by Bridgett Hart | HOPE
Scientifically speaking, there is a recipe for how to have hope in desperate times.
There are three parts to the hope recipe, and looking in the mirror is the key to multiplying them all.
Goals, Pathways, and Agency
Like I said over on youtube, hope comes from a trilogy of Goals, Pathways, and Agency, a framework I first learned from psychologist C.R. Snyder's Hope Theory, laid out in his book The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There From Here.
Simply put, folks have hope when they know what they want and how to get there for themselves. That could make us think we can have hope by ourselves, or in ourselves. The problem is, it just doesn't work that way.
We may have goals we think are ours alone, but we never have all the pathways and agency by ourselves. Research shows it's the goals we share in community that give us the most of all three parts of the recipe for hope.
I'll start by defining agency, then give you a basic example to consider.
What Agency Really Means
There are many definitions of the word agency, but here, it refers to the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power. We could call this our ability to do for ourselves.
Our level of agency can change based on our physical abilities, legal constraints, financial means, and more.
The overturn of Roe v. Wade and several other key pieces of legislation reminded many of us that while we thought we had full agency over our body, choices, and personal health care, that isn't true in the United States. We can be imprisoned, or forced to die, over a personal health care decision, if we're in the wrong part of the country.
We may believe we have the capacity to do a lot for ourselves, but we don't have the means. We need other people, and other parts of nature, for most of it.
Consider our ability to breathe. It's unconscious for most of us, most of the time. Our brain and lungs and body work together to make it happen seamlessly. But could we breathe if there were no plants producing oxygen? If you've ever gone scuba diving, you've learned what happens to a body that can't get its oxygen. It's not pretty. The answer is a hard no.
We have the agency to breathe, but we're never doing it alone.
Why the Mirror Matters for Goal-Setting
Now that we understand agency doesn't exist in a vacuum, let's talk about why it's so important to look in the mirror for our goal-setting process.
In this mini-series, I mentioned four ways we need to evaluate our self in order to have hope in desperate times: strengths, with gratitude; shadows; boundaries; and Spirit.
This matters because these things all affect the how and why of the goals we set, and whether they'll be strong enough to feed hope when the going gets tough.
An Example
Goal: Lose 40 lbs to be more healthy. My body, my goal.
Pathways: Eating healthy. Eating less. Exercise. Starving. Binging and purging. Extreme working out. Requires farmers, grocers, food manufacturers, gym owners, gym equipment manufacturers, trainers, doctors, supplements, and more.
Agency: I do the grocery shopping and meal planning. I have a 6-month-old breastfeeding, three other kids to make dinner for and get ready for school each day, a 9-to-5 job, no car, no money for a gym membership. Focused on what self is capable of accomplishing alone, but neglects the many people required for each constraint even to exist.
Versus:
Goal: Look good and feel good in my body that takes good care of me. Strength and gratitude. Be kind and gracious with myself because I know I've been through a lot of trauma around this in the past. Shadow. Make choices that honor myself. Boundaries. So I can live a fulfilling, happy life with my friends and family. Spirit.
Pathways: Beautiful clothing that fits well, healthy food from the farmer's market, massage and other holistic body care, outings with friends and family, therapy, exercise, involvement in local interest groups, hobbies, regular health care, meditation. Lots of others involved here.
Agency: Support from partner, friends, family, neighbors, and experts. Routines that prioritize self-care. Thrift stores. Neighborhood mutual aid and gardens. Learning to grow, harvest, prepare, and preserve fresh fruits and vegetables. Time in nature. Seeking fulfillment and better conditions at work. Even more others involved here.
Hope Is a Community Practice
When we take the time to know ourselves better, we're more able to see others for their contributions as well.
As we practice the Habit over time, we may find our goals aligning with the community we're loving and being loved in. When we align our goals as a community and move toward them together, well, "yes we can," as President Obama said.
For me, the goal that keeps me hopeful is leaving the world my Black American daughter and her community live in better than it was when I got here. There are a million pathways to get there, and I have a lot of agency as her mom and primary caregiver.
I'm grateful my journey brought her into a strong, loving community to help accomplish that goal. The awesome part is, while the goal still drives me to do more and better every day, it's also already done. Because of our community. And because of me.
Talk soon. I love you.
Question of the day: What goals help you hold on to hope when times are desperate? If you don't know the answer, try working through this series for yourself and see where you land.
Mind you, while the series might only take 20 minutes to consume, it could represent months or years of self-reflection practices, depending on where you are in the process. You get the time and grace to move through the process at your pace.
by Bridgett Hart | HOPE
[What a few weeks we've had here in the United States.
For some, it's been a time of lifetime dreams coming true. For others, it's a blatant display of disregard for the life they've been fighting to extend for generations and generations.
Throw a birthday in the mix and it's the perfect recipe for drunken fireworks accidents and mass shootings by white terrorists at the city parade.
All of it encouraged me to share some thoughts and strategies I've developed over the years that have resulted in me feeling like I still have hope, even in these tumultuous times.
I share this because I love you, and I want all of us to make it through this healthy, happy, and with equity in our system. I can't do much about your happiness, but I can share what undergirds mine, and maybe you'll find some tools you can use too.
Is It Real to Say "I Have Hope"?
So is it authentic, or ostentatious, for me to say "I have hope" when the whole world appears to be going to hell in a handbasket?
