The science of hopefulness
Why is it that when we need help most that we are most afraid to ask for it?
Lack of hope and vulnerability.
I didn’t intend to think about this question this week -- or write an email about it -- but then something happened:
I found myself happily lost going down the rabbit hole of the science of hope.
There’s this little rule I made for myself a few years ago that if something catches my attention, I run it down. I pull the thread. Doesn’t matter what it is: a person’s name, a quote, a mention of an idea in a book, anything.
This time it was the mention of the growing field of the science of hope in an audiobook I was listening to.
Science of hope?! That had me hooked immediately and off I went ordering books, downloading scientific papers, and spending hours and hours and hours absorbing as much as I could.
Until I dove into this new (to me) world of research, I thought about hope as the ignition that we need as human beings to live. If we don’t have hope -- that things will be better, that we can experience what we want to experience -- then why bother getting up in the morning, right?
I was close.
As Casey Gwinn, J.D., and Chan Hellerman, Ph.D., write in their book Hope Rising:
“Hope is the belief that the future will be brighter and that you have a role in making it so.”
Rick Snyder, a positive psychologist who wrote The Psychology of Hope, a cornerstone book in this field, defines hope as “the sum of mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals”.
According to him, hope has 3 core components: Goals, willpower, and waypower.
GOALS → Goals are outcomes or experiences that we imagine and desire. When it comes to hope, these are goals that are important to us that we’re not 100% sure we can achieve ( vs. simple goals that we’re certain we can achieve, like putting on our shoes, for example.)
WILLPOWER → Willpower is the mental energy that over time, propels us towards our goals. It’s a combination of determination and commitment, and it's our perception that we can take actions towards a goal we desire.
WAYPOWER → Waypower is the mental capacity to come up with different pathways towards our goals. It’s our capacity to plan how we’ll reach our goals and our confidence that we can shift our plans and find alternate ones when we encounter obstacles. (Progress is rarely linear.)
Rick Snyder offers us this hope equation:
Hope = Mental Willpower + Waypower for Goals
(Notice how hope is not the same as optimism or wishful thinking. Hope is active and requires your agency, your involvement, and your commitment.)
People with high hopefulness have high willpower and high waypower. Even when things get tough, they have lots of determination to keep going and find alternate ways to reach their goals.
If you don’t have the determination or energy to keep going or can’t think of different pathways to reach your goal, you have less hope. And when you have less hope, you make less progress towards what you want, which causes discouragement, which leads to even less determination and ideas for how to move forward. (A vicious cycle of hopelessness.)
One of my favorite things I’ve learned in all this hope research is that we can increase hopefulness! It’s not static.
Rick Snyder and other psychologists have come up with many methods to improve a person’s willpower/determination and their waypower. I have been reading about these non-stop and will be dedicating a lot of my time to understanding, learning, modifying, practicing, and sharing them in my work.
(My mentees in the Unleashing Aliveness small-group mentorship program will be the first ones to experience this work with me. If it feels like work you’re excited to do, schedule a 30-minute call with me to talk about joining the program.)
So what does all this have to do with why we don’t ask for help when we most need it?
Because we experience hopelessness.
I remember when I burned out and lifed-out.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t just have the willpower to move towards anything or ideas for how to do it.
I actually stopped wanting to move towards anything at all. I didn’t have any goals… other than just making it through the day.
This was a really dark time because the light of my hope, my life ignition went out.
I remember people suggesting that I get help. People who knew me well and loved me. People who knew me a little and saw that I was stuck in a difficult place. People who really meant well.
But I didn’t, not for a very long time.
Because I didn’t see the point. I didn’t have hope that the future could be better and that I could make it better. So what’s the point of spending money on some therapist or coach to get help?
There was another reason: I was afraid that I would go to someone for help and whoever this person was, that they wouldn’t be able to truly understand me and help me.
This is vulnerability: Asking for something without a guarantee that you will get it. And vulnerability is really hard. Really really hard, especially if you’re in a difficult place, are burned out or lifed-out, or feel stuck.
I did eventually work up enough hope and courage to get help. I hired a woman who became my teacher, mentor, and guide. I owe so much of my flourishing to her. (Her name is Janet and I’ve written about her before, including in my first book, Happier Now.)
How did I do this? You know, I wish I had a simple answer. Because if you’re in that place of low hope, of not really being sure what you truly want from life or feeling low willpower or waypower to get to what you want, I want so much to help you.
I think it was a combination of things:
My daughter. I wanted her to have a good mama, full of aliveness and joy. So initially, that was my goal.
Feeling an obligation to find a better way to live. I came to this country as a refugee and my parents sacrificed a lot for us to be here. I couldn't waste this gift. I felt a sense of obligation to figure out how to honor it, even when I was stuck in a difficult place. I don’t think we should do things out of obligation, but sometimes, it’s a great source of determination to move forward.
Unwillingness to settle. Even though I’d temporarily lost my drive, my creativity of planning, my aspirations… deep down, I’ve never wanted to settle for anything that didn’t feel right. And this didn’t feel right.
The other day, I was talking to one of my private mentorship clients, telling her about all this hope research I’d discovered.
(When you work with me privately, you experience a lot of this! I leave you voice messages with the interesting research I read and how it might fuel you, or an idea I heard during a talk that I think you’ll want to learn more about. If you’re interested in private mentorship, I’d love to connect. Use this link to schedule a time for us to chat.)
She teared up: “I’d always had all these ideas for what I wanted to do, places I wanted to travel, businesses I wanted to start… and I think I’ve made myself smaller in some way by giving up on them. It’s not that I don’t have any goals, but I’ve gone dormant on the goals that really fire me up inside,” she said.
This was a giant insight for her and we’re going to work together to wake up those goals and determination to move towards them. Not in some forced way, but from a pure place of alignment, excitement, and enthusiasm.
I’m sharing this with you because I want you to think about if you’ve made yourself smaller by going dormant on the goals that truly light you up inside.
Or are you finding yourself in a stuck place where you do know what you want, but you don’t feel any mental or emotional energy to move towards it -- or can’t really think of how to do it?
Maybe you feel that you want to ask for help because you’re ready to get unstuck, but you don’t trust that your vulnerability will be worth it?
Answering these questions isn’t easy, but it’s a giant first step towards greater flourishing.