PNTV: Making Hope Happen by Shane Lopez (#292)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. I took a little break over the new year, was super focused on producing master classes for our membership program. Really excited about that. And, and also our 2016 business goal became our Q1 business goal, so had some fun jumping into that. But we have another great new book, Making hope Happen by Shane Lopez. Making hope Happen, subtitled create the future you want for yourself and others. Shane Lopez is the world's leading scientist studying the science of hope. This is an awesome book, really enjoyed it. Bunch of big ideas here in the Philosopher's Note. I've got a handful of my favorites. Let's take a look, starting at what hope is vis a vis fantasizing and dwelling. So hope is its own special thing. It's not fantasizing when you're just thinking of the ideal future and that's all you're thinking about, ignoring anything that might go wrong. You're just thinking about pure awesome. Feels good for a moment, then you often feel a letdown, but that's fantasizing. Now you can also think about the future. And rather than think about the positive, you can think about the negative. That's dwelling all the things that could go wrong. Hope essentially combines the best of both. You imagine a hopeful future, an awesome, inspiring, better future, and you're willing to look at the things that might go wrong, the things that are in the way, the obstacles. That's what makes hope hope. It's not pure fantasizing and it's obviously not dwelling on the negative. You need to combine it all. Here are the three primary components to the science of hope. We start with that ideal future. You have a goal, right? What's firing you up? The big idea is that you are here and you want to get there and you believe you can get there, which is our second component. You have your goals and then you have agency. Here's you. And you have a sense of agency, which basically means confidence that you can actually achieve that which you aspire to achieve right now. The third component is pathways. So you have goals, you have a sense of agency, and then you also have multiple pathways, right? You don't think that you're going to go from here to there. And that's just it, you know there are going to be obstacles and you might need to go around it like that. You might take a shortcut like that, or you might need to go crazy looping. There you go, you got to your goals, right? Goals, agency, pathways. Those are the three primary facets of hope. Obviously, in the book, he unpacks each of them in more depth. We're going to take a quick look at each of them now in our second, third, and fourth big ideas here. So second big idea is all about the goals. Shane calls it future casting you need to have. He says this is the most critical skill in hope. The. He italicized it. I like to emphasize it, and I did in the note. The most essential skill in hope, cultivating our hope, is future casting. You have to be able to create a sense of a more positive future. Right? So when you think of where you are right now, rate that on a scale of 1 to 10. He says a ladder from 0 from 1 to 10. Where are you right now? Then when you imagine your future, say in about five years, where do you imagine yourself? One to ten.

Right?

Hopeful people, wherever they are right now, believe their future is going to be better than their present. That's a key characteristic of hope, and we want to cultivate that. We can build that muscle of future casting. So imagine your life in five years. You work on all the ideas that we explore here and all the other things you're doing in your life to optimize and actualize. It all comes together. You work hard, get some good luck. Life happens in a fantastically beautiful way. What's your life look like? Future cast that see yourself in that mode. What is your life like? Take some time, write down the goals that inspire you today and what your life would look like in five years if everything came to fruition. That's future casting. We want to create a really clear sense of what's possible. Then, of course, we need to believe that we can actually create that. And one of the things that gets in our way of doing that are sirens. I've been talking about them as Kryptonites in our master classes. We all have different habits that distract us from actually doing what we need to do.

Right.

What are your sirens? What are your Kryptonites that take you out of the game such that you're not performing at a high level? Here's what's cool about this, and I talk about it in the note. He tells us that a goddess advised Odysseus in the Odyssey and told him, hey, you're going to go up against the Sirens and here's what you need to know. The Sirens tailor their songs for each traveler, for each voyager. They have a different song. They know your weakness, and they're going to sing to that. They're going to seduce you to your own personal weakness. Each song the siren sang was unique for each listener. I love that idea. We have weaknesses. There are things we do when our willpower is depleted. We're feeling tired, a little stressed or wobbly or whatever, right? That's when these sirens come in and they tempt us and they tempt me in a different way than they tempt you. You need to know what those sirens are singing to you when you're at your weakest moments. And then you need to make what Shane calls an Odysseus contract. You need to pre commit, right? So Odysseus had his men tie him up to the mast, right? Tied him up. And then when he struggled to get free, he, they tied him up even tighter. And then his crew put beeswax in their ear. That's an even better pre commitment strategy. They couldn't even hear the sirens, right? Couldn't even get through their little beeswax. Odysseus heard him, but he was tied up to the mask. We couldn't do anything about it. What are your sirens and what are you going to do to deal with them? In the Habits 101 class we talked about, if then cue triggers. There are certain cues or triggers in your environment that, that fire, right before you do something stupid, you need to know that what they are. And then if that thing happens, then you do this. You tie yourself up to a mast, you plug beeswax in your ears. What are you going to do? If you feel tempted to do something not optimal, then you will do this. That's sirens. Know your sirens, know your if then strategies to cultivate your agencies and keep you on the pathways. So our third component goals, agency pathways. You need to know two things. There's never only one path to your goal. If you think that the only path is this one and then something happens to that one, what are you going to do? You're going to give up, you're going to lose your hope. You need to know that there are always multiple pathways and you need to know that they are always, they always have obstacles. You're going to have a bunch of different pathways and every single one of them is going to have its own obstacles. None of them are going to be free of obstacles. Now when you know that you have so much more power because the moment you hit an obstacle, you don't freak out, which is why fantasizing is so destructive and unhelpful. If you think it's going to be easy and it winds up not being easy and it's never easy. If you're doing Something worth pursuing, then you. Then you tend to give up. But if you have this future casting and you're seeing the obstacles that might get in the way, right? And you create options and multiple pathways, then when you run up against an obstacle, it's not that big of a deal. You take a little different path, you try a different strategy, and you continue moving forward. The big idea that I loved that he shared was, look, you have a plan A. This is this one. Then you have a plan B. Okay, that one didn't work. No big deal. Go to plan C. You got a ton of pathways. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, yeah, that's awesome. But why stop at plan C? Keep on going D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. Go all the way. You got a whole Alphabet of possible plans. And I literally, as I was reading the book, stopped and wrote out plan A to Z on how we could achieve our number one business goal. What can we do? Okay, we've got plan A that we're working. Then we've got plan B that we're kind of sliding it actually in parallel. But what about C, D, E, F, G? I made a rough draft, and then I actually alphabetized it. Google Doc. Plan A is this B. Starts with B. Is this C, D, E, F, G. Do that with your goal. What's your number one goal for this year that you're most fired up about? You got to know you can do it, and then create optionality. Create all these different pathways you can pursue. One other idea here that I talk about in the note and that I talk about in our Confidence 101 class is Nassim Taleb's antifragile concept, where when you hit challenges, you get stronger. You're not fragile, you're antifragile fragile. Something hard happens, you break antifragile, something hard happens, and you get stronger. That's how we want to be. And one of his key ways to help us cultivate antifragility is optionality. If you only have one option, if you only have one pathway and that option gets blocked, you're kind of screwed. But if you have optionality A to Z, you're antifragile. Doesn't matter.

