Research-Backed Key to Practical Hope: Focus on Your Own Efforts
Hope sounds like it doesn’t exist outside of cinema. It’s impractical to just cross your fingers and hope things work out. However, if you connect hope with your own efforts, it will be much more effective.
As the advice site Barking Up the Wrong Tree explains, “hope” is the belief that things will get better in the future. If you do nothing to achieve this, then obviously your hope will get nowhere. However, if you use that hope to fuel your work, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Simply put, those who hope and strive for a better future achieve more than people who do only one thing or the other:
Does it sound corny? No, it’s not just a wish for everything to be good. Angela says you need active hope. You have to trust that things will improve because you are going to improve them. Hope may sound vague and unscientific, but it is not. Research shows that people without hope avoid serious problems, quit smoking earlier, and act helplessly. What could be more persistent than this?
It’s easy for the cynical mind to assume that some of the hope doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done. However, as Professor Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania notes , if you work constantly, not hoping to improve the situation, you are more likely to avoid risks and quit smoking faster. Work and hope go hand in hand if you want to improve your future.
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