Hope Actualized

Hope is not abstract or wishful thinking. Hope is real and influences one’s beliefs, thoughts, and behavior. An inert desire for wonderful expectations is but a fantasy. True hope, on the other hand, stirs action. Hope strengthens one’s beliefs, transforms thoughts, and motivates behavior. Hope is a gift but a gift that needs to be nurtured and practised to realise its full potential. 

So, what does one need to do to nurture the gift of hope? Charles R. Snyder, a positive psychologist, offers a framework to understand hope and suggests practices that one can learn to grow in hope. Snyder proposes three components of hope — goal, agency, and pathways.[1]

Goal — The Direction of Hope

Through his research, Snyder discovered that people who had hope “were seeking a goal”.[2] People who are not trying to get something done, to achieve, to overcome, or to actualize do not really need hope. So, the first thing individuals need to identify is their challenging yet realistic goal. 

Agency — The Willpower of Hope

           Agency is the cognitive perception that a goal can be attained through one’s efforts along with the resolve to do so.[3] This perceptual belief focuses cognitive and physical energy and enables the person with high hope to both begin a challenging task and to persist if the effort is blocked.[4] High agency is the will power to action, motivating self and behavior toward the realization of one’s goal. There are things which are beyond human effort and cannot be achieved without God’s intervention. But this does not mean that human efforts are worthless. Often God uses human efforts, though limited and imperfect, to bring transformation. 

Pathways — The Waypower of Hope

           The third element of hope, according to Snyder’s theory, consists of one’s ability to generate strategies to attain a goal.[5] Hope is not only believing that one day things will be bright but also working in that direction. Thus, hope involves both beliefs and actions in pursuit of the goal.[6]

           Knowing ourselves deeply can help us to surface our true goals and enhance agency and pathways to achieve them. Wallis invites us, particularly those facing very challenging and painful times, to go deeper to a more foundational and spiritual understanding of hope — one rooted in our identity as children of God — as the only thing that will see us through in the most desperate and unjust times.[7]

 

John Baptist OFM Cap.

Clinical Counselor & Psychospiritual Resource Person

York, PA, USA

Notes

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[1] Hoover-Kinsinger, Sandra, Hoping Against Hope: An Integration of the Hope Theology of Jurgen Moltmann and C.R. Snyder’s Psychology of Hope, Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 2018, Vol. 37, No. 4, 313-322.

[2] Snyder, Charles, “Hypothesis: There is Hope,” in Snyder, Charles (Ed.), Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, and Applications (pp. 3-19), San Diego, CA: Academic Press. 

[3] Snyder, Charles, The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here, 1994, New York, NY: The Free Press.

[4] Snyder, Charles, The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here

[5] Snyder, Charles, The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here

[6] Snyder, Charles, et al., 1998

[7] Jim Wallis, The Way of Hope