Are You Hoping to Be Well?

I hope not. You can do a lot better than that.

“Hope” is a very tricky word:

1. Used well, hope is tremendously helpful when going through life’s vicissitudes.
2. Used poorly, hope is absolutely suffocating.

As such, both of these statements are true:

1. Hope is very powerful. Hope can be a massively powerful catalyst for making things better. Hope is often the only thing that keeps us going during our darkest times.
2. Hope is completely useless. More than useless, hope is harmful. Hope cripples many people every day.

How can hope be both powerful and useless?

Hope is actually two entirely different experiences, both called “hope”:

hope | noun | a spontaneously emerging feeling of the opportunity for better wellness

hope | verb | a distraction-and-procrastination tactic used by a person to avoid taking action to create better wellness

Noun Hope

You’ve probably experienced noun hope. You’re in a tough spot. It feels like there’s no way out. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a powerful feeling emerges that you’re going to be okay. Even if you don’t know how you’re going to do it yet, you know in your heart there’s a way out.

Noun hope is incredibly valuable. It can keep you going when nothing else is working.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”
—Howard Zinn

Verb Hope

You’ve probably tried to use verb hope. You want things to be better. You have opportunities to make things better. But instead of stepping into those opportunities, you keep hoping things get better. Instead of taking action, you hope.

Verb hope is incredibly dangerous. It keeps you from the very things you want most while allowing you to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing your very best and are on your way to getting what you want.

“Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.”
—Marcus Aurelius

The Trap

Because noun hope is so powerful, it’s very easy to accidentally give power to verb hope. “Hope” (noun hope) and “hope” (verb hope) are the same word after all.

Just this week, I’ve heard people use verb hope in many destructive ways:

1. “I hope ‘we’ [‘the world’; anyone but me] fix ‘healthcare’.”
2. “I hope to start a family one day.”
3. “I hope to finally lose weight and keep it off.”
4. “I hope to start my own consultancy one day.”
5. “I hope Alex calls me so we can heal the damage I did to our relationship.”
6. “I hope I don’t get dementia like my grandmother did.”

These people aren’t likely to experience what they want to experience.

They’re probably never going to take the actions that would give them the best chances of experiencing what they want to experience. They’re too busy hoping.

Life has limitations. The platitude, “Anything is possible,” is very popular, and it’s patently false.

After 30, it’s much harder to get pregnant, and there are increased risks to the child. There’s always going to be something going on that prevents it from being the perfect time to start a business. You can get sick in a way you can’t heal from. No amount of hoping changes these facts. Some things aren’t possible. When you neglect to take action, hope (verb hope) usually turns into regret.

“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior

Time runs out.

This isn’t mean; it’s reality.

Time runs out.

This doesn’t make life grim; it makes life sacred.

It means giving your gifts to our world really matters. It means your work really matters. It means your relationships really matter. It means your life really matters.

It means your life really matters now.

Verb hope is a distraction-and-procrastination tactic. Distraction-and-procrastination tactics are things people do to make sure they avoid taking the actions that are most likely to lead to experiencing what they want to experience.

Verb hope is so tempting, and so common, because it’s easy to confuse it for, and conflate it with, the very noble noun hope. People run around every day patting each other on the back for hoping there’ll be less cancer, for hoping there’ll be less crime, for hoping there’ll be less war.

This virtue-signaling makes people feel like they’re living benevolently. Like they’re involved in making our world a better place. But, horrifyingly, hardly anyone who is hoping is actually doing anything.

Hoping is doing nothing with the pretense of doing something.

Because noun hope is such a beautiful, wonderful, powerful experience, many people mistakenly attempt to bestow verb hope with beauty, wonder, and power.

Since the only thing hoping creates is complacency, this is a grave error.

The Way Out

I encourage you to drop hoping in favor of “couraging”.

Couraging is very straightforward:

1. Get in touch with yourself. Allow yourself to be. Allow yourself to feel.
2. Get in touch with what you want. Not what you crave, like maybe a soda or to check Facebook again. What you deeply desire. What you want more than anything you’ve ever wanted. What would make you feel whole. Satisfied. Fully alive.
3. Take one step into what you deeply desire. The one that’s immediately in front of you. That’s the only step you need to take. Call that person, and start a conversation. Write the first page of your book. Do one workout. Do one courageous thing that’s in alignment with what you deeply desire.
4. Ask for and accept support from others. Ask for and accept every ounce of support you need. Don’t skimp.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Behind the Veil

Remember, hoping is a distraction-and-procrastination tactic used to avoid taking the actions that give you the best chance of experiencing what you want to experience.

Why on Earth would you do that to yourself?

Three reasons:

1. Fear of failure
2. Fear of success
3. Fear of feeling

Hoping makes it possible to avoid all the feels that come with being fully alive.

We’ve all been hurt. We’re all tempted to shut down so we don’t get hurt again. But we can’t selectively numb ourselves. To live in a way that protects us from negative feelings is to live in a way that cuts us off from the very best feelings available to us.

It takes courage to stay open. It takes courage to go for what you want.

I’m not saying it’s easy; I’m saying you can do it.

One More Word to Play With

Now you can see the weakness in statements like these:

1. “I hope to be more patient and forgiving with my life partner this week.”
2. “I hope to start writing my book this week.”
3. “I hope to exercise three times this week.”

I’ve previously introduced couraging as an alternative to hoping. A more practical word in our language is “committing”. It’s important to keep couraging in mind, because committing to something important to you, committing to yourself, takes courage, but let’s play with “committing” for a moment.

Consider these statements:

1. “I commit to being more patient and forgiving with my life partner this week.”
2. “I commit to writing the first chapter of my book this week.”
3. “I commit to exercising three times this week.”

How much stronger are these statements?

Very hope is a very weak building material for your life. Using very hope to build your life is like using Styrofoam to build a bridge. Commitment, on the other hand, is a very strong building material for your life. Using commitment to build your life is like building a bridge out of the strongest steel on Earth. A commitment means something. A commitment is something.

I encourage you to make commitments. I encourage you to write them down. I encourage you to say them out loud. I encourage you to share them with others. This makes them real and infuses them with mojo.

Pay attention to how it feels when you do so. You’ll likely feel something well up in you that feels persistent, resilient, capable, and empowered. How does that feel?

I encourage you to practice avoiding using words that make you feel weak and using words that make you feel empowered.

The words you use matter. The words you use shape your experience. The words you use create your world.

The Outcome Is Out of Your Control

After opting out of hoping, some people make a well-intentioned mistake I need to warn you about: They make guarantees of outcome.

For example, someone might say to me, “I hope to write a best-selling book,” and I might challenge them to do better than hoping.

Oftentimes, the person will respond by saying something like, “I guarantee I’m going to write a best-selling book.”

This definitely isn’t hoping. But it also contains pretense because even if the person writes an amazing book, there’s no way of guaranteeing it’ll become a best-seller.

You can’t honestly commit to outcomes that are out of your control. You can commit to actions you’ll take. In being honest with yourself, you have to allow for the uncertainty of outcomes.

Using this example, these are very strong commitment statements:

1. I commit to writing one chapter a week until my book is complete.
2. While writing my book. I commit to writing passionately about my experience and not holding back.
3. I commit to finding an editor for my book by November 30^th.

These are commitments that can be honored. They greatly enhance the person’s chance of writing a best-selling book, and they’re within the person’s control.

Commitments like these call you to action. Commitments like these eradicate hoping and the fantasy of controlling outcomes. They enable you to be honest with yourself. They breed integrity.

And they give you the best chance of experiencing what you want to experience. Of living the life you want to live.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
—Oscar Wilde

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.