Only you can decide what's true for you. But I will say I loved Susan Cain's book, Bittersweet, because it helped me understand why I can exist so easily at the intersection of grief and hope. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
I've done it for a long time, so I promise it wasn't easy or an overnight process. You may or may not be like me in that way, but I promise, even if you aren't, you can find hope even in desperate times. I say this with so much confidence because of who I've chosen to learn from over the past 8 years or so.
Where the Hope Series Starts: Looking in the Mirror
To keep this simple, I broke my thoughts down into a series called How to Have Hope in Desperate Times. Right now, there are 7 bite-sized videos that represent months of work. I'll spread them out here on the blog, with context and resources for each one.
Before we dive in, here's your warning: the next four posts are about looking in the mirror.
That's how important our own self is in the recipe of how to have hope. We have to dig in deep to the who, what, how, why, and when of our individual existence on this planet. I'll take you through that thoroughly over the next four posts.
But right now, go look in a mirror and tell yourself: "Wow. You are awesome. A miracle. A real gift to the world."
Talk soon. I love you.
by Bridgett Hart | HOPE
If anxiety and negative thinking have left you feeling hopeless, you are here on purpose, and I have a message especially for you.
I Called Bullshit
As I was developing The Hart Habits, I came across a verse that said "love always hopes." I'd personally been in plenty of places where love, specifically, had left me feeling especially hopeless.
Before anything else: if you're feeling hopeless right now, I understand. I've been there. And you matter, that's why I'm here, writing this. If you need support right now, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available anytime, call or text 988. We want you here. I want you here.
Hope is a skill you can actually learn, practice, and get better at. But it turns out hope is also, scientifically, an outcome of practicing the other nine Hart Habits. I didn't know that when I started this process. It just turned out to be true.
Hart Habit Ten: Hope
The tenth and final Hart Habit is Hope. The declaration: I maintain or find hope, even when it's not easy.
It's easy to say "just find hope, just hold onto it," as if that's all there is to it. I've personally been in places where I couldn't have found hope if I wanted to. I did want to, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I had to reach for practical tools that felt safe, the same system I'm sharing with you now. They worked. They got me through those hopeless stretches. That doesn't mean I never go through hopelessness or anxiety anymore. It means I now have tools to get through it, and to actively build more hope in my life overall.
Hope Is a Thinking Process
Hope has been studied by scientists, what it is, how it works, what it actually does for people. The clearest framework for this comes from psychologist C.R. Snyder's Hope Theory, first published in 1991 and later expanded in his book The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There From Here. What Snyder found is that hope is a thinking process made up of three parts: goals, pathways, and agency.
If it's a thinking process, that means it's something we can apply for ourselves. If we can become conscious of our thoughts, we can apply this process to them.
Goals
The first element is goals. This loops back to Hart Habit one, Self, knowing and understanding who you are, what matters to you, your boundaries, your visions. It also pulls in a bit of Habit seven, Show, putting your visions into written, audible, artistic, or any other tangible format.
The first part of hope is having goals of your own, taking the time to actually know yourself and what you want. If you're feeling hopeless, start there: what do you want? What are your goals?
Pathways
The second element is pathways, how you can actually reach those goals. What's distinct about this part of the research is that it isn't pie-in-the-sky fantasy thinking. It's about realistic pathways, the routes that genuinely exist for you to get there. Scientifically, this is about facing the truth, Hart Habit two, head-on, not blind positive thinking.
Agency
The third part is agency, your actual ability to travel those pathways and reach those goals. I break this into two pieces.
Internal agency is about your thoughts. Yes, physical agency matters too, and it varies a lot for each of us, but what doesn't vary much is our ability to access our conscious thoughts, Hart Habit four. We often blame our capacity to hope, or not, on outside circumstances. But science shows hope has more to do with how we align our thoughts toward our goals, and endure the difficulties that inevitably come up, which is Endure, Hart Habit nine. By practicing the Hart Habits consistently, you build the capacity to access hope, because you've built the tools to tap into your own manifesting agency. You can ask and answer: what's the goal? What's the realistic path? What resources are around me? How can I move toward that goal, even a little?
External agency is the final, most crucial piece, and the one that ties hope to the people around you in a way none of the other nine Habits quite do. Everything up to this point has been internal work. Hope is the Habit that reaches outward.
Hope Requires Community
Connecting to community is how we find the pathways we can't generate alone. We don't have every pathway inside ourselves. We need people, support, and resources around us to help us find and actually use them. As we understand what those pathways look like, we understand our own agency better too, because now we know what our team looks like.
I love Pamela Slim's book The Widest Net, because a wide enough net catches plenty for all of us. We each have a real net of people in our lives, and as we strengthen our connections to each other, hope rises, and it gets easier for all of us, because we can lean on each other when we need to.
All the other Hart Habits feed into this. When you practice them regularly, you build relationships with room for people to be themselves, room for you to be yourself, trusting and edifying relationships you build together, not alone.
Wrap Up
If you're struggling with Hope specifically, you'll likely feel resigned to your circumstances, pessimistic, expecting the worst. If that's where you are, there's help. See above.
If you're not quite there, and just want to build this Habit intentionally, these steps will help, and so will practicing the whole framework together.
There's one more piece: an overview of how the whole Hart Habits framework fits together, which you can find on the Hart Habits Framework page.
When you practice Hope consistently, you'll start to feel optimistically expectant, regardless of circumstances. You'll be able to hold the full truth and weight of what we're dealing with, and still know that better things are coming, and that we'll work toward that better good together.
Recommended resources:
The Widest Net by Pamela Slim
The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There From Here by C.R. Snyder
Question of the day: What goals do you focus on that give you hope?
