What is Hope?
Watching children on a playground tells you all you need to know about hope. A child's vision transforms a series of obstacles (tall ladders, hard to reach monkey bars, wobbly wooden bridges) into limitless opportunities for fun. Goals become very clear ("I am going to swing across all the monkey bars"), the plan develops ("I am going to climb the ladder, grab the bar, and swing from the first one to the second one"), and support is requested ("Can you help me up?") while confidence grows ("I think I got it. Yeah, I am doing it!").

Hope happens when we focus our thoughts on clear and meaningful goals. We concentrate on the future we want, reflect on our goals, and think about all the ways we can make our vision of the future a reality. When we put our thoughts about our goals together with pathways thinking (thinking that helps you identify or create many paths to a goal) and agency thinking (thinking that helps keep your motivation up while pursuing your goal), we are most hopeful. So, the statement, "These are the many ways I can get there from here" reflects pathways thinking. And, "I am excited and confident about getting there from here!" captures agency thinking. Contentment, pride and joy come about when we use our hopeful thinking and overcome obstacles. Frustration, sadness and anger bubble up when obstacles wear us down.

The essence of hope is having the drive to set and pursue goals, to take risks, to initiate action. Hope fuels problem-solving and it helps us develop personal strengths and social resources. More specifically, having hope makes us more likely to do well in school and to take good care of our health.


Why Hope is Important?
Whether your child is experiencing good times or bad times, hope can help. During a good day, when a child is thinking about a bright future, hope helps him persist on important tasks, create challenging stretch goals that foster growth, and build new resources through successful experiences. On tough days, ones that involve failure or illness, hope helps a child overcome major obstacles. For example, if a child receives a poor grade on a test, she revisits her goal for that class, adds or modifies the pathways to achieving that goal, and searches for more support and confidence. In short, she makes hope happen when she is under pressure. When facing more serious problems in life, like chronic pain and illness, hope works to make situations more bearable or makes the recuperative process more productive. For example, high-hope people have a higher tolerance for pain than those with low-hope. And, high-hope people are more likely to do what needs to be done to bounce back and become healthy again.

Optimism: A key Ingredient in Happiness Resilience: Ingredient List >Making Hope Happen