Boom.

Okay, that one didn't work. No big deal. I knew I'd face challenges. I'm going to try this one. Oh, same thing. This one, this one, this one. Infinite optionality leads to antifragility. And of course, you want to lean into your plan A and bet on it and go for it, knowing it's going to be challenging and moving through them when appropriate and pivoting to other options when necessary when you decide it's wise. Fifth big idea. Here is a chapter on leadership and hope. It's fascinating. Get this very quickly. Obviously, followers want their leaders to inspire them. They need hope, he says. He jokingly says, look, let's summarize the last hundred years of research on leadership. Followers need hope. They need this. And then a study he shares that brings the point home is this. If you ask people, or they ask people at Gallup whether or not their leader, in most cases it was their manager, right? Inspired hope. Did your manager. Does your manager inspire the idea that your future is going to be better than your current reality? That's hope. For those who said, yes, my manager, my leader inspires Hope in me, 69% of them were engaged in their work. They were engaged. They were pretty excited about pursuing a better future. Now for the individuals who said, no, my manager does not inspire hope. Doesn't make me think my future is going to be better than my present. Guess what percentage of them were engaged in their work. 69% were engaged. If their leader inspired hope, 1%, I might have given it away there. 1% of the individuals who said their leader does not Inspire Hope were engaged. 1%. That's crazy. So we are all leaders, starting with ourselves. If you have not convinced yourself that your future is going to be better than your present, guess what? Your level of engagement in life is going to be about 1%. You're not going to want to do a whole lot, from getting out of bed in the morning to pursuing things of meaning, etc. You have to believe your future is going to be better than your present to do those things. That's why hope is so important. This obviously goes on to your kids, to your colleagues, to individuals. You may lead in a direct sense, as direct reports. You need to inspire hope. You need to show them that their future is going to be better than their present and then ideally, help them cultivate a sense of agency and confidence and then let them know, hey, look, our current path is one of many. We're gonna face obstacles, no big deal. We're gonna re goal when we run up against an obstacle and see what we need to do to evolve in pursuit of creating and actualizing that better future. So that's a quick look at making hope happen. Shane Lopez, Science of Hope, which I think is just a fascinating subject. Leaders need to inspire hope. Plan A to Z. You are antifragile. You have optionality in your in how you pursue your goals. What are your sirens? Remember the Sirens create songs that are uniquely tailored to your weaknesses. You need to know what those whispers are when you're feeling your weakest. And then have your Odysseus contracts here. If this happens, then I'm going to do that. Pre Commitments Future casting. Such an important skill. What's your future self look like in five years with all the hard work and crushing this stuff? Believe in that, get excited about that and also be willing to look at the obstacles.

Of course.

And then we juxtapose hope vis a vis fantasizing and dwelling. And we looked at those three components. Goals, agency, pathways. I hope you enjoyed Think about the big idea that really jumped out at you. Maybe after this. Press pause and try to think of the three core facets of hope. Not looking at the chalkboard, just thinking about it. This is make it stick 101. We're actually going to do a class on learning 101. You want to learn these ideas. You want to learn anything in your life, Actively retrieve them. Don't just re watch it or whatever. Actively retrieve it. That's how you build the muscle of memory in your mind. So think about those three facets and then think about the idea that most inspired you. Write it down in your own words. That's another great way to groove a memory and then share it with somebody. And then I always like to say, most importantly, figure out how you're going to embody this. Move from theory to to practice. Make it a more consistent part of your life. And have another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more.

See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode.

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