Thursday, May 13, 2010
Now Blogging on Hope at Psychology Today
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hopeful Words on the First Day of School
Shane
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Portion of Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Monday, August 17, 2009
HopeBanks Bailout America's Youth
When I was 20 years old I was determined to go to a good graduate school (out of Louisiana) and get a PhD in psychology and then a great job. I had good grades, adequate test scores, and strong letters of recommendation. Trouble was, I did not know how to type (makes filling out 15 applications challenging), I was a poor writer (my essays were atrocious), I had rarely been out of Louisiana, and I had never been on a plane. To make my dream come true, I had to take a risk and let lots of people know about my goal. I had to ask folks to invest in my goal by sharing their resources with me. People stepped up by typing my applications (while I was learning to type), helping me answer questions about myself and my future (and proofing and reproofing my essays), giving me the confidence to apply far and wide, and donating an airline ticket.
I was lucky to be surrounded by people who believed in me and in my goal. Over the years I have wondered how other young people with big goals get people to invest in them. It just might help to have a formal way to connect young people with big dreams with the resources from caring adults. What would happen if we opened a HopeBank in every community?
Local HopeBanks would create opportunities for community members to invest in the future of local youth. A HopeBank links young people with clear goals for their future with the resources from community members. Community members invest in young people and their ideas by linking personal resources (specifically time, talent, knowledge, and skills) to the needs of the youth. As a member of a HopeBank, an individual or a small group of committed adults open a HopeBank and solicit investment ideas, or goals for the future, from youth through schools and youth organizations. A representative of the HopeBank works with youth to refine these goals to make them specific and additive, with very clear markers of progress and an attainment timeline. The goal and a list of resources needed are then posted on the HopeBank website which is reviewed periodically by members.
Imagine that a company of 2000 people opens a HopeBank in their community. 50 employees sign up as members of the bank and they solicit investment ideas from youth in schools within a few miles of the workplace. Dozens (maybe hundreds) of accounts are opened by youth by submitting goals that are then refined with the help of the bank manager to make them more attainable; the revised goals are then posted. At that point, bank members (i.e., the investors) attempt to match their resources with the needs of local youth. For example, imagine if a student submits this proposal, “Soon-to-be first generation college student needs help preparing for entrance exams and writing college essays.” The HopeBank manager would help the student clarify the goals, the timeline, and the assistance needed. Upon posting, members could work through the bank manager to offer time, talent, knowledge, and skills needed to help the student get into college. Accounts would be updated online (for members and account holders to see) and return on investment in youth will be tracked over time with updates from young people and members.
Open a HopeBank in your community. Find local kids with big goals and invest in them.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Our Next Big Hope Moment
We were at out best. We made the world a promise and delivered. We lassoed the moon 40 years ago. 500 million people watched and celebrated. On July 20, 1969, we had our last big hope moment.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Two Hope Lessons
Most of what I know about hope, I picked up from other people. In April 1997, I learned two lessons about hope. With my coursework behind me, I was wrapping up my last few months of clinical training at the Eisenhower VA Medical Center. The staff psychiatrist popped into my office. He had a case for the soon-to-be psychologist. Dr. McNutt (real name…couldn’t make that up) threw me several softballs during my time in the clinic. The case of Paul Carlson (pseudonym to protect client confidentiality) was not what I expected.
Paul was a full-bodied 63-year old veteran who had spent his life in the farm fields of Kansas. He was a pragmatist, from his work boots to his flattop to his no nonsense approach to life. In shock from a diagnosis of kidney failure he had only one fix – suicide. See, Paul had never heard of a farmer running a farm while on dialysis, so that treatment option did not make sense. Not getting treated would leave him too sick to work the fields. Get treatment, lose the farm. Don’t get treatment, lose the farm. Lose the farm, lose all sense of meaning. Paul wanted to avoid losing the farm, by any means necessary. That day, Paul and I completed Lesson #1: hope depends on the quality of our relationship with future.
The next day, he came back to the clinic and started Lesson #2 with a question, “What’s my story?” After fumbling a bit, I was able to grasp the full meaning of what he was asking. Paul wanted to know how talk about being ill, going to treatment, and getting better or getting worse. He hated the question, “How are you doing?” and wanted to have a go-to answer. We spent the next two hours talking about hope as an active process that requires constant attention. At the beginning of the next session, he told me, “I got it. ‘I am working on it’ When people ask me how I am doing, I tell them, ‘I am working on it.’” Lesson #2: hope is active and it fueled by the language we use.
Now, the two lessons Paul shared with me add to my book learning about people and hope.
Hope Lesson #1: We are the only creatures on the planet that truly think about the future. The quality of our relationship with the future determines our hopefulness. Future thinking at its best gives us high hope.
