Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (11 page)

In other words, hope trumped wishful thinking. When we hope, we have high expectations for the future
and
a clear-eyed view of the obstacles that we need to overcome in order to get there. We are primed for action. But wishful thinking can undermine our efforts, making us passive and less likely to reach coveted goals.

Wishing ourselves into failure and loss is bad enough. But when we push our wishful thinking onto others and call it hope it is potentially destructive.

This is what writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich realized when she entered what she called “Cancerland” after a routine mammogram. Several years later, she fired a broadside at all the easy forms of positive thinking she encountered during her treatment, which included grueling chemotherapy. Her article, called “The Pathologies of Hope,” started this way:

I hate hope. It was hammered into me constantly a few years ago when I was being treated for breast cancer: Think positively! Don’t lose hope! Wear your pink ribbon with pride! A couple of years later, I was alarmed to discover that the facility where I received my follow-up care was called the Hope Center. Hope? What about a cure? . . . Fuck hope. Keep us alive.

It pained me to read this, but who could blame her? During one of the most difficult times of her life, well-intentioned but misguided people were telling her to think about the future in a way that could actually undermine her well-being. (If you don’t get better, is it your fault for not being “positive” enough?) These people were telling her to wish, not hope. And they didn’t know the difference. Interestingly, the “wishiness” of her caregivers made Ehrenreich agitated and proactive, which are characteristics of a high-hope person under pressure.

It now looks as though wishing is impotent because it does not give us—and may actually sap—the energy we need to pursue our goals. This is the downside of passive positive thinking.

Pause a minute and think about your upcoming week. What’s on your plate? What are your big responsibilities? Now imagine that everything goes amazingly well. You meet every challenge with ease. You enjoy the feeling of being in control and on top of things. You don’t feel pressed for time, and yet you manage to get everything done. Wonderful, isn’t it? An exercise in fantasy, right?

Heather Barry Kappes (a member of Oettingen’s research team at NYU) gave this fantasy exercise to one group of research subjects—prompting them to think about a hassle-free perfect week. She asked another group to write down whatever they thought might happen in the coming week with no fantasizing. Then her team focused on the feelings of energy generated in each group, fantasy week and normal week. How excited, enthusiastic, and active did participants feel afterward? The “ideal week” group actually reported lower levels of energy. (Kappes has also researched this effect using physiological measures like systolic blood pressure, which rises whenever we’re aroused to take action.)

Perhaps more surprising, when participants reported in a week later, the initial energy drain turned out to be lasting. The “ideal week” group reported that they accomplished less than the group that had written down more neutral (and realistic) thoughts. So a Sunday night filled with wishes for the upcoming week will actually
rob
you of the energy you need to get things done Monday through Friday.

Reflecting on these findings, Barry Kappes said, “When you fantasize something very positive, it’s almost like you are actually living it.” The mind reacts as if the goal has already been achieved. This is why fantasy “will sap job seekers of the energy to pound the pavement, and
drain the lovelorn of the energy to approach the one they like.” We’re actually better off when we imagine ourselves surmounting obstacles, problems, and setbacks.

Wishes are mental fast food. They are mind candy (or doughnuts) that satisfy for the moment but do nothing to nourish us for the long haul. That’s why people who say “think positive” trigger my negative thinking. “Really, that’s the best you can do?” Yes, I know they are trying to be supportive, but this is just lazy cheerleading. There is not a stitch of evidence that wish-fulfillment thinking (“Every day in every way I am getting better and better”) improves anyone’s lives in any meaningful way.

The same goes for bestselling “self-improvement” books (like
The Secret
and
The Power
) that tell us the only thing we have to change is our minds, and reality will align with our wishes. Sorry, the so-called law of attraction is not a law, and telling yourself “I will have enough money for everything I desire” will not fill your wallet, no matter how many times you repeat it.

Yet future thinking that is rich with imagery is a core ingredient of both hoping and wishing. If you are thinking about a desirable outcome, you may be hopeful. Then again, you may be just wishing. Both future visions can give you the warm fuzzies. Both are self-reinforcing—priming the pleasure pump with thoughts about a wonderful vacation will lead you to think more about that destination. Both can also help you relax and buffer you against stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. But these benefits are fleeting
unless your thoughts spark action
. Only hope starts you thinking about ways to save money to pay for that trip to the ocean and your lodging when you get there.

