Hang Onto Your Hat
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, 18 (public domain - Wikipedia)
“Hope is a waking dream.” — Aristotle
The new year has arrived, with about as much celebration and dread as various factions can muster.
We wonder: Will it be a good year? A terrible year? Will I be able to break my bad habits and forge a new beginning?
It’s a time of year when hope grabs us by the throat, suggesting that the year ahead holds many possibilities, some of which are within our power to grasp.
Enter the New Year’s resolutions.
We have the best of intentions, but the reality is these are gestures aimed at pleasing our logical selves. What we do (or don’t do) with them is the result of our discipline and willpower.
We’ll talk about process discipline and leadership in a future newsletter, but for now, let’s focus on hope.
In 1973, E.B. White reminded an anxious correspondent that the future of humanity is not unavoidably bleak with a lovely letter that captured the notion perfectly:
“As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness…
Hang onto your hat. Hang onto your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
Your job as a leader is to be a hope peddler, providing a vision, celebrating progress, and motivating people from the front. How? By giving them hope.
Hope is a motivator. Without it, we operate with a sense of dread — or worse: a sense of disconnection. Hope gives us strength, focus, courage, and peace.
Hope is one of the things I work on with clients in my executive coaching practice.
“Hope is patience with the lamp lit.” — Tertullian
First, hope gives us the strength to persevere through the various challenges that life presents. It is what keeps the lamp lit, what fuels our souls when obstacles seem overwhelming.
Hope also helps us focus on our goals and aspirations. In doing so, it becomes easier to believe in ourselves and our abilities, which sometimes even allows us to achieve things we hadn’t thought possible.
Hope gives us the courage to take risks and try new things. So emboldened, we throw aside our fears and take necessary risks and steps toward fulfilling our dreams.
Hope also brings us a sense of peace and contentment. This inner calm gives us a sense of trust that everything will work out in the end, even if we don’t understand why certain things happen.
How to Lead with Hope
Every leader should be interested in creating a sense of hope for their people. We want them to be strong, courageous, focused, and trusting.
Whether you’re trying to raise children or create a successful business, these steps are identical, because hope is universal.
1. Create and communicate a clear and compelling vision
When you help your team understand your vision and the broader goal, they’ll be in a better position to help achieve greatness.
Make your vision something worthy of pursuing — something they can get excited about.
2. Keep the momentum going
When we run into obstacles, it can be demoralizing. Reducing or eliminating the obstacles in your team’s way will help them become more successful.
Showing a child how to solve a problem (but not solving it for them) gives them a sense of independence and a can-do attitude.
3. Celebrate successes
It feels good to achieve something. Whether it’s crossing off an item from a to-do list, hitting a milestone, or launching a new product, when we accomplish a goal, it sends a message to our brains.
We should pause and acknowledge these victories, small and large, for they continue to give us hope to power on.
4. Practice precursive faith
Even if we’ve never done a certain thing before — particularly if no one has done a certain thing before — there’s a kind of confidence that gives us hope.
Precursive faith is a belief in ourselves, combining initial confidence and resilient confidence, that we believe in ourselves enough to accomplish something.
Imagine instilling that kind of belief in people you’re trying to inspire.
5. Control what you can
There will always be factors that are outside of our realm of control. We can’t control what others do or think. We can’t control external forces. But we can control our reaction to them.
We are in command of our own minds. And by focusing our efforts on what we can control, we offer up more hope.
Related:
Timeless Leadership Episode 14: Control with Carey Lohrenz
With the new year ahead of us, suddenly, it feels like we have more reason to hope than before.
Keep hope in your heart and grow it in the hearts of others. Focus on things you can control.
And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
& More
For our Ampersand Guild subscribers — our paid subscription tier — we have additional essays related to hope, all in one place:
To Hope Is to Believe — when we hope, we put our belief in the unknown, trying new things and changing. Even when it seems impossible.
Finding Hope — things can seem dire at times. But when we look for the gain among the loss, we can find our way out of it.
Look for the Helpers — even in the worst circumstances, there are people doing good and showing us hope is possible. Align yourself with these people.
Hope for the Future — the future by definition is uncertain, by fate leads the willing, and draws along those who hang back. Start with your beliefs.
There’s so much to learn,
