Hope
Concern over the role and function of hope in psychological development, motivation and psychological functioning has come under investigation. Psychotherapists have begun to take into account the place of hope in the therapeutic process, and also the influence of hopelessness on various forms of psychopathology.
From a psychological perspective, hope has been broadly characterized by Charles Richard ("Rick") Snyder (1944-2006) as the "will" and the "ways" to achieve our goals. Specifically, Synder defines hope "as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways" (2002, p. 249). The first part involves feeling capable to create a reasonable plan of action (the "way") and the second part is the motivation to follow the plan (the "will").
A recent study indicates that hope is related to lower procrastination, which would seem to be the opposite of hope, wouldn't it? It has been theorized that the more hope a person has, the less he or she would procrastinate.
The resulting conclusion from one study on procrastination and hope determined, that, on the surface, it would seem that helping people become more hopeful might reduce their procrastination. For example, changing our attributions about a situation, known as "attributional retraining," may help. Rather than attributing a recent failure to a lack of ability (something we can't do much about or be hopeful about), we can learn to see the important role of effort in our performance and attribute our performance more to our effort (or lack thereof).
We can change effort and maintain hope in the future. I sure hope so.
From a psychological perspective, hope has been broadly characterized by Charles Richard ("Rick") Snyder (1944-2006) as the "will" and the "ways" to achieve our goals. Specifically, Synder defines hope "as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways" (2002, p. 249). The first part involves feeling capable to create a reasonable plan of action (the "way") and the second part is the motivation to follow the plan (the "will").
A recent study indicates that hope is related to lower procrastination, which would seem to be the opposite of hope, wouldn't it? It has been theorized that the more hope a person has, the less he or she would procrastinate.
The resulting conclusion from one study on procrastination and hope determined, that, on the surface, it would seem that helping people become more hopeful might reduce their procrastination. For example, changing our attributions about a situation, known as "attributional retraining," may help. Rather than attributing a recent failure to a lack of ability (something we can't do much about or be hopeful about), we can learn to see the important role of effort in our performance and attribute our performance more to our effort (or lack thereof).
We can change effort and maintain hope in the future. I sure hope so.
