6.1 What is hope and optimism and how can it help you and your family?

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An illustration of two silhouetted people looking at a glass which has liquid in it up to the half way point. One person has a speech bubble saying half full and the other has one saying half empty.

We have hope when we expect or anticipate that we will attain what we desire.

If we have a tendency to look to the future with such a hopeful or positive outlook, then we are likely to be described as being optimistic. Optimists have a built-in attitude to be hopeful all the time and consider the possibilities of good things happening in life.

This tendency to take a hopeful approach to the future is summed up by the popular metaphor as seeing a ‘glass as half full’ rather than a ‘glass half empty.

The benefits of having a hopeful and optimistic attitude

In this video Michelle invites you to consider the benefits of having a hopeful and optimistic attitude and to learn about how and if this can be cultivated and if it is possible to ‘learn’ optimism.

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MICHELLE:
Whilst many people think this way, hope is much more than just a state of mind. In fact, according to Snyder and colleagues, well-renowned researchers in this field and the founders of hope theory, hope is an action-orientated strength which gives us the motivation to pursue our goals as well as the resilience to pick ourselves up when things go wrong.
According to hope theory, hopelessness comprises three distinct thinking but related components. These include first, goals thinking, which is about having a clear understanding of valuable goals. Two, we have pathways thinking, which is the capacity to develop the strategies to reach those goals.
And three, there's agency thinking, which is the ability to initiate and sustain the motivation for using those strategies. So put simply, hope is like a snapshot of a person's current goal-directed thinking, highlighting the motivated pursuit of goals and the expectation that those goals can be achieved.
Many people also believe that hope is an either/or proposition, believing that in order to have hope, all despair or hopelessness must be extinguished. However, research has shown that hope doesn't necessarily fade in the face of adversity. Indeed, hope can foster an orientation to life that allows for a more grounded and optimistic outlook, even in the most challenging of circumstances.
You will learn more about the benefits of hope as part of this unit. But as a taster, some of the benefits are as follows. Hope can lead to improved overall mental health, including for those with severe mental illness, depression, anxiety, and trauma-related disorders. In fact, hope has shown that this can promote wellbeing more than optimism and self-efficacy.
Hope also has strong relationships with positive mood, emotional adjustment, and illness-related coping. This also links with greater life satisfaction, enhanced believing that life is meaningful, and a higher sense of purpose in life, to name a few. High-hope individuals generally also have a positive attitude to interpersonal relationships and form stronger bonds to others.
Like hope, optimism is also more than a state of mind. And also like hope, optimism has been defined as a way of thinking too -- in this case, one that reflects our favourable views about the future.
Compared to hope, optimists are also more focused on generalised expectations rather than the how or why a goal is achieved. And research has shown that optimists generally have more positive than negative expectations and report less distress in their daily lives in the face of challenge.
In terms of benefits, research has shown that optimism is related to fewer symptoms of depression, higher levels of wellbeing, lower attrition rates, and stronger perceptions of social support. The positive repercussions of optimism have also been related to individuals being more likely to adopt health-promoting behaviours and coping strategies that enable better psychological adjustment.
More recent evidence also shows that optimism is modifiable and associated with better cardiovascular health and increased likelihood of healthy ageing. In contrast, pessimists are more likely to adopt risky behaviours, such as alcohol abuse or other drugs, and to display more harmful reactions and adaptations to adversity compared to optimists.
In terms of the benefits of hope and optimism during the pandemic, a very recent study carried out in schoolchildren in Australia, which looked at stress-related growth in teenagers, found that by adopting a positive reinterpretation of the events during COVID, along with using strengths, also predicted levels of growth. In particular, the teens had learned to be better able to deal with uncertainty and small hassles, to discover their inner strengths, and become more accepting of others.
Taken together, therefore, research has shown how having belief in a good life, or optimism, hope for the future, using our strengths, and reinterpreting things more positively is another way in which positive psychology has helped during this pandemic. In short, by building and expanding coping processes that foster growth.
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Positive psychology suggests that it is possible to develop your capacity to take an optimistic outlook on life. It defines optimism as a set of beliefs and qualities that help individuals to focus on the positive aspects of life rather than the negative ones, showing resilience and personal strength.

Embracing optimism doesn’t make us immune to worries and stress, rather it teaches us to see the bigger picture regarding what is going wrong and still be hopeful that it can be turned right. Being able to approach difficulties, such as enduring lockdowns during the pandemic, with an optimistic outlook can help us to be more resilient and bounce back more quickly.

Hope and optimism

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A graphic detailing several quotes. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Winston Churchill. Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute. George Bernard Shaw. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it. Barack Obama. You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. William Faulkener. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen.

Which of the quotes above do you most relate to and why?

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The diagram below highlights some of the benefits of hope and optimism.

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A diagram with a centre circle saying hope and optimism. Around the outside are six satellite circles saying improves physical health. Enhances wellbeing and positive emotions. Protects against depression. Protects against anxiety. Helps you to pursue goals. Boosts academic achievement.

The fifth of six themes

6.2 Realistic hope and optimism