The Potential of Hope

The potential of hope during these days of a global pandemic involves developing the ability to think about the future expecting that desired events and outcomes will occur.  For this to happen, we must take action in ways that make them more likely.  Hope, optimism, and a future orientation represent how we think, what we feel, and our motivation toward the future.  

Learning How To Hope With Optimism in a Pandemic: ABCDE

When I think of hope, I often recall one of my favourite quotes by Clare Boothe Luce.  She is buried on a property she owned, then donated to Trappist monks I know in Mepkin, SC.  She said, “There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.”

The Corona virus has brought death, suffering, unemployment, lockdown, a government mandated recession, but most of all, THE OPPORTUNITY FOR HOPE.  Hope is a new future.  A time to for the people of the world to reconstitute themselves.  In the times we live in, we have choices.  We can either learn to view the world with optimism and a positive, hopeful orientation to life, or we can learn how to be helpless.

Martin Seligman, one of the fathers of positive psychology, focused his early work on learned helplessness.  This involves giving up when you believe that nothing you do will make any difference.  To unlearn helpless, and learn optimism, Seligman’s approach is known as the “ABCDE” model of learned optimism:

• Adversity is the situation that calls for a response.  During COVID-19, it may be you have become sick with the virus, lost your job, or your family is suffering other forms of loss.  To begin to learn optimism, just sit with that right now.  Allow yourself to feel and think about it. 
• Belief is how we interpret the event.  To begin realising how you are interpreting your COVID-19 experience, keep a journal.  Every day, make notes about what you are feeling and thinking in the face of the adversity that this pandemic has caused you to encounter.  To measure your beginning level of optimism, you can take The Optimism Test.
  
  
• Consequence is the way that we behave, respond, or feel as a result of what we choose to believe.  The pandemic is a traumatic event.Many of us believed before Sars-COV2 spread across the globe that experiencing hardship and troubles can leave us in a better place than we were before.  In my work on reaching the Peak of Potential, I have often helped those on the climb to understand the positive life changes that people report in the aftermath of highly stressful life events–adversity. 

  Right here, right now, in the middle of the uncertainty and disruption of life we are experiencing, the unseen enemy has isolated us from each other through social distancing and lockdowns.  The consequences on our society, families, and our own individual lives are many.

  Do you believe this will end?  Do you believe you will be okay?  Do you believe life will go back to what is was before?  Are your beliefs causing you to take positive action or are they causing negatives like giving up on your goals and dreams?  Is your passion, life purpose and meaning, ability to get in the flow, and be productive despite the adversity intact?  Every day, I recommend setting a time toward the end of your workday or before bed, to write down in a notebook or journal the consequences of your beliefs today.

   

• Dispute is the effort we expend to argue or dispute the belief.  Here, we need to question our beliefs. “The Work” of Byron Katie is helpful here.1. Is it true? (Yes or no. If no, move to question 3.)
  2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? (Yes or no.)
  3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
  4. Who or what would you be without the thought?

   

• Energy is the outcome that emerges from trying to challenge our beliefs.  We turnaround helplessness and negativity into positive optimism by realising that we create our own reality.  We do not have to believe the negative!  We can choose to throw out the script of fear, anxiety about the future, sadness about the past, and decide to be in the moment again, and sit with what we are feeling till tomorrow now that we have dealt with today.  

Affirmations of Hope

Here are several powerful affirmations to remind you of how to maxmise the potential of hope during this time of opportunity to grow stronger in our personal character which releases our potential: 

Do you need help processing the pandemic, learning optimism and not pessimism, and releasing your potential in the face of adversity?