Why generative hope can help you realise your goals

Then Christmas came, and their condition was unchanged, always behind bars, in poor hygienic conditions, with hunger cramps.

"We'll be out by Easter!" And Easter came... then Thanksgiving, then Christmas again. The years passed, and the more optimistic prisoners, feeling 'betrayed' by circumstances, would let go and die, often of starvation or heartbreak.

Optimism instils confidence about the future, people and the world, but it is often (at least to some extent) disconnected from reality. When an optimist feels betrayed by reality, he freezes, his motivation dissipates like leaves in the wind and he can become the most cynical of cynics.

To face the greatest challenges, optimism is not enough. Something else is needed.

According to various research conducted in recent decades, we need hope. In particular, what I like to call 'generative hope'.

The concept was introduced by psychologist Rick Snyder: unlike optimism, it shows us the dark sides of the situation and then connects them to what we can do. Sometimes small, sometimes big.

In this way, instead of waiting expectantly, I can read the context realistically and try to do something that is within my sphere of influence.

In this respect, hopefuls can be optimists as well as pessimists.

A hopeful pessimist can understand a bleak future, yet he has faith that he can improve his life and the lives of others.

Generative hope is made up of 2 ingredients: Agency (I believe I can make something happen and channel energy in that direction) and Pathways (I can imagine and undertake alternative paths and plans to overcome obstacles).

How much does generative hope affect the actual ability to achieve Goals, our goals? There is an interesting study on this.

In 2010, a research team studied the generative hope of university students for years.

It emerged that being able to be hopeful about their path (Agency), and to move hopefully along different paths (Pathways), predicted academic achievement better than their intelligence, personality and past achievements.

Generative hope is straightforward (it does not tell you 'it will be OK') and puts you in the centre of action (it does not make you wait, but do), and it can be trained.

To understand how, let us review the constituent elements. Goal: the goal, what I hope will happen. Agency: the energy, what I believe I can do. Pathway: the paths, how I think I will move.

How to train the Goal attitude?

Plucking it from vacuity. Making it specific, and addressable. If it's so huge that you don't know where to start, it's not a good goal. After that, rip it out of dependency. If it depends entirely or almost entirely on other people, reconfigure the context, or change the goal.

Let me give you a personal example: I want to launch a festival on personal growth. The goal of my generative hope will be: find sponsors!

Let us move on to Agency. To best express it, we need to channel energy in one direction, safeguarding it when it drops, due to the obstacles we will almost certainly encounter.

To achieve this, we break the goal into small steps to be taken quickly. Let us ask ourselves: "What is the first/next step I can take?"

Returning to the example: create a presentation deck, and then an official website that makes it clear why a company should invest in it.

Finally, we train the aptitude for Pathways.

Let's get used to thinking: if this doesn't work, what alternatives can I generate?

Instead of telling ourselves that everything will be fine (naive optimism), imagine that something is going wrong.

Let us ask ourselves: "How can some goals be achieved by another route?"

Returning to the example, let's say that for various reasons all, or almost all, of the realities that seemed interested and convinced, eventually tell me that they fail this year. What to do in this nefarious near future?

I could expand the pool of contacts through my Partners in Crime network. They will be able to help me.

As Snyder reminds us: we run out of agency when we struggle to keep going, to maintain the pace, and we run out of pathways when we feel we are at a dead end when faced with an obstacle.

If you are curious and want to find out your current levels of agency and pathways, and thus how much generative hope you harbour, there is a test: the Adult Hope Scale. I took it and found out that I am doing well on agency, but on pathways... I need to work on that.

Happy goal achievement: may generative hope be with us!

*Partner & Head of Communication, Newton SpA