Hope is something we both need and fear having too much of. Hope can help us get through difficult times, it can make situations more bearable. Hope is a key and central part of the human experience. While we may experience it daily, we may not realise just how important it is.
What is Hope?
Hope is trusting or believing that something good will happen or a positive outcome will occur. We can have hope for the future, for our future career, future family life and so on. Sometimes we put hope in people like, friends and family, we trust they will do the right thing. We hope for the best when it comes to exams, job interviews, or a medical diagnosis. Each day you prepare for a new day you have hope that it will be better than the last.
But what is so important about this belief in something good?
Hope Keeps us Going
Without hope why would we proceed to go about our lives each day. Hope gives us reason to tackle each day as it comes. Hope can present itself at the darkest of times and give us positive motivation to keep going, to keep moving forward.
Hope Influences our Behaviours
Hope is understanding the negative parts of life but looking for ways to cope. When we have hope for the future it motivates us to mind ourselves, to eat better, exercise and engage in meditation or yoga. Hope, in general, contributes to our well being.
Hope Reduces Anxiety
Research has found that hope fights the experience of fear and anxiety. Experiencing or generating a feeling of hope has been seen to reduce anxiety. Hope encourages us to engage in plans and create goals, this includes making plans for reducing anxiety such as drinking less coffee, meditating, or attending support groups and counselling.
Hope Helps us to Cope with Depression
Depression is often described as a feeling of darkness while hope is its opposite, a source of light. Hope gives us reason to face depression and actively try to fight it. Hope prevents us from feeling as though there is no way out of this depression. In fact, hope is being considered not a short term quick fix but a long term healer of mental health that improves all aspects of our lives including social life, work life, and family life.
Hope Gets us Past Setbacks
When we encounter an unexpected setback, it can easily throw us off balance, give us a scare, make us question what we are pursuing. It is hope that helps to pick us back up again. In fact when we actively engage with hope, setbacks don’t impact us as much. We begin to appreciate the set back and how it has strengthened us when we have hope and positivity on our side. Hope reminds us that one set back is not the end of the road, that we can and will keep going cause something happy and wonderful is going to happen.
Hope Improves Self-Esteem and Confidence
Hope is not only the belief that something good and positive will happen in the environment around us but it is also the belief that we encompass what it takes to make it through to that wonderful life we hope for. Hope helps us but self-belief is powerful as it is what drives us forward. Instead of hoping for something external to you, place that hope in yourself to be able to strive for a wonderful, peaceful life.
Hope is a powerful thing, so do your best to hold on to it. Let it fill your heart and hope for a wonderful future and believe in yourself that you deserve and will achieve such a future.
To finish we will leave you with this quote from Desmond Tutu –
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness”