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Let's Talk About It...
How to Cultivate Hope
Dan J. Tomasulo, PhD • Jul 01, 2019
How to cultivate hope; the secret is focusing on what you can control.
Unique among all the positive emotions, hope require some degree of dissonance, difficulty, negativity, or uncertainty to be ignited. If there isn't some thing awry, we don't call upon hope.
In studying this field, a pattern emerges. People high in hope have sustainably better physical and mental well-being. They also tend to live longer and happier lives. High-hope people see, and respond to, the world differently, and they use their thoughts to focus on what they can control.
Our level of hope can have a big impact on our lives. High-hope people have passion and zest that fuels their energy. This passion is viable and dynamic because there is a degree of persistence and follow through that accompanies it. They are optimistic about their future and believe in possibilities. They see challenges as opportunities to grow and learn, rather than as obstacles. This is key to the success of many High-hope people. They not only bounce back from setbacks they seem to bounce forward and keep going despite the challenges. They believe possibilities can open up when they put in the work. Here's a tip sheet to get you into the habit of hope.
Set and Achieve Goals
Goal setting is only as important as the action you take toward achieving your goals, and people high in hope do both. They know that without a clear goal, it's easy to get distracted and lose focus. They don't let life happen to them; they proactively make decisions and take action to move forward in their lives. Whether it's a big dream or a small goal, the hopeful typically have something they're working toward. They usually visualize their goals and create conditions that set them up for success. One way that gets done is through micro goals, which are brief and reasonable to accomplish. Getting three emails out in the next 15 minutes or preparing lunch in the next 20 minutes are simple examples. Setting goals and taking action can create an upward spiral of engagement and accomplishment.
Stick With Positive People
Being around positive people is one way to keep an optimistic mindset. This doesn't mean being intolerant of another person's difficulties, negativity, or struggles, but it does mean that hopeful people tend to spend more time associating with those who share a bright and proactive attitude. People high in hope don't block themselves from naysayers or folks who have a more pessimistic viewpoint. They maintain a healthy balance but don't get overwhelmed by the negativity around them. They know that seeing different perspectives allows them to cultivate life realistically. Well they take in multiple, sometimes difficult, perspectives, they remain compassionate.
Focus on the Present
People high in hope tend to focus on what's in front of them. They don't dwell on the past or worry about the future, though they do set goals for themselves. They stay focused on what's happening right now. This allows them to stay positive and take action. Additionally, hopeful people are always learning. They're constantly trying to improve themselves and their skill set; this encourages contentment and openness to growth. Hopeful people are grateful for what they have; gratitude keeps them appreciative and grounded in the moment. They recognize that even though they may not have everything they want, they're still lucky to have so much good in life.
Be Self-reflective and Confident
While believing in oneself is important, highly hopeful people are able to forgive themselves as well. This is a unique combination because this type of confidence allows a person to be imperfect. In addition, they are willing to take reasonable risks to support their growth. Hopeful people know that failure is inevitable and that it's important to learn from those experiences, moving forward with positive momentum. This capacity for self reflection is valuable. Learning from mistakes means viewing failure as an opportunity rather than as a measure of self-worth.
Keep a Positive Outlook
You've heard this one before, and that's because it's true: when it comes to High-hope people, no matter what life throws at them, they endeavor to see the silver lining. They don't let the circumstance define their emotional response. In addition to having a positive outlook, high-hope people are also creative problem solver's. When faced with a challenge, they don't give up easily. Instead, they formulate solutions that help them overcoming the obstacles in their way. In chicken and egg fashion, positivity helps creativity, and being creative feeds positivity. They invest their energy in the future and hunt for the good.
Dan J. Tomasulo, PhD, is the academic Director at the Spirituality Mind-Body Institute
at Columbia University and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
How To Cultivate Hope
Some clients have strong preferences, but other factors matter more than gender in creating a good therapeutic alliance.
