A short micro-class podcast by Brian Johnson (March 10, 2016) explaining the scientific view of hope. Johnson differentiates hope from fantasizing and dwelling, introduces Gabrielle Oettingen’s mental contrasting, and presents hope’s three components: clear goals, agency (confidence), and multiple pathways to achieve goals. The episode closes with a brief promo for his newsletter and membership.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on what is hope? It's inspired by making hope happen by Shane Lopez. Shane Lopez is the world's leading researchers studying the science of hope. So what is hope from a scientific perspective? That's what we're going to talk about in this little session. First, what we need to do is differentiate hope from fantasizing and dwelling. So hope is not fantasizing. Fantasizing is basically when you imagine a perfect future and that's all you imagine, right? It's just sunshine and roses and of course, unicorns flying over rainbows. Nothing ever goes wrong as you're fantasizing, right? Not helpful. We've talked about that in a number of different contexts. We'll leave it at that for now. Then there's dwelling. Dwelling is no, there's clouds over this sun, right? It's all negative all the time. I'm just thinking about what's wrong. Obviously that's not helpful. The most healthy orientation to the future is hope. Hope basically combines the best of both fantasizing and dwelling. It's like Gabrielle Oettingen's mental contrasting, right? Where you have your ideal future, there's your wish of your ideal, but then you also contrast it with the obstacles that will get in the way, right? Mental contrasting is what she called it in her scientific research, which Shane Lopez references, shows unequivocally this is way more powerful than fantasizing. Now, hope has three components to it that we want to know about and that I'm excited to chat about. The first aspect of hope is having a hopeful sense of a better future. So kind of the definition of hope is that you think your future is going to be better than your present. In order to have that, you need to have clear goals. Now, that's not enough, right? Just having goals could be fantasizing. You also have to have a sense of what researchers call agency. Agency is a fancy word for confidence or sense of empowerment. You can actually achieve your goals, right? So here you are, you have goals, you have agency. Those are the first two components. The third component is this, the pathway to achieve the goal. So you want to go from here to there, and you have pathways, but it's with an S plural. You don't just have one path, right? You have multiple pathways. This is huge. A lot of people think that this is the way it's going to work. They're going to have a vision, then they're going to start working toward it and oh my goodness, the moment they hit an obstacle on this path, they feel overwhelmed and they give up because they spent most of their time fantasizing. Then they just start dwelling about how nothing ever comes to fruition the way we want. We need to know two things. We need to know that there's always more than one pathway and that all of those pathways to our goals have obstacles. You're never going to come up with a pathway that's going to be perfect, and if you did, then you didn't set a bold enough goal. Anything that's that easy to achieve wasn't worth pursuing, right? So goals, Agency, Pathways. That's a quick look at the three components of hope, differentiating it from fantasizing and dwelling. In the next few micro classes, we're going to unpack goals in more detail, agencies in more detail, and pathways in more detail. But for now, there you go. That is hopefully Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish, and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.