Hope Lesson #2: Human language makes hope infinite. Hope is brought alive by the stories we tell to ourselves and about ourselves. These stories live on, as does our hope.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Hope for America's Students
Measuring Hope with the Gallup Student Poll
Over the next 10 years, the Gallup Student Poll will measure the hope of every 5th through 12th grader in America. The inaugural poll surveyed 70,078 students from 335 schools and 59 districts located in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Here is a summary of the hope results from the poll.
Half of students are hopeful; these students possess numerous ideas and abundant energy for the future. The other half of students are stuck or discouraged, lacking the ideas and energy they need to navigate problems and reach goals. Hope varies little across grade levels.
Most students (95%) agree or strongly agree with the statement: “I know I will graduate from high school.” The belief that a student will graduate from high school is positively correlated with student responses to the following items: “There is an adult in my life who cares about my future” and “I can find lots of ways around any problem.” Unfortunately, there is a slight disconnect between this expectation for graduation and the potential outcome suggested by data on the dropout crisis. While 95% of today’s students say they will graduate, fewer than 75% of students will receive a high school diploma.
See http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/web_links/050509_student_gallup_poll_results for a brief video describing poll results.
Doubling Hope
Half of the young people in America need more help to develop skills for hopeful thinking. Doubling the number of hopeful kids will yield America’s Most Hopeful Generation. So, help a student in the pursuit of an important goal and teach her how to hope for a better future.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Hope for Today, Hope for the Future
What is Hope?
Watching children on a playground tells you all you need to know about hope. A child’s vision transforms a series of obstacles (tall ladders, hard to reach monkey bars, wobbly wooden bridges) into limitless opportunities for fun. Goals become very clear (“I am going to swing across all the monkey bars.”), the plan develops (“I am going to climb the ladder, grab the bar, and swing from the first one to the second one.”), and support is requested (“Can you help me up?”) while confidence grows (“I think I got it. Yeah, I am doing it!”).
Hope happens when we focus our thoughts on clear and meaningful goals. We concentrate on the future we want, reflect on our goals, and think about all the ways we can make our vision of the future a reality. When we put our thoughts about our goals together with ideas and energy for the future, we are most hopeful. Ideas are shaped into pathways to a goal and the energy, or personal agency, is built up over time. So, the statement “These are the many ways I can get there from here” reflects the ideas or pathways of hope. And, “I am excited and confident about getting there from here!” captures the energy of agency. Contentment, pride, and joy come about when we use our hopeful thinking and overcome obstacles. Frustration, sadness, and anger bubble up when obstacles wear us down.
The essence of hope is having the drive to set and pursue goals, to take risks, to initiate action. Hope fuels problem-solving and it helps us develop personal strengths and social resources. More specifically, having hope makes us more likely to do well in school and to take good care of our health.
Why Hope is Important?
Whether your child is experiencing good times or bad times, hope can help. During a good day, when a child is thinking about a bright future, hope helps him persist on important tasks, create challenging stretch goals that foster growth, and build new resources through successful experiences. On tough days, ones that involve failure or illness, hope helps a child overcome major obstacles. For example, if a child receives a poor grade on a test, she revisits her goal for that class, adds or modifies the pathways to achieving that goal, and searches for more support and confidence. In short, she makes hope happen when she is under pressure. When facing more serious problems in life, like chronic pain and illness, hope works to make situations more bearable or makes the recuperative process more productive. Specifically, high-hope people can tolerate pain twice as long as people with low-hope. And, high-hope people are more likely to do what needs to be done to bounce back and become healthy again.
What Does a High Hoper Look Like?
A high-hope child has the ideas, the plans, and the motivation to make things happen. These youngsters are energetic in the moment and excited about the future. Hopeful children are not sitting on the sidelines. They are busy creating pathways to achieve goals and they are filled with the determination to succeed, thereby actively engaging in life and all its possibilities. Through interacting with the world, they are able to acquire the tools and resources they need to successfully navigate their lives. They may even create a hope domino effect that gets their friends and family members involved in hopeful goal pursuits.
Teaching Hope
Getting children talking about hope is as easy as asking them a few questions and discussing the answers:
1. What are your hopes and dreams? Which one is most important to you right now?
2. What are all the ways you can think about to make your most important dream come true?
3. Who makes you feel like you matter? How will their love and support help make your dream come true?
When helping your child become more hopeful, keep in mind that that you are teaching a set of skills that build on what children do naturally, thinking about the future. With a little help, children can learn how to describe important goals in terms that are clear and specific and add something to their lives. Ideas grow as children generate more and more routes that will take them from Point A to Point B in the short term and long term. Finally, with some love and caring and a short track record of personal success, children can stay energized and motivated when pursuing goals.