"So what do you think?" , "Megan" asked toward the end of her first appointment with me. I gave her a brief summary of my assessment and told her she met the criteria for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. I said she would probably get a lot out of treatment and mention some things we could work on together. She still seem to be holding her breath, as if waiting for the punchline. “I guess…” she began, then stopped. “Well I guess what I really want to know is…. Do you think I'm crazy?", she asked. Deep down Megan feared that she was broken in a fundamental way. Many people who start therapy (and many who are afraid) share this apprehension- that when a trained professional looks deep into their psyche they'll discover an essential deficit. For Megan it was the fear of being “less than” or an imposter, and that even psychotherapy couldn't fix her. What Coming to Therapy Means Most people start therapy when they're struggling, often through the hardest time of their life. For this reason, it can feel like a defeat, especially in a society that continues to “other” those with mental health challenges. But the truth is that deciding to start therapy is a sign of your whole-ness. No matter how hard a time you're having, or how hopeless you may feel, a part of you is determined to find the support you need. Seeking therapy signals your acceptance that all is not well, and acceptance is the foundation for change. Most therapists will recognize the vulnerability behind a question like Megans', they'll probably let you know that the struggles you're having are common. Therapists generally understand that having mental health challenges means you're human, not crazy. Indeed, countless therapists, myself included have had their own battle with the psychiatric condition. I reassured Megan that I didn't think in terms of “crazy”, and that in fact, my impression of her was the opposite of what she feared. “Coming to therapy is a sign of what is right with you, not what's wrong”, I told her. “We all need help from others, especially when we're hurting”. A part of Megan recognized that she needed help and was willing to overcome societal stigma and her hesitation to get it. That willingness was a sign that she was already on her way to finding relief. What You Discover in Therapy Here's what you're likely to find out when you start therapy. First, you'll find validation for thoughts and feelings that you may have struggle to understand. Your therapist will help contextualize your experience; Of course you sometimes assume people are talking about you behind your back if your mom constantly criticized you. Of course you have a hard time feeling secure in your relationship so in the past partner betrayed you. You'll probably discover that your fears and struggles makes sense, on account of what you've lived through. Maybe you've survived major trauma and have a hard time feeling safe. Perhaps you've experienced a sudden death, and you're often anxious about the health of your loved ones. Instead of beating yourself up for reacting in ways you don't understand, you can develop a compassion for yourself and what you've been through. You may also find out that you have more strength than you knew, the same strength that has sustained you this far and that drew you to therapy. While it may seem paradoxical, you'll come to see how fundamentally sane you are. Many of the people I work with start to see the truth that what they call crazy is the radically sane part of themselves that refuses to go along with the insanity around them. For example, you might have been labeled the problem child in your family because you were the only one who refused to sweep long-standing issues under the rug, and you couldn't help but shine a light on the things that everyone else chose to ignore. It's a sign of health to know when things in your life aren't working, just as it's a good sign when your body warns you by reacting to pain. And finally, you may begin to accept that the patterns giving you trouble with relating to others, thought processes, and emotional responses--developed when you desperately needed a way to survive. Maybe you learned to never get your hopes up, for instance, because they were so often dashed when you were a kid; now that you're grown up, it's still hard to trust that things will work out. Although these ways of coping might not work so well anymore, they got you through a perilous past. The same wise part of you that formed these defenses may begin to let you know that it's time to try something new. Even if you feel broken, starting therapy shows that the seeds of new life are already within you. The healing process begins well before you set foot in a therapist’s office. When Megan realized that her value as a human being was not on the line, she gradually became less guarded in our sessions. Her honesty with herself and with me helped her to make remarkable progress in therapy. Megan was willing to take a close look at herself and at the habitual behaviors that had hurt her relationships with key people in her life. With hard work, she was able to develop greater self compassion even for the part of herself that was struggling. By the time we parted ways she reported very few symptoms of depression and was optimistic that she could eventually find the love that she craved. Seth J.Gillihan, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and the author of several books, including Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Heads up: There's a discussion about sexual assault at the end of this article at #17, in case you want to skip. We all have that friend who's constantly quoting their therapist (or maybe you're that friend?). And, whether a sentence that starts with “my therapist says” makes you cringe or not, there's a reason why mental health pros are so damn quotable: They know what they're talking about. Therapists, obviously, are all about you and your feelings. So you can show up with your thoughts spirals and buckets of emotions and they'll help you sort through them. Whether a mental health professional is sitting on a couch across from you or on the other end of zoom, they can use therapy techniques to teach you positive self talk, how to face certain fears, ways to improve communication skills, or just how to take care of yourself. They can also support you by offering an outside perspective and giving you the lowdown on things like