Cultivating Hope Allows You To Have The Ability To Plan

When there is hope, the mind is oriented towards a goal and gives meaning to waiting. The moment our brain activates this focus, strength and emotion shape the ability to plan, to draw strategies and routes with which to overcome the present situation. Maintaining a realistic but positive view of things broadens our life perspectives and that is a skill that we should all improve.

Understanding the sense of hope as a psychological competence would improve our mental well-being and, in turn, even optimize our ability to achieve. A good part of the expert community agrees on this same idea. One example, Matthew Gallagher, a psychologist and professor at the University of Houston, focuses in one of his studies on how this dimension generates notable advances in psychotherapy.

If we enable a person in the art of cultivating this concept traditionally related to the field of philosophy or spirituality, he will be able to handle conditions such as daily stress and anxiety much better. It is achieved because we manage to instill in the patient’s mind dimensions such as anxiety reduction, self-confidence, positivity and cognitive flexibility.

This last concept, that of cognitive flexibility, is decisive. Hope works by weakening those more rigid mental schemes so that we can plan, design new goals and objectives, trusting that one of them will work. Teaching us, after all, that only when we are receptive and trust that the future can we transform our present.

Hope and our ability to plan

Charles Rick Snyder was one of the most prominent exponents of positive psychology in the study of hope. He defined this dimension as a motivational state in which two factors combine. On the one hand, the energy or emotion of positive valence towards the idea of ​​achieving something. On the other, planning.

That is to say, the authentic hope, the one that is useful and reverts to our well-being, is not one that is limited only to trusting that the events that are to come will be good. In addition, the person reasons and visualizes what strategies must be used for what one hopes to happen.

Therefore, in this dimension not only positivity and confidence are integrated, we also find the ability to plan what must be done in order to achieve that desired horizon. Let’s see more features though.

Hope is a component of psychological well-being

We pointed it out at the beginning. Cultivating a sense of hope is key to psychotherapy. At the end of the day, the opposite of this dimension is fear, immobility and that perpetual anguish in which only walls and obstacles are seen and no horizon.

Positive psychology has always integrated hope into its bases because it sees in it what allows the impulse towards change in the human being. It achieves this basically by the components that make it up:

• Goal-oriented thoughts and ability to plan.
• Cognitive flexibility. Ability to react to uncertainty and difficulty, being able to change approaches, to find ten solutions for the same problem, to see several solutions to a specific situation.

• Self-confidence. This third element is very important. The person who maintains hope does not always trust 100% that things are going to happen will be favorable. Hope is also trusting yourself and your skills to deal effectively with what may happen.

Thinking positive improves planning ability and change orientation

Thinking positive is understanding that we need to transform our reality in difficult moments to achieve well-being. For their part, those who see reality through the glass of negativity only glimpse obstacles and provide criticism. Therefore, we need to mentally build the foundations of an active hope that mediates the ability to plan, project and act to transform the present.

Thus, in a study carried out at the University of Maryland, United States, Dr. Thomas Bailey demonstrated how hope and optimism mediate people’s quality of life. One of the most notable dimensions that this mental approach favors is that thanks to it we mitigate the impact of uncertainty.

When we navigate those difficult and adversity-punctuated times, we need a sense of hope that allows us to move without the weight of fear or that permanent anguish that makes us think the worst. The not knowing what may happen tomorrow or what awaits us in the near future is one of the largest sources of anxiety, stress and suffering.

Now, the hopeful gaze handles that ocean of uncertainty much better because it assumes that what has to come will not be so bad. Likewise, they trust themselves and understand that it is best to be prepared, activate the ability to plan to develop strategies and then be more proactive and less passive.

Let’s reflect on this tool of life and make it our own right now. Our well-being deserves it.