In the three chapters that follow, I’m going to look more closely at how hope works in the real world. You’ll see where genuine hope parts company with wishing, and how hope can stay strong even when you
acknowledge your limited ability to predict or influence the future. The real world is where we face the circumstances of birth or chance or personality that could hold us back, and where we have to choose between hope and stagnation. We’ll see how the three elements of hope (Goals, Agency, and Pathways, introduced in
chapter 2
) work together in the stories of some extraordinary individuals. I’ll also alert you to the destructive messages in our culture that undermine hope, so you recognize and combat them when they come your way.

M
Y MIND
is swirling with thoughts about the months ahead:
In the next few months, I will learn how to play harmonica. I will cook more dinners for my family and friends. I will make more trips for fun and fewer for work. I will go to church more often . . . and like it.
I have hundreds of these “in the next few months” thoughts and none of them, for the time being, has any strings attached.

Future thinking brings us wonderful freedom. It releases us from the burdens of the past and the anxieties of the present, buffers us from the stresses that come with daily life, excites the mind, and lifts the heart. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that future thinking can also mislead us. Most of us overestimate how much control we have over the future and yet some of us don’t exercise the bit of control we have, becoming passive about the future. When we don’t act on our goals, they remain wishes—without substance or force in the real world. When we do act, we face unpredictability and chance, no matter how well we plan. That is why hope requires courage. When we hope, we are committing to a leap of faith.

We believe we know and understand our future selves. Because of this we usually assume we know how we’ll feel if we get what we want or if we fail to get it. Right? But what
actually
happens when we get what we’ve hoped for, longed for, worked for? I learned the pitfalls of prediction the hard way . . . from my own family.

One of my relatives is a high priestess of wishery. She wishes hard, fixating on her big wants day in and day out. Her wish du jour might be a certain car or computer or house—not to mention pets, sofas, and trips. Then she locks in on the one thing she wants most. She had chattered on about how and why a dishwasher would simplify her life and make her happier. Then, one day while driving around town running errands, she saw “it,” there, on the side of the road, with “FREE” scrawled on it, the dishwasher of her dreams. She heaved it into her car and hauled it home.

But once she got it into the kitchen, the dishwasher lost its luster and she never even hooked it up. When she moved and took the dishwasher with her, she didn’t hook it up in the new house, either. Because it did have a butcher-block top, it made a handy cutting board—until it was left behind in a recent move.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has created a science around what he calls “affective forecasting”—how we think we will feel in the future after a particular event. He warns against being cocky about our predictions, because we generally overestimate how happy we will be when, say, we move to a warm, beautiful city or get a long-sought promotion.

In one of his quirky early studies, Gilbert showed that we overestimate our emotional response to a favored candidate losing an election. (I call it the “I’m moving to Canada!” Study, in honor of a certain buddy who predicts catastrophe if his guy doesn’t win a major U.S. election.)

Gilbert’s team went to Texas to cover the 1994 gubernatorial election. George W. Bush, then a political newcomer, and sitting governor
Ann Richards were head-to-head. The researchers stood outside a polling station and asked exiting voters how they would feel a month after their candidate won or lost. Those who had voted for Bush did not think a win would significantly influence their happiness much (a bit of a surprise to researchers). In some cases, we adjust quickly to things we expect to happen. But supporters of Richards believed that a loss would hurt them emotionally.

One month later, the researchers followed up with the participating voters by telephone. The winners were about as happy as they expected to be. On the other hand, the losers were significantly happier than they’d predicted. Some of them had even warmed up to Governor Bush since the election.

Gilbert’s research resonated with my own experience. When I finished ten years of college and graduate school, I thought I would be thrilled. And I was, for a day or two, and then the reality of my new job set in. As a college instructor working toward tenure, I was sure I’d do the happy dance for months after I became bona fide—a real professor. When I got tenure, I was more relieved than ecstatic.

And what about that friend of mine who swore he’d move to Canada if “that guy is elected”? I had a beer with him recently at a local watering hole, about a thousand miles south of the Canadian border.

In
chapter 9
, I’ll introduce some ways you can reduce your chances of affective misforecasting by bringing the future closer to you. But keep in mind that the downside of
not
choosing to take a risk on the future is the “what if” question, which can haunt us for a lifetime.

Since feelings are messy and unpredictable, maybe we should focus on the rational side of hope. We humans have managed the future well enough to become the dominant species on the planet. Even so, our day-by-day decision-making is inherently flawed. These big flaws are so hidden in plain sight that psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton
University won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for pointing them out. In a series of brilliant experiments, he and his colleague Amos Tversky (who died before he could share the Nobel) showed just how much our thinking is guided by unconscious cues and mental processing that is lightning-fast and automatic.