attachment theory or the impact of trauma when discussing your past experiences, says psychotherapist and author Chris Warren – Dickens, LPC. While you could call the exercises or ideas your therapist brings up “advice”, technically it's up to you to process that info and make any sort of decisions on your own, he adds. Still, therapists can be kind of amazing at reframing otherwise hard-to-understand techniques and ideas, so that you can use them in your every day life – which is why we've gathered here today, friends. Ahead, we asked people to share the most helpful tips, tools, and perspectives from their therapists and how all of that changed their mental health for the better. From learning to put yourself first to dealing with depression, these genius insights can help anyone going through a difficult time. 1. You can only control how YOU live your life. “My therapist always tells me that I can't control other people. I can only control how I interact with them. I wish some people I love would take my advice when it comes to certain adverse situation's, but I have to remember that they are the experts on their own lives, and I might not actually know better, even though I am a Virgo! But I can still support and love them.” - Emma W., 30 2. After pain, face the world (and yourself) with patience. “When I was 14 weeks pregnant in 2012, I had a sudden miscarriage. I beat myself up thinking something in my body went wrong and I hurt my baby. My therapist was the only person I would speak to. She made me do two things: 1. Whatever I was saying to myself, envision a friend and say it to them. If I would never say it to them, I wouldn't be allowed to say it to myself. 2. I had to leave my house once a day and provide her with receipts as proof. I would walk through the mall sobbing and like a zombie to get a movie ticket, a snack, or a gift for myself. She didn't care if I watch the movie, ate the snack, or gave the gift away. She just wanted me to see and feel forgiveness and to build courage to face the world again. -Mandy T., 46 3. Visualize your negative thoughts to be kind to them. “When negative thoughts or memories from the past traumatic experience come up, you can imagine they are paintings on the wall and look at them with a compassionate eye. Tell yourself that it's OK to feel bad and that you went through hard moments, but those are in the past. Then, imagine leaving the room and leaving them in the past you can also imagine these thoughts are your children and they come into the room you're in. Give them a cup of tea, hug and soothe them, caress their head, tell them it's OK, and talk to them in a motherly way. When they are calm, gently walk them out through another door.” - Laura F. 4. The way you feel about yourself isn't always based in facts. "I was talking to my therapist about some physical health issues that are altering the way I look a bit, how I find myself hyper fixating on the changes, and how I feel bad about myself as a result. He said, you see what you feel about yourself, and feelings are the least reliable forms of evidence. It helped me to see that my default mode of self criticism, which I've struggled with long before I had health issues, is coloring what I see in the mirror and making it seem worse than it really is. The way I feel about myself internally is effectively making it harder for me to navigate and accept myself externally. The message isn't to ignore our feelings, of course, but to regularly question them, particularly when they are presenting themselves to us as fact." – Jessica S., 31 5. Emotions come in all sizes. "My therapist once described my emotional state as 'little d depressed'. And that stuck with me because, as someone who has felt big D depressed, I always imagined that anything better than big D depressed meant that I had to be OK. The reality is when you live with depression, or any mental health struggle, you'll go through the motions that are big and ones that are a little, but that doesn't make life better or worse." – Nora D., 26 6. You can be who you are no matter what’s happening around you. "I've been in therapy for nearly a decade now. What stuck with me the most was when my therapist told me, nature just is and you can be too. She emphasized how a tree, for example, grows despite its surroundings. It continues to be a tree no matter what else is going on around it. I have adapted that to: I can be me in all circumstances at all times. I can still exist as a wonderful, committed, successful human despite my anxiety and depression trying to tell me otherwise. I will also often think of myself as the ocean and waves with this in mind. The water is very rarely still – waves are always coming and going – and ocean remains the ocean. This mindset has helped me through difficult times and allowed me to remember my innate worth simply because I exist." – Drew T., 28 7. Sort your anxieties into fiction and non-fiction. "I have anxiety, and when I first admit it to myself that I needed some tools to figure out how to live with it, I went to a cognitive behavioral therapist for a few sessions. She said, pretend you're in a library. Now find the nonfiction section. Go there. Ignore the fiction section – you don't need that one. Stay in nonfiction and start to list the things you know are true. It's likely you'll soon see that most of what's causing you anxiety is stuff from the fiction section. But you're not in that section, so stick with the facts! Something about visualizing a fiction and nonfiction sections resonated so deeply with me. For starters, the concrete visualization exercise takes me to a more meditative place right away, which distracts me from physical anxiety sensations I feel. And then, once I start sorting ‘my anxieties’ into fact or fiction, I start to see that a lot of what I'm anxious about is conjecture." – Morgan B., 46 8. Healing is messy and takes time. "The best advice I've been given from my therapist is that healing is not linear. Before entering pretty intensive therapy, I thought that I would go in, have some sessions, and things would start to progress in an upward motion from there. It tends to add and flow and takes turns and dips before rising again. We never know what life will throw at us, so it's impossible to know the exact direction that the therapeutic journey will take." – Lindsay A., 37 9. Feel your grief so that you can also feel happiness. "You can't close yourself off to