When you feel lost, uncertain, and troubled in your career and your life – sometimes all you need is a dose of hope.
Like happiness, hope is an emotion that comes and goes. It requires the individual to make good choices in order to maintain their positive impact. As such, the people you associate with and your general state of mind are just a few things that influence your level of happiness and hope. Many just want to hear a loved one tell them that everything will be fine. They want a feeling of security, the feeling that their worries and sorrows will soon be gone. People are looking for the hope of finding that moment in time when they feel best, when they have minimal financial, personal and / or professional problems. As we all know about life, we solve a problem, we come out stronger and a new problem resurfaces. Hope alleviates stress points throughout the journey of life.

People are willing to sacrifice hard-earned time and money in exchange for hope. But, why will they do this?

Take a look at these 4 powers of hope on your state of mind, mentality and physical well-being.

1- Hope renews faith

Hope resets your belief system and allows you to renew your faith in a message, person, and / or support groups to help you become more responsible for improving yourself and others. With this renewed faith, hope introduces you to a path of new beginnings; belief in finding solutions to problems – solutions you never thought existed.

Glenn Llopis, a contractor, says this:

‘‘ As a corporate executive that transitioned into the world of entrepreneurship, my journey was difficult at first.  There were many personal struggles along the way as I sought to build businesses that were against conventional wisdom.  Often times I had to reevaluate my friends and relationships as many of them either didn’t understand nor wanted to learn more about what I was trying to accomplish.  I encountered a lack of support early on.  I felt alone, needing hope to get me through each day.   Thankfully, my father and other mentors would give me a sense of peace to help me renew my faith in my friends and the focus to keep pursing my goals.  My Dad would always tell me, “It’s ok to be concerned, but don’t fall into the trap of worrying.  Worrying causes stress and that impacts your health; it doesn’t allow you to properly think of a viable solution.  Being concerned makes you more aware and allows you to use critical thinking/reasoning toward a longer term solution.”

My Dad would often remind me that “opportunities are everywhere but few have the eyes to see them.”  Thanks to my Dad and to those who are my real friends, I proudly live and share my foundational values and beliefs through my immigrant perspective.  ’’

2- Hope Builds Self-Confidence

Hope builds our self-confidence and inspires us to believe that we are capable of achieving great things by enabling us to aim higher and work smarter. Self-confidence becomes a platform to accept fresh thinking and motivates us to make new choices in our careers and life.

Hope recalibrates your mindset and makes you believe there is a way out of your deepest fears.   Self-confidence is amplified when your emotional intelligence kicks-in and you begin to feel that the workplace environment gives you the permission to be yourself.  When you can be your authentic self, your self-confidence further begins to illuminate and your engagement levels elevate.  People take notice and you begin to have “game” again.

Many use social media as a source of hope to build their self-confidence. People spend hours each day monitoring the number of friends, followers and “likes” they have.   They use LinkedIn as their primary networking tool, believing that they automatically have the permission to connect with a senior executive just because they belong to the same LinkedIn group.   While social media provides a short-term source for hope, you need to have the substance and credibility to sustain the momentum you are attempting to build.  Social media doesn’t enable happiness.  Social media gives you hope and with this additional breath of fresh air, you start to believe that something positive is going to happen in your career and life.

3- Hope Promotes Clarity

Hope broadens our observations and gives us the circular vision to see around, beneath and beyond the goals we seek.    Hope allows us to translate complexity into clarity.  We begin to see through a wider lens.   My father said that “adversity is very big when it is all you can see. But it is very small when in the presence of all else that surrounds you.”   Hope fuels your perspective.

Hope invigorates our passionate pursuits of endless possibilities.  Hope gives us purpose and strengthens our will and ambitions.    Napoleon Hill introduced us to the power of having a positive mental attitude “that will clear all obstacles that stand between you and your major purpose in life.  A positive mind finds a way it can be done, while a negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done.”

Every leader must have hope because without it, you become cynical.

4- Hope Helps Increase Productivity

Hope reminds us that we need to be more enterprising; that survival, renewal and reinvention are just lifestyles. You do not need to be an entrepreneur, but you must adopt an entrepreneurial attitude. Hope gives us the right attitude to keep pushing when caution says to stop.

This reminds us all that it is important to surround ourselves well: success comes above all to those who are surrounded by people who want success to continue.

So use the power of hope in your daily life, when no window appears open, to keep you going. Maintain this essential element, but don’t overdo it. Certainly, we must have hope, but do not stand up to him. Act while hoping to achieve what you want to achieve.

Keep hope and give hope to those around you because “hope is what keeps us going, when everything seems to be lost in advance.” Franck Ntasamara

– From Glenn Llopis