Focusing on the Good

    Sometimes, feeling hopeful is hard. I feel like we've all had a period in our lives in which we hope for things, and then it feels like one gut punch after another when most or all of those things don't work out the way we had hoped or needed them to. After each gut punch, it gets a little bit harder and a little bit scarier to hope. It can feel like the next logical step is just to stop hoping and accept that things won't work out because that seems to be the pattern we're stuck in.

    Feeling hopeful has been particularly difficult for me for the last few years. More and more often over the last few years I've found myself thinking, "Yeah. There's no point in even hoping for that because I know it won't happen." Recently, I got a little worried about myself when I realized that hope-squashing thought had pretty much become my life motto.

    I addressed this concern with my therapist in my session. She told me that instead of only thinking about the times that I hoped for something that didn't work out, that I should think about the things that I had hoped for that did work out. She also told me that instead of focusing on the things that I felt like I wanted but didn't have in my life yet, to focus on the good things that I already had in my life while I wait.

    It's sort of like that saying, if you're always on the lookout for a spider, you're more likely to find a spider. If you're on the look-out for something, your brain is more likely to find it or, sometimes, even generate it for you. By thinking, "X happening is the pattern," you're programming your brain to pick out the examples that support that thought and disregard examples that don't support that thought.  Of course, if I'm thinking there's no point in hoping for something, I'm going to find more examples of when I hoped for something that ended up not working out. If I'm thinking that it might be okay to have some hope, I'm more likely to find examples of when I hoped for things that ended up working out. 

    Whenever I feel that hopelessness creeping back in, and whenever I catch myself thinking that I shouldn't hope for something because it won't work out, I try to think of a list of times when I hoped for something that did work out. Then I can shift my thinking to, "Yeah, things feel impossible right now, but X, Y, and Z also felt impossible at the time, and those things worked out. So, something has to work out eventually. The waiting is really hard, and I hate it...but right now I have X, Y, and Z that I hoped for in the past."

    My default is still to tell myself not to hope, but I made a New Year's resolution to try to be more hopeful in 2022 so I'm working on it. Some days, I literally have to list off everything over the last year or so that I hoped for that I have now so I don't get completely lost in the land of hopelessness. It's still a work in progress, but I can feel it making a small difference. 

    I'll end with this: The way we think about certain things programs our brains to cherry pick evidence from our lives that supports the way we already think and to disregard the things that don't support the way we think. So, if we think we shouldn't hope for things because it won't happen, of course, our brains are going to only pick out the instances that support that thought, which is going to feed that feeling of hopelessness. The only way we can actually fight that feeling of hopelessness so we can start feeling hopeful again is by focusing on the good instead and thinking about all the times we hoped for something that worked out.