grieve without also closing yourself off to joy. My therapist told me to think of it like a kink in the hose if you try to stop the flow of sadness, you stop the flow of happiness at the same time. The key to a beautiful life be willing to feel it all." – Andrea G., 47 10. You can keep moving forward regardless of the path you take. "The tip from my therapist that has stuck with me the most is that 'there's always a move'. In other words, there's always a way to navigate through or remove yourself from challenging situations, and there's always a way to create a more fulfilling life. Things are not set in stone, and there is always a path forward – though it's not always clear right away – toward a happier existence." – Zoe S., 26 11. Talk to yourself like you would a BFF. "I struggled with incessant negative self talk for most of my life. It wasn't until my therapist put it into perspective for me that I began to change my mindset. He asked me to imagine a specific friend who's going through a hard time. What advice would I give them? Was it supportive and kind? He then told me to imagine I was going through the same thing. What would I tell myself? My inclination was to beat myself up and tell myself I should be doing better. But he challenged me to be as kind to myself as I was to my friend because I deserve kindness. I didn't need to earn my own kindness, I was good enough already." Rachel E., 31 12. Think about how your past experiences impact your behavior right now. "I spent three years in therapy understanding what my inner child stuff is. Some [therapists say that] the things we didn't get as children that remain in our subconscious and actually guide our actions and emotions without our knowledge. My inner child has a fear of abandonment, so I'll do things hoping to earn someone's live. Every day, I take tiny steps or set micro boundaries to challenge and cope with that fear. For example, I'll check in with myself to see if I want to actually do the thing I am about to do or if I'm just trying to earn a person's live." – Amanda G., 37 13. Let your feelings be huge. "The most impactful thing I remember my therapist ever telling me was depression can happen because you have decided that you're feeling should only take up a certain amount of space. She told me to let my feelings be as big as they are. Let them feel the amount of space that they want to fill. It changed my life, and I stopped convincing myself that the things in my life were too insignificant to have feelings about and I just felt them." – All J., 34 14. Ask yourself “and then what?” when you’re spiraling. "A special skill of mine is catastrophizing whenever I'm worried about some thing that I have zero control over. One of the most game changing moments I had in therapy was an exercise my therapist called 'and then what?'. We basically played out the worst case scenario currently taking up space in my brain and took it as far as possible. The idea was to try to address the uncertainty and the tools I had to deal with it. For instance if you were catastrophizing around a relationship ending (like I was), you would face each one of the scary thoughts in your head ( OMG we're breaking up. I'll have to find a new place. I'll probably lose some friends. I'll have to answer what happened? 100 times. Ew, I'll have to date again… ) and meet each of those starts with 'OK and then what?' It was incredibly hard and emotional but the takeaway was even if my catastrophic thoughts come true, life will go on. It might look very different than you expected and it might be really effing hard, but you'll keep going. Now, when I start catastrophizing about anything in the future that I don't have control over – whether it's a work issue or an airline losing my luggage – I remember that even when the thing you're worried about actually comes true, you figure it out. Sometimes that's enough to stop me from spiraling." – Casey G., 33 15. Focus on small wins when your’e depressed. "A therapist once told me that just getting to the gym is a success when I'm depressed. It helped me separate the act of leaving the house, commuting, and going into a building from the actual lethargy of depression that halts participation. I could leave the house, catch the bus, and enter the gym, but I just couldn't run, lift weights, or swim and that's OK. I've taken this into other areas of my life. So when I'm depressed, I still give myself permission to go to the places I go when I'm happy, but I shift my expectations. There is a café I always visit to work or study. When I'm depressed, I still go, but I don't take my laptop. Instead, I have a hot chocolate, listen to music, and people watch. I'm doing 60% of what I would normally do, rather than not engaging in any of it because I know I can't give 100%. It helps remind me that I still deserve to be part of the world. That I am still worthwhile." – Ashley W., 32 16. Perfection is arbitrary. "I started going to therapy to deal with major social anxiety that was really disrupting my flow at work. I get so anxious before meetings where I had to present ideas that my heart would race, I felt short of breath, and I could barely read what was on the page in front of me. One thing that really helped me cope with my therapist's point that perfect does not exist. So, even if my managers hated my presentation, it didn't mean they were right and I was wrong. They are concept of perfect work could be different than mine, and that didn't mean that my ideas sucked or that I was bad at my job." – Ashley O., 32 17. You can channel your anger toward something good. "My therapist helps me make choices that are healthy for me. During one session, I vividly remember discussing my rape case with her. I told her how the police did not notify me when the investigation was closed. So, when I relentlessly demanded a meeting as to why, I discovered my perpetrator used his fifth amendment right. This meant they could not interview him, which caused a lack of evidence to prove anything. At the point I was telling this to my therapist, I was passed the immediate PTSD from this case and was discussing my advocacy work with her. I said, I know all the police saw was an angry, fed up woman. She said, you know what I think about angry women? Angry women change the world. She and I discuss this often how to balance taking care of myself while still crafting my skills as a writer and storyteller for change." - Debbie J., 26