December 8, 2016
Interview with Dr. Shane Lopez, author of the book Making Hope Happen
Mike Carruthers: Do you consider yourself someone who has a lot of hope?
Dr. Shane Lopez: Hope is the belief that the future will be better than the present coupled with the belief that you have the power to make it so.
Dr. Shane Lopez, author of the book Making Hope Happen, says most of us start out being pretty hopeful.
By age 2 (you think about the last 2 year old you hung out with) they’re saying, “I can, I can, I will.” So you’re already your own superhero when you’re age 2 and those are the basic building blocks of hope. That thinking about the future and then telling a story about the future in a way that it pulls you through everyday life – we have that probably in place when we’re 5 or 6 years old.
Hopefulness if really a key ingredient to happiness and fulfillment.
If you don’t see the best years as being ahead of you, if you don’t see the future as being better than the present and that’s kind of this chronic belief – then that can kick start a real depression that can be quite enduring and quite challenging to overcome.
Being hopeful about your future in a way is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you’re hopeful you actually start generating positive emotions – when you generate positive emotions your mind kind of opens up to unique opportunities in life and more opportunities in life. So then you start to generate more pathways to the goals that you’re interesting in and you just work a little differently, a little more efficiently, a little harder. But it’s a little bit more than self-fulfilling prophecy and its way more than wishing.
