I recently read that “hope” is a skill.

Candidly, never thought of hope as a skill.  Maybe an attitude.  Maybe wishful.  But not skill.

But someone broke it down this way:

Hope happens when we set goals.

Setting goals directs our view to the future.  Gives you a target.  Refines your focus.  It’s the first step toward building a future.

Hope happens when you have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue the goals.

There’s a mental toughness that comes with pursuing goals.  It takes effort.  Discipline to pursue must be developed.  It’s easy to pursue goals when there’s progress, but eventually, there’s a plateau or a setback.  That’s where perseverance comes in.  You don’t abandon hope at the first setback.  The hopeful press on.

The hopeful believes in their abilities to act.

This is a “happening to the world” trait.  As you develop the habit of setting goals and the discipline of achieving them, you become confident in the process.  