How to have hope.

To have hope requires bravery and vulnerability. To hope is to risk disappointment.

Giving up hope protects you from disappointment, from being let down, and from looking like a fool who believes in such poppycock.

But when you are doing something new, something exciting and potentially spectacular, there will be plenty of voices telling you to give up, to set your sights lower, to play small, to give up.

See, the very idea that you have dreamed of doing something potentially spectacular implies that you have hope, that the seed is in you. And the folks behind those other voices are threatened by your hope – they don’t want to risk believing for themselves.

A goal without a plan is a wish.

So, if you have dreamed of doing something spectacular, you only need one step to get started. What’s the next right thing to do to move you closer to that goal?

• Dreaming of writing a book? Could you start with the summary for the back cover or write the first paragraph?
• Dreaming of paying cash for that new kitchen? Could you price that next job 20% higher? (It’s OK if they say no.)
• Dreaming of taking off work for a month? Could you train someone to do a small part of your job this week? Who would you train? What would you give them?

Breaking down the goal into a manageable first step gets you in motion. It helps make the dream more tangible, and getting you started increases your feeling of agency and control.

Suddenly, you have more hope—enough hope to take a second step and then a third. Before you know it, you are living that spectacular future you dreamed of.

Where do you have hope? Where do you feel hopeless?

Now that you have a way to build hope, take a minute to survey your life right now. Where do you have hope? Where have you given up a little bit? Where are you downright hopeless?

Are there specific dreams you’ve given up on? Others you put on hold?

Are you comfortable with those dreams sleeping where they are? Or is there one that needs to come alive again? What’s one step you could take? (If you need help figuring that out, hit reply and tell me about it. I read and answer every email.)

P.S. I know there’s a lot of crap going on in the world; wars, climate change, existential stuff! Hope works the same way there, but on a longer time horizon. If you build your hope muscles closer to home, then you can use your belief in miracles to tackle geopolitics from there!