A skill that helps me manage depression and anxiety is hope.
It seems a bit cruel and simplistic to tell people who struggle with hopelessness to “have hope.” It’s like saying, “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” to someone prone to excessive worrying. Yet, hope is a constant theme during my darkest times. Even when I wrestle with hardship and hopelessness, hope helps me cope.
But how?
How does hope help our mental health? And if hope helps, how can we enhance our capacity to hope?
Dan Harris, co-founder of Ten Percent Happier, believes that hope is a skill that can be cultivated. His conversation with Dr. Jacqueline Mattis, Dean of Faculty at Rutgers University, in “The Science of Hope,” is a great listen on the benefits of hope and how to be more hopeful. In the podcast episode, Dr. Jacqueline Mattis says, “Hope is rooted in data. It’s not fantasy.” My eyes lit up when she said that because I love data.
When we hear the word “data” we might imagine objective numbers collected from studies and experiments, but data isn’t only about numbers. Data can be composed of our own thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Data can be in the form of other people’s lives—what they created, changed, and caused. Data is anything we can observe and capture.
I have countless notebooks filled with data. The data I’ve captured during personal times of ease and times of distress validates the belief that hope is a skill that can be developed. Hope is a skill, like honesty, that I practice regularly. In fact, both hope and honesty work together quite well.
Honesty helps us collect data.
In the episode, Dr. Mattis outlines five ways to generate hope. In my opinion, honesty applies to, at least, three of the five ways: harness the power of uncertainty, manage your attention, and look at the evidence.
When we practice honesty, I believe that we cultivate our ability to be objective and neutral. Good data collection requires the ability to be objective and neutral. Otherwise, we’re only looking for evidence that supports our beliefs and wants, or worse, our fears and anxieties.
“Hope is rooted in data. It’s not fantasy.”
When we practice honesty, we also confront the unknown and uncertainty head-on, rather than deny its existence or let fear consume us. Once we accept what exists now by being honest, we make space for what can be in the future. And once we make space for possibilities, we can choose to focus our attention on the positive over the negative. In other words, honesty gives us the opportunity to be more hopeful.
Hope is a different adrenaline.
Honesty is a skill that helps me collect the data I need to root myself in hope. And hope? Hope is the adrenaline that lifts me out of despair and helps me turn dreams into reality.
Another way we can generate hope as a skill, according to Dr. Mattis, is by “starting with goals.” If she didn’t have me at data, she had me at goals. Like hope and honesty, data and goals also work well together. If data paints a picture of what we’re working with, goals paint the vision of whatever we’re trying to create or achieve. Together, data and goals provide clarity on how we can create or achieve something, how to get from point A to point B, or how to be more hopeful.
In a weird and full-circle way, starting with a goal has led me to this moment writing about hope. In starting a blog, my goal was—at its core—to write more. I had the goal of writing more because writing makes me happy. From pursuing what makes me happy, I realized that writing also allows me to live aligned with my values. And if I can share one key takeaway from therapy, it’s that living a values-driven life is more meaningful than an outcomes-based life. When we mix values, goals, and honest data together, we create more hope; and we can then use that hope to turn dreams into reality.
Without community, who would we be?
Finally, Mattis points to “seeking community” as a way to produce hope, with Harris adding that “community is one of the number one reasons for human flourishing.” Based on the data of my life, I would agree with these experts on happiness and hope because I wholeheartedly believe that without my community, I wouldn’t be writing on this blog today. Without the connections I’ve nurtured and the people I’m privileged to know, I don’t think I’d be living the life I live right now.
I never thought I could be my own boss until a friend told me they see me as “a CEO.” I never would have quit my job if I didn’t have a family and partner supporting me. I might have never been able to call myself a writer if a friend didn’t ask me what it would take to call myself a writer. Or, if friends and family didn’t share how my writing inspired or comforted them. Or, if I didn’t have the privilege of having family and teachers and books to teach me how to write. Life would be different if I didn’t have the community I have today, and I’d be a different version of me. So, how can I not believe that community is a gateway to hope?
Life is surreal; it’s full of heartache, magic, and wonder.
Honestly, this is a tough piece to write because when you’re down, one of the last things you probably want to hear (or say to yourself) is, “Have hope.” And, in the spirit of honesty, I also think we’re all a little down right now. Metaphorically speaking, I’d bet money that we all could use a dose of hope. Despite hope not being a magical cure that makes everything okay, I’m still giving myself permission to practice hope. I hope you do, too.
Now, it’s your turn.
Q: What makes you hopeful?
Want more journal questions that help you choose hope over fear? Or, do you seek connections where you can be authentically yourself? Subscribe to my free monthly newsletter, or co-create with me on Patreon.
Thank you for helping me turn big dreams into reality. I appreciate you.
