Hope is a feeling of expectation, a desire or wish for a certain thing to happen.
According to psychologist and renowned hope researcher Charles R. 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.
“Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.” Brené Brown
In other words, hope is like a snap-shot of a person’s current goal-directed thinking, highlighting the motivated pursuit of goals and the expectation that those goals can be achieved.
Hope helps us remain committed to our goals and motivated to take action towards achieving. 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 et al. (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.
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, Irving, & Anderson, 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 an orientation to life that allows a grounded and optimistic outlook even in the most challenging of circumstances.
Practicing optimism has much in common with hope. Both are concerned with a positive future orientation and both assume that good things will generally occur in one’s life.
The difference is that optimism is a positive attitude about a future event that is probable and likely to occur: the optimist expects that life will work out well and as expected (Scheier & Carver, 1993).
On the other hand, being hopeful is regarded as more realistic than optimistism.
The hopeful individual recognizes that life may not always work out as planned, yet maintains positive expectancy directed toward possible outcomes that hold personal significance (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2002)
Hope is more than just a state of mind; it is an action-oriented strength.
I love this line from @EmmanuelAcho’s new book. All of us are a little untethered right now, which means a lot of projecting our own fears and anxieties onto other people. Sometimes, if we get really quiet—quiet enough to hear ourselves—we realize we know. https://t.co/XIrIv11FXk pic.twitter.com/JEsZ8rbSEW
— Brené Brown (@BreneBrown) April 7, 2022
References:
C.R. Snyder was a fellow of the APA in the divisions of teaching, social and personality, clinical, and health. He worked as the director of the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Kansas and was the editor of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. Snyder passed away in 2006.
The biblical definition of hope is “confident expectation.” Hope means “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” and it is a cognitive processes or way of thinking.
“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 (NIV)