The character strength of hope has to do with positive expectations about the future. It involves optimistic thinking and focusing on good things to come. Hope is more than a feel-good emotion. It is an action-oriented strength involving agency, the motivation and confidence that goals can be reached, and also that many effective pathways can be devised in order to get to that desired future.
Students who are high in hope have greater academic success, stronger friendships, and demonstrate more creativity and better problem solving skills. The good news is that hope is very similar to the growth mindset in that it can be cultivated.
Hope doesn’t mean wishful thinking—as in “I hope I win the lottery.” Instead, a person who is high in hope is able to:
Set clear and attainable goals.
Develop multiple strategies to reach those goals.
Stay motivated to use the strategies to attain the goals, even when the going gets tough.
Visualising the paths to your goals will help you to achieve them and using a growth mindset will help overcome obstacles.
Another hint is to remember other successes that you and role models have achieved. There are many people who have overcome adversity to reach their goals.
It’s important that you enjoy the process of attaining your goals. If you use positive self-talk, you will be more likely to achieve your goals.
The North Star; a story of life which involves following the windy track on the journey to achieving your goals.
Hope can be about your wishes for yourself in the short term and long term future. It can also be about small steps of action for the good of the whole, for example, recycling things that you have used to contribute to a cleaner planet!
Think about your role models (such as scientisits, authors, environmental activists, sporting heroes) as they have managed, through small steps and persistence, to achieve their hopes!
PERMA is the model for wellbeing that we use at BHPS. It is based on research and scientific evidence shared by Martin Seligman.
According to Seligman, the acronym, PERMA, makes up five important building blocks of well-being and happiness:
Positive emotions – feeling good
Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
Relationships – being authentically connected to others
Meaning – purposeful existence
Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success
and underpinned by the Character Strengths.
Positive Emotions
Positive emotions are among the many components that make up happiness and well-being, and one of the more obvious layers of happiness. It’s good to know the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. While pleasure relates to satisfying bodily needs like hunger, thirst, or taking a long sleep after a tough day, enjoyment comes from intellectual stimulation and creativity. Enjoyment can be as simple as playing a fun game with friends in the playground at lunch time. Enjoyment also involves being intellectually challenged and standing up to it. For example, puting a jigsaw puzzle together, which requires concentration and careful figuring out, can lead to smiles of contentment and enjoyment.
Positive emotions are good for us because they stretch the imagination. When we do something they enjoy or find interesting, we are more likely to persevere in the face of challenges, and spontaneously search for more creative solutions and opportunities. Positive emotions can also help undo negative ones; Generally, we are likely to do more of the activities we find stimulating and that bring enjoyment, and the effects last longer than those that generate short-lived pleasure.
Engagement
We’ve all had the experience of becoming so absorbed in work or in reading a book that we completely lose sense of time or forget an appointment. Achieving this state of flow or total engagement is natural, especially when people are involved in activities they love and are good at, such as dancing, playing sport, or pursuing creative activities and hobbies.
Although engagement in enjoyable activities comes relatively easy to most children, it is still important to have opportunities to take part in activities that offer experiences of engagement or flow. Such opportunities might involve putting together jigsaw puzzles, drawing and coloring, playing with toys, or practicing ballet or a musical instrument. The fact that such activities stretch the intellectual and emotional limits and endurance, as well as require concentration and effort, is important.
Relationships
Happiness and psychological health are inextricably linked with close, meaningful, and intimate relationships. Fleeting social relationships with strangers as well as longstanding ones with peers, siblings, parents, extended family, and friends are all sources of positive emotions and support. According to research, one important function of social networks is that they can spread happiness, cheer and laughter like wild fire.
Meaning
True happiness comes from creating and having meaning in life, rather than from the pursuit of pleasure and material wealth. Loving someone and being loved is a meaningful phenomenon, for example, because such acts inspire people to live for, and take care of, someone other than the self. Living a meaningful life is, in essence, related to attaching oneself to something larger than oneself. It instills the sense that there is a larger purpose to life, and being a part of it confers meaning. Doing chores, caring for the environment and helping others within the broader community are some examples of taking part in activities that go beyond merely living for oneself. These activities bring fulfillment and meaning that enhance well-being.
Accomplishment
Having explicit goals in life, even small ones like reading for an hour everyday, and making efforts to achieve them are important to well-being and happiness. Achievement helps to build self-esteem and provides a sense of accomplishment. It also strengthens self-belief.
The mere effort one puts into reaching a specific goal in itself harbors satisfaction. Importantly, setting goals and putting in the necessary efforts to achieve them are just as important as actually reaching them; it is OK not to succeed the first time.
The beginning of term is a great time to look at your previous Wellbeing Goal and, if you have achieved it, set a new one.
The beginning of term is a great time to look at your previous Wellbeing Goal and, if you have achieved it, set a new one.
A video that explains PERMA!
“Pass It On” by Sophie Henn; A joyful and uplifting picture book about finding happiness in the smallest of things. A fun idea: when you laugh or smile–pass it on!
Here is Kid President with”20 things We Should Say More Often!”
What makes you happy?
“Happy Right Now” is about being happy with what you already have .
My Strong Mind by Niels Van Hove. A book about about Confidence, Resilience and a Growth Mindset. An introduction to mental strength and techniques to develop a strong mind.
Practicing gratitude is one of the simplest tools that you can use to improve how you are feeling.
Research has shown that the positive side effects of using gratitude include physical benefits such as better sleep and psychological benefits including less anxiety and increased happiness and resilience. Social benefits include; fewer feelings of loneliness and isolation, increased forgiveness and greater helpfulness and generosity.
When thinking about the things that we are grateful for, the benefits will be greater if you don’t think about the “things” you have, such as toys but rather, look for kindness from others, or a kind deed that you have seen or been involved in.
Sone of the ways in which you can practice gratitude is to write a gratitude journal, make a list or share with others, three things which you are grateful for.
Another way of practicing gratitude is to be a gratitude detective by watching for kind and caring behaviour from other people.
How about boosting your wellbeing by setting yourself a challenge to show gratitude in some way every day?
