Dear College of Education Community,
We can safely say that there are many sources of stress in our world at the moment. One way to reduce stress is to remain optimistic that everything will return to better times in our future. But there is another way to move forward in a more realistic, proactive, and engaged way when facing life’s challenges, and that is to have hope. “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for,” notes a famous quote from Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. In a Psychology Today blog, Andrea Bonior, Ph.D. asserts, “Being hopeful does not mean forcing yourself to be positive. Instead, it involves acknowledging a full, realistic picture of the world.” Dr. Bonior further states that hope is “a psychological construct that, as it turns out, is good for both your emotional and physical health.” She offers the following as benefits of having hope:
Hope Improves Your Physical Health-Many studies have shown a wide range of physical health benefits of increased hope, including a higher-functioning immune system, better prognosis in chronic illness, and decreased sensations of pain.
Hope Improves Your Emotional Health-Higher hope is associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression.
Hope Helps You Choose Healthier Behaviors-Hope also may very well motivate us to choose better behaviors, creating a cyclical pattern that keeps perpetuating itself.
Hope Is Not Being Unrealistically Positive- Look for hope in a realistic way, and choose to lean in to it—but let it be part of the larger whole. In fact, hope—or light—can be that much more exquisite and meaningful when it comes with full acknowledgment that darkness exists, too.
In the words of the late Leonard Cohen, in his song Anthem, "Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in."
To read more, go to
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/friendship-20/202103/the-health-benefits-hope
For a list of other self-care options, please go to our COE self-care website for resources for faculty, staff, students, and the community at https://www.csun.edu/eisner-education/self-care/articles-information-self-care
May we all have hope to guide us in “finding the good worth working for.”
Warmly,
Shari