Hopeful Words on the First Day of School

Imagine that your future can be better than the present and believe that you have the talent, support, and responsibility to make it so. I wish I would have heard this speech (http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/) when I was a kid. Here is an excerpt.

Shane
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Portion of Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. 

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. 

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. 

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. 

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. 

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. 

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. 

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. 

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. 

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. 

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. 

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." 

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. 

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. 

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. 

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. 

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?  

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

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.

Though few of my clinical techniques worked with Paul that first day, he did get to the point where he was no longer a danger to himself. With the help of his family and friends, we made sure that Paul had a safe home to return to and plenty of support.

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.

 

Personal Hope Becomes a Public Resource

Sometimes great ideas and hope lay dormant until someone transforms a personal hope into a public resource.

In 2009, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, committed to making his city greener, climbed into the cab of a new all-electric cargo hauler, capable of moving a 60,000 pound shipping container quietly and cleanly at the Port of Los Angeles. The idea and the energy for this futuristic vehicle had been carried around by its developer, Balwinder Samra, president of Balqon Corporation and was put to work during a lunch with Harbor Commission President David Freeman. Freeman, curious about the capacity of Balqon’s electric motors wanted to know if Samra could make one powerful and efficient enough to haul 30 tons of cargo.
Samra: No problem.
Freeman: Well, I know theoretically no problem, but can you actually build one?
Samra: Sure.
Freeman: Well, why haven’t you?
Samra: No one has ever asked me to.

The official request came along with $527,000 in funding from the port and an air quality organization. Two years and 47 new green collar jobs later, Mayor Villaraigosa rolled the first green hauler into use. With zero emissions, a top speed of 40 mph, and a range of 30 to 60 miles per battery charge, the hauler could make drayage a greener industry.

Got a friend with a personal hope? Sure you do. Help her turn it into a public resource...today.

Hope for Now and for the Future...Please

“I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, ‘In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.’” JFK preceded that recollection with this simple quote that sticks with me. “We must think and act not only for the moment but for our time.”

Thinking and acting in the moment takes a high-hope person who prevents bad times from getting worse. That person is a responder.

Thinking and acting for our time, for our generation, takes a high-hope person who transcends the moment and crafts a better future. That person is an initiator.

During down economic periods, we value the responders. They “put out fires” and keep people from running scared. Responders solve problems today and create a better tomorrow. And, during these times, we must value the initiators for their long-view and for their vision of the future that others cannot yet imagine.

Right now, we need to respond and initiate. We need to tend the garden and plant Lyautey’s tree.

Are you a responder or an initiator? Pick a role and get to work. We need hope for now and for the future…please.

Choose Hope over Fear

On inauguration day, “we gather because we have chosen hope over fear...” This choice between hope and fear requires us to power up our new brain and to override our ancient instincts. Hope is intentional; fear is automatic. Choosing hope is hard work that never lets up. Fear just happens, it runs amok, and we need to corral it.

Fear fuels our lives, yet strangely it keeps us right where we were, sometimes running in small circles. Fear can be used better. The days of our lives will never be without fear. We must learn to manage it.

Now, hope, as our science has demonstrated and folks have started to believe, can be chosen and converted into a fuel for change. Some might say that this energy is not as powerful and reliable. They are dead wrong. Hope is potent, plentiful, and faithful. We need to learn to master hope once we make it our default.

We choose hope and nudge the hell out of it to create better lives for ourselves and others. We must learn to make fear work for us, to keep us safe, but not too safe. In time, we will realize that hope and fear can work together and modern humans have been, and always will be, hope-fear hybrids.

Master hope. Manage fear. Go hybrid.

Hope: Taking the Blinders Off

Hope and fear are both necessary in modern life, but they operate very, very differently. Fear is associated with signals from one of the oldest parts of our brains, the amygdala. When we experience threat, the amygdala initiates a process that helps generate the physical resources we need to kick ass or make tracks. We have few other options when we are fearful; we behave as if we have blinders on.

No creativity comes out of fear; we just don't see options when we are fearful. When fear does its job, we escape that which makes us fearful. This fear response is exhausting and it comes with a host of negative emotional and physical consequences.

Hope is wired in the youngest part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex. When we attach ourselves to the future through a goal that matters to us, our new brain tells us to reach out, find more resources, get some support. Hope effectively takes the blinders off and helps us see chance and opportunity.

Innovation comes out of hope; we create something out of nothing then tweak, tweak, tweak until it works just right. Hope works because it broadens our thinking and because it fuels persistence. Big thinking without sticktoitiveness is not hoping, it is wishing.

Now, take the blinders off. Use your new brain.

Hope is the new fear

Back when we shared the earth with saber tooth tigers and short-faced bears, people lived together in caves and small villages and left the safety of the group only to hunt or gather what we needed. We brought two things with us at all times: fear and hope. Fear was there to keep us safe from our many predators and hope came along to help us do the job of getting the food we needed. We needed both fear and hope to live a long life. Yet, ever present fear kept us alive today to hope tomorrow. In prehistoric men and women, fear trumped hope.

Today, we have no natural predators. In developed countries, we go days, weeks, or months without a fear spike. When fear does strike, in the face of natural disasters and violent acts, we go on high alert to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. Then, fear fades and our alertness wanes. We will always need spasms of fear to protect us every now and again. Hope is on high alert every day. Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning, takes us to school and work, and helps us gather what we need to survive. Success, good health, and well-being depend on hope; they are undermined by fear. In modern life, hope trumps fear.

Hope is the new fear. Long live the hopeful.