It’s time to make hopeful goals

You could say that my love of books takes up most of my spare time. A pile of books spilling over next to my bed has been the aesthetic of every house I have lived in. I would bet, should I pick apart my disposal income over my lifetime, from birthday gifts to monthly pay, bookshops would be the place that my cash goes. But reading is more than a distraction, is a resource that taught me to feel more hopeful.

I’m not alone in this desire to accumulate more books than I can read; the Japanese have a word for it “Tsundoku: the art of buying books and never reading them”. Since technology has evolved, from online secondhand shops to e-books, my ability to get my hands on books are at the end of my fingertips. Both the kindle app and the library app are installed on my phone, so wherever I am, I can start reading. My average “count” over a year is 90 books; that I now lovingly enter the titles into my Goodreads app to make sure I keep track; it’s been known in the past for me to pick up a book, get halfway through and realise that it’s one I’ve already read.

Over the years the books I have read have filled my head with great tales of adventure, made me laugh, made me cry and most importantly, given me the opportunities to reflect on who I am, what I need and make real changes in my life. As I’ve got older, my desire to develop during my reading has grown and has led me to seek out books that have more of a personal development slant. It’s no surprise, as a coach, most of these have a psychological base! When the final page closes, and I look back up into the world, I ask myself “what can I do with this new information?”

The concepts, emotions, scientific studies and resources that a good personal development book provides when you study it when you read, give returns to your life repeatedly. They are the rare types of books that I will reread, scribble over and pause reading while I digest their latest revelation. I find there is a direct link between what I need in my life, the books I choose and the lessons I uncover. Each time I pick them up, driven by an unconscious gap that needs to be filled, my attention is drawn to what I didn’t realise was missing!

One such book, that I want to talk about today, is Dr Brene Brown’s “The Gifts of Imperfection”. It’s one of the many books you can find in my Personal Development BookClub.  Published in 2010, this book gives you hope for the potential for change; it removes the human drive to compare (and use it as a stick to beat yourself up with) and allows us to gentle question and test to expectations we put on ourselves. My first reading of this book was in the latter part of 2020 when the personal and professional experiences of that year had tested the core of who I was and what I thought was important.

Part of this book is the instruction to make notes; the back pages of the book are blank, for what Brown calls “integration”. One topic of integration that was filling up fast when I started is a category I call “emotional concepts”.

As I was picking my way through the chapters, I was stopped in my tracks by the discussion around hope. When I consider hope or being hopeful, I’ve always associated it with a lens on life that strengthens or weakens depending on the situation. This can alter and change, but I always believed it started with having people around you that can you show you the way. Hopefully, role models, However, like so many mindset concepts, the question that always remained was HOW? When you get under the bonnet and deconstruct hope, especially if you want to become more hopeful, what is the process? How can you grow hope and how can you break a circle of hopelessness?

Here comes Dr Brene Brown in all her glory, where she explains the work of C. R. Snyder, a former researcher at the University of Kanas, Lawrence. First things first, hope is not an emotion: it is a cognitive process. As human beings, we can feel the result of this process and call the emotion hope. But our interaction with the process is the blueprint to being hopeful. Snyder states that the creation of hope takes three things, the hope trilogy:

• Goals
• Pathways
• Agency

So, what do these three things mean?

Taking the words straight from page 88 of” The Gifts of Imperfection”

Goals: We have the ability to set realistic goals: 

We know where you want to go, and we know what the end in mind looks like.

Pathways: We can figure out how to achieve these goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes: 

Very simply, we have the journey in mind, that begins with the framework from our goals but allows us the options to respond to any changes that come our way.

Agency: We believe in ourselves: 

The self-belief that we can do this!

If any of these three are missing, we feel powerless and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and that there isn’t a future or way forward. Next time you feel like your hope for the future is slipping away, sit down, remember the trilogy and start planning. This doesn’t need to be monumental changes in our lives; it can be applied to anything that you need to bring an optimistic state of mind into your life, from health, wealth, relationships, work-life balance or career, you can make moves to feel more hopeful.

So, what will you start with today?

If you would like to share the hopeful goals you will set, come along to Creating Careers to Enjoy; a Facebook group with over 500 people (who happen to be parents) who are working on creating a work-life balance that works for them.

Read more career, return to work, balance and confidence focused articles on the rest of this blog!