How to find hope (other than a walk to a river, with a dog, in the rain. )

I am nearly at the end of a writing challenge. I woke this morning not really knowing what to write about. I walked the dog down to the river which is always good for thinking: dog + water x walk = something good. Even though I felt stuck, with that magic formula I felt I could, regardless of a long winter funk, have hope.

So it almost came as no surprise to notice, for the first time this bench. It was set amongt a promenade of other benches with testimonials about how much someone, now dead, liked sitting on that bench. This bench says ' Hope is Everything' and the plaque says 'After Life 2019' - ... It had something to do with Ricky Gervais and a Netflix programme I haven't seen. It's also got a little piece from CALM ( The Campaign Against Living Miserably) - 'Life can be tough but there's always hope.'

This whole thing probably means a lot to fans of the programme and there's a beautiful intent here from Netflix/ Calm, but in and of itself, it meant plenty to me.

I wonder sometimes if hope is necessary or is it this addictive thing they call Hopium in crypto circles. We need it desperately but at the same time hope can be misplaced, delusional. Or is it? Is it Ok to have hope even though to everyone else, it you should be hopeless? Is there just one hope, or are there different forms? Turns out there are four or six main sorts of hope...

• Realistic Hop - hope for an outcome that is reasonable or probable.
• Utopian Hope - a collectively oriented hope that collaborative action can lead to a better future for all.
• Chosen Hope -helps us live with a difficult present but also with an uncertain future.
• Transcendent Hope - which breaks down into three other forms of hope....Patient Hope – a hope that everything will work out well in the end.Generalized Hope – hope not directed toward a specific outcome.Universal Hope – a general belief in the future and a defense against despair in the face of challenges.

But is hope useful or just a comfort blanket inside our comfort zones ? Here are 9 benefits of having hope from Positive Psychology Today...

1. Hope is significantly correlated with superior academic and athletic performance.
2. Hope has the potential to enhance wellbeing over time. People who are more hopeful and expect to be successful in achieving goals are more likely to experience a state of wellbeing.
3. Individuals with high hope are more likely to view stressful situations as challenging rather than threatening.
4. Hope can be perceived as a protective factor against the development of chronic anxiety.
5. Hope is a motivational factor that helps initiate and sustain action toward long-term goals
6. High-hope individuals can conceptualize their goals clearly; establishing goals based on their own previous performances.
7. Snyder et al. (2002) found that high hope college students were more likely to graduate than their low hope counterparts.
8. Hope is positively related to overall life satisfaction.
9. Hope, with its in-built orientation towards the future, motivates individuals to maintain their positive involvement in life regardless of any limitations imposed upon them.

So how do you make hope, how do you keep it?

27th January was the anniversary of the liberation of Auswitz. It's impossible to imagine how little hope there was there after so many years of unthinkable cruelty. One man however discovered how to find hope. Victor Frankl saw most of his family die at the camp, but he survived and helped many others to. His book 'Man's Search for Meaning' is a short, brilliant account of survival - the secret, the way of opening up a well of hope, he suggests is to focus on the future and what and as importantly, who, you have to live for.

When you have that then you have nothing else to ask for, so for this post I am not asking for anything.

#hope #practical #no4thfloor