personal test of everything that had gone before, she had enough self-belief to achieve her goal some years later.
We too need to believe in ourselves and put our skills to good use. When we value our life experience and are prepared to put it to the test, we flourish and can feel hopeful about the future.
I believe in myself and my abilities.
I am utilizing my talents for myself and others.
My self-belief grows stronger every day.
4. Realizing our time on earth is limited
Hope becomes crucial as we begin to age, and above all, we hope we will be blessed with good health and will achieve a measure of serenity. When we're young, we don't much think about it and assume we will live beyond the biblical three-score years and ten, yet the reality is that we don't know what may befall us, and at any point our life could come to an end.
As children, we can't wait to grow up, yet as time passes, we often wish we were younger, particularly in our youth-obsessed culture. We have to face the fact that energy begins to decline, we start to creak, we face a continuing series of losses, and generally we become frailer with old age, even though we still feel young inside.
Hope lies in having a spiritual perspective, recognizing that we are not merely the physical body, but something else altogether—a divine spark that exists beyond time. This part of us never ages.
Alice Herz-Sommer was sustained by hope and made the best of everything that happened to her during the course of her life. She was Jewish, born in Prague, and became a music teacher. She survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp, playing in concerts, along with other musicians, for the prisoners and guards. She said:
Music is magic. We performed in the council hall before an audience of 150 old, hopeless, sick and hungry people. They lived for the music. It was like food to them. If they hadn't come (to hear us), they would have died long before. As we would have.
Alice's husband died in Dachau. Her son survived, and after the war, she lived for forty years in Israel, where she taught at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. In 1986 she moved to London, close to some of her family. She practiced the piano three hours a day until the end of her life at the age of 110.
Alice knew that holding on to hope was vital. In A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, she states:
I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way.
It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad.
When we can exist without any anxiety about the future or brooding upon the past, age no longer matters. We live as fully as possible, in the present moment, whatever point we're at on our life's journey.
I know that I am much more than my physical body.
I am making the best of everything that happens to me in life.
I am free from anxiety about the future.
5. Being optimistic yet realistic
Hope is a process that we learn when we have to grapple with difficult circumstances. It's not something passive, but a courageous choice we make. It accepts the pain, yet at the same time realizes there is the possibility of change for the better. As well as a choice, hope is an action that we have to practice until it becomes a habit, for what we practice, we become.
Optimism is not quite the same as hope but is linked with it, and there is evidence that it's inbuilt. Optimism is about seeing the glass half-full rather than half-empty, which on the whole we have a natural tendency toward. It's actually inherent in our survival mechanism, possibly being hardwired by evolution into the human brain. However, both neuroscience and social science suggest we tend to be more optimistic than realistic—the so-called optimism bias; for example, we tend to overestimate how long we will live or how successful we will be, while underestimating our chances of getting divorced or being diagnosed with cancer. The bias helps protect us and inspires us to keep going. Scientific research studies show optimists tend to work longer hours, earn more, and save more; they are more likely to remarry, eat healthier diets, and exercise more. They also show that being optimistic helps make us less anxious, lowers stress levels, and improves physical health. A Harvard study in 2016, looking at more than seventy thousand women between fifty-three and eighty-three, confirmed that there were greater health benefits to optimism, with a lower risk of death from heart disease, stroke, cancer, respiratory disease, and infection.
It seems therefore that, although positive expectations enhance our chances of survival, because we can also be overoptimistic, we need to ensure that we develop our awareness and thus strike a balance with realism. We need in effect to be realistically optimistic so that we maintain the glass is half-full, but at the same time are practical, believing that things will turn out well yet taking precautions and being flexible.
Eleanor Roosevelt, the much admired wife of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had a painful childhood and a challenging marriage. This meant she was able to empathize with those who suffered, and she worked tirelessly for women's rights in the second half of her life. In You Learn by Living, she writes:
It is not wishful thinking that makes me a hopeful woman.… Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, “it can't be done.”
It's far better to have an optimistic attitude toward the challenges we face, rather than be weighed down by disappointment, worry, and self-pity. When we're negative, it does no good at all, sapping our energy and taking away hope. When we think optimistically, our energy increases.
Words have great power, so it's important to talk optimistically rather than complain. Complaining rewires our brain for negativity, so we need to ensure that we trigger our neural network for optimism. We can use affirmations to help us feel optimistic. If we can look for the good in everything; believe the best about people and situations, without being like Pollyanna; and be grateful for what we have, then we will find that each day turns out better for us than if we had given way to negativity.
Our circumstances don't necessarily change immediately, but our hopes and expectations change us and we react differently to life. This shift in perspective makes all the difference: Realistic optimism carries us through and gives us strength; it heals and brings peace of mind.
I practice hope so that it becomes a habit.
I choose to believe that things will turn out well, but I also remain flexible.
I increase my energy by being realistically optimistic, and I look for the good in everything.
6. Developing our capacity to be aware
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings—and consequent behavior—get in the way of achieving our dreams. We often sabotage ourselves with negative thoughts and attitudes without really
