Hope

Francesco Guardi, 1747

HOPE comes into play when our circumstances are dire, when things are not going well or at least there's considerable uncertainty about how things will turn out. Hope literally opens us up and removes the blinders of fear and despair and allows us to see the big picture, thus allowing us to become creative and belief in a better future.

Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a systematic process used in psychology for reserving pessimism. The term "false hope" refers to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.