Creating hope - instructions for more confidence

Draw hope again

By hope, we mean today a positive expectation, commonly, without there being any objective reason. Hope is the opposite of despair and is closely related to it. In general, we hope when something is not certain or even when practical methods to achieve a goal have failed. How do we overcome despair and hope? The following overview:

• Hoping can also describe an active as well as a passive state.
• Actively Hope means seeing an important event, event or goal on the horizon, wishing it to believe in it, but knowing that one's own ability to achieve it is limited.
• Hope can promote the self-healing of the body.
• Those who actively hope for unconventional ways to reach their goal. Active Hope motivated.
• Anyone who hopes passively, however, blocks their own activity, which could improve a precarious situation.

contents

• Draw hope again
• Hopping and fidgeting
• The principle of hope
• Today's definitions
• motivation
• A feeling of anticipation
• Motivating or demotivating?
• How can hope be positive??
• Hope - A double-edged sword
• Creating hope in crises
• From which we can draw hope?

Hopping and fidgeting

Hoffen comes from the Low German word hopen, which means jumping, even today in English hop. Thus, the hopeful hopes, in joyful anticipation, to hop on something coming. He is positive about the future, in contrast to the hopeless, who sees the future as black. While despair is the counterpart to hope, anxiety and sorrow accompany our hopes.

The literal blackness of the pessimist in contrast to the hopeful, who looks positively into the "bright" future. (Image: jozsitoeroe / fotolia.com)

Rarely is hope absolute. Adding to the expectation that the future will be positive, there is the fear that this hope might be deceptive. Unfair hopes we call illusions. Hope points to a goal, it means trust, which goes hand in hand with a subjective interest in pleasing possibilities of the future.

The principle of hope

Hope in the religious sense is one of the leitmotifs of Christianity and goes hand in hand with a firm belief in Almighty God. In the 20th century, on the other hand, Ernst Bloch defined hope philosophically. Although Bloch sees hope as a forward-looking expectation that results from the biological drive to self-preservation, it goes beyond that. For in hope, this expectation is combined with the reflective reason of achieving the desired goals in reality.

This kind of hope is not a passive submission to a fictional God, but an active action in the world. It means dealing with a problem, looking for changes and taking action to fix the problem. For Friedrich Nietzsche, on the other hand, hope was the worst thing in the world because it prolonged people's torments.

Today's definitions

Current definitions of hope are in the essentials in agreement that

• Hope is positively occupied,
• refers to the future,
• regardless of whether others judge it that way, and regardless of the fact that the realization takes a lot of effort,
• Hope combined with self-competence provides an approach of psychotherapy to exploit one's own potential, in the sense of "belief in yourself",
• traditional ideas with hope are more of a persevering, but passive inner attitude, ie the waiting for outside help,
• other concepts place hope transcendent as "destiny", "cosmic force", the Christian God, a metaphysical righteousness or in the belief in technical progress. Here there are still differences between a passive expectation of salvation or the (magical) belief in being able to tap into these "cosmic forces".

Hope is understood by some in connection with destiny and divine influence. (Image: artitcom / fotolia.com)

motivation

Charles Richard Snyder investigated in the 1980s what Hoffen mentally triggers. Hope is therefore linked with thinking about goals and thus the determination to tackle these goals. Add to this the optimism to find ways to achieve these goals. He suspected that hope drives people to focus on their goal. Hopeful people were less discouraged. If they get stuck, they are looking for alternative paths instead of giving up. In this definition, hope is accompanied by motivation. Hopelessness, on the other hand, leads to abandoning goals and refusing alternative solutions.

Snyder referred to the fact that high-hop students had better grades and completed their studies better. Snyder's approach was later criticized because his concept of hope does not allow a content-based separation of terms such as optimism, self-control or belief in oneself. In addition, he excludes hopes people have just when there is no possibility of reaching set goals - a notion of hope to which Nietzsche referred, hoping for just when there is no rational possibility, a situation improve.

A feeling of anticipation

Psychologically, hope is an expectation emotion. When we imagine a future event, our brain designs a figurative model of it, both positive and negative, independent of "objective reality." This can also be a fear image - here the expectation would be negative. The feeling of hope on the one hand means the conviction that this positive event is possible and, on the other hand, it springs from the wish that it will happen.

It is also typical for a sense of hope that the wishful has little or no influence on this happening. For example, a doctor who says about a cancer patient that "there is hope" and at the same time believes that the cancer heals and wishes to heal, but knows that his own ability to contribute is limited.

In some cases, hopefuls - as outsiders - have little influence on the event. Self-healing powers can probably only be promoted by the affected person. (Image: sebra / fotolia.com)

Motivating or demotivating?

Whether Hoffen motivates or demotivates a person depends on whether the expectation is active or passive. Active hope promotes motivation by eliminating negative expectations and inspiring those affected to gather information that will make the hoped-for - even when conventional methods fail.

However, passive hope can lead to the exact opposite. Instead of becoming active, the hopefuls wait for something beyond their control. This is especially true of the religious hope that a supernatural being will judge it. This also applies to hope in the sense of making illusions, where only the desired goal is in mind, but the hopefuls just take no steps to bring it about.

Hope's hallmarks are that the future event has great significance for the hopefuls, secondly, that it is difficult to achieve through one's own work, and thirdly, that those affected invest feelings and thoughts in the result, even if the prospect of it occurring in doubt.

How can hope be positive??

Actively hope, according to studies, has a positive effect on the professional success and promotes the achievement of high goals, at the university as well as in sports. Hoffen promotes well-being even in precarious situations. It mobilizes the self-healing of the body much like a placebo.

Studies show that hope and positive thinking have a positive effect on the achievement of goals. (Image: Aaron Amat / fotolia.com)

Hope - A double-edged sword

Actively hoping to have one goal in mind, despite external resistance, promotes the achievement of this goal. Hope creates the stamina needed to track a target for a long time. Meanwhile, the success of a project also includes the critical appraisal of reality. Those who cling only to their hopes and desires can also slip into the abyss because they miss the point where a hopeless goal should be dropped.

Active hope also leads to selective perception. We only accept what seems to us to be positive in the direction of the desired goal and ignore concerns. Although this is to a certain extent a necessary safeguard of the brain, so as not to be able to freeze in fear and act, but goes seamlessly into self-deception. The critical point is reached when we hide or even combat new insights that contradict our positively colored image.

Creating hope in crises

In a life crisis, people quickly reach the point where "nothing works". Despair spreads, we feel unable to get out of the situation on our own. Although active hope can not work wonders here, but guides us to overcome the crisis. Despair may be justified, but, like hope, it is first of all a subjective feeling, regardless of whether the "objective situation" is really desperate. Hope is apt to deal with a crisis, paradoxically, because we have nothing to do for the time being but to believe in a positive outcome.

The point of hope comes when we are desperate. We are in the middle of the black hole after the separation from our partner, after the loss of a job or the apartment. While we run the risk of getting stuck in our grief, hoping shows us a perspective. That is the most important function. The longed-for goal shines on the horizon and shows us that the present low in the future does not have to last.

So, when I have the hope that another state will be possible in the future, the ideas and thoughts are slowly but surely dripping, of what I can do to achieve that state.

In a life crisis, hope shows a perspective, a light on the horizon that helps us to escape from our depths. (Image: ferkelraggae / fotolia.com)

From which we can draw hope?

No religious faith is needed to gain hope, but it is helpful if they have internalized ethics and values. Such values ​​give them a hold and help them to not lose heart. We can therefore derive hope from a humanistic coordinate system and the aspiration to live in a world worth living. Because to hope means to trust that meaning lies in what we do. Accordingly, the commitment to a humane society is just as much about despair as hopelessness. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)

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Ernst Bloch: Edition: Volume 5: The Principle Hope. Frankfurt am Main 1985