed by them or letting them decide our life’s path for us.
After all, how good have humans ever been at predicting the future?
3) Hope lives (and dies) in the daily patterns we repeat.
Lopez’s set of hopeful beliefs is easy to accomplish on a theoretical level, but to me, they felt a bit too abstract. To actually believe that the future is better than the present isn’t easy. To get there, we need to create daily practices and patterns that strengthen our faith in the positive.
There’s an endless array of self-help books that try to help us become positive forces in our own lives.
As someone who has spent a large chunk of my life immersed in the self-development genre, I have found the following principles to be the most effective in cultivating a hopeful mindset on a practical level:
Practising gratitude and an abundance mindset.
Giving and being of service to others.
Becoming clear about our intentions for our future.
Adopting a growth mindset.
Taking concrete action instead of overthinking.
In this post, I won’t go into depth about each of these principles. If you want to learn more and practice these in real life, sign up for Get High on Hope.
4) Taking action is what defines us.
Hopefulness isn’t created in a vacuum, but it’s the result of individual and collective action.
If you’re feeling hopeless about the climate crisis or thinking that your bad boss will never change, you will always have two choices: a) do something about it, or b) not do anything about it and settle for wishful thinking.
Now, doing something about whatever is pissing us off doesn’t necessarily have to cause a big shift in the external circumstances.
For example, if you participate in a local beach cleanup, it won’t, unfortunately, stop the planet from overheating. However, what it does is change your internal setting from passive observer to active participant. And that in itself serves a purpose.
By taking action, you connect with a community that shares similar values, you see immediate reductions in the amount of plastic on your beach, and you motivate others to join similar initiatives by sharing your participation with them.
Your actions may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they’re meaningful to the immediate environment you belong to.
Taking action forces us to show that we care about something. Making our caring visible can be very empowering, not just for ourselves but for those we’re connected to.
» Note: Hope is different from naive optimism
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “But Aurora, what if I take action and nothing changes? What if my hope is just naive optimism?”
Naive optimism is what Lopez would call ‘wishful thinking’ i.e. the idea that if we just think positively, everything will be swell.
This type of thinking ignores reality and assumes everything will work out perfectly. Hope acknowledges reality—remember Lopez's fourth belief—but chooses to act anyway.
When your beach cleanup doesn't stop people from littering, a hopeful person doesn't pretend it did. Instead, they ask: “What did I learn? Who did I meet? What more could be done?”
Hope isn't about guaranteed outcomes. It's about trying and retrying even when we fail or when the outcomes seem uncertain.
5) For creative generalists: Hope can be your North Star
If you're someone with multiple skills and passions—a writer who also designs, a marketer who makes music, a consultant who paints—hope could save your ass from “choosing one thing”.
You might find your throughline in choosing one guiding principle instead of focusing on a single skill.
Let’s imagine you’re Anne, a creative generalist, skilled at brand strategy, design, workshop facilitation, social media management, and event planning. You might feel scattered because you don’t know how to sell your multiple skills to clients and potential employers.
What if you stopped asking "What am I good at?" and started asking "What kind of hope would I like to create in this world?"
Anne might be passionate about fighting loneliness and creating communities where people feel seen and heard. In this case, all her skills can be bundled together to create these types of experiences for people. She can use her event planning skills to organise community events, her design and branding skills to create engaging content for the events, her social media skills to attract attendees and her facilitation skills to encourage interactions at the events.
Your skills become invaluable assets when you start to view them as means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.
This is what hope can do for creative generalists: it becomes the organising principle that gives your varied interests coherence. Instead of being "the person who does a bit of everything," you become "the person who uses everything they know to advance their hopeful vision."
Your clients and collaborators won't hire you despite your generalist nature—they'll hire you because of it. Because when you're clear about the change you’re making, people can see how your unique combination of skills serves that vision in ways no specialist could.
The market doesn't need another graphic designer or another writer. But it desperately needs people who can bridge disciplines in the service of something they believe in.
Hopeful people are never “done”
I say that hope is the new success because what is success without hope? An empty feeling of “I made it”, according to some random metric. Once we achieve the metric, then what?
Living in hope isn’t about any achievement per se, but about believing that tomorrow is worth living for. It’s worth striving for. Hopeful people will never “be done” because they see that there’s always more beauty to witness, more laughter to experience, more wisdom to gather and more caring to share.
In a world that is ready to announce a doomsday every month, being among the hopeful ones is a currency like no other. It makes us not only desirable to hang out and work with.
So, if you feel like you haven’t succeeded in the traditional metrics of money, status or social capital, ask yourself: But have I succeeded in creating something hopeful in this world?
And if the answer is no, is this something you could pursue?
Because hope, my friend, is what it’s all truly about.
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Please share your thoughts in the comments or via email. I would love to chat more.
In the meantime, remember that hope isn’t given to us but created within and by us.
Keep creating.
With kindness,
Aurora