“What is hope? Why does it matter? How does trauma and adversity we experience throughout childhood or even into adulthood impact our hope and then more importantly, how do we nurture and restore our hope?
Dr. Angela Pharris is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and a member of a research team on the science of hope.
She says it has nothing to do with “wishes.”
“Hope is a cognitive process, so it’s a mindset we have, the thoughts we have that our future can be better than what we have right now and more importantly I have a strategy or a way or the capacity to make that future possible.”
The expectation of a positive future comes from the ability to identify goals and pathways to make that future possible, and to evaluate how to get around any challenges.
“We know when we experience trauma, it minimizes and depletes the kinds of goals we might set and puts barriers in the pathways in front of us and most important, it drains that mental energy right? And the conversation becomes, what do we do about that?”
Pharris advises getting very intentional about hopes and setting goals toward the desired future.
Small goals will keep the task from seeming overwhelming and it only take moving the needle a little to begin to see big results.
“All the research, probably 2000 studies on hope right now, and they all signal when hope gets bumped, nurtured just a little, good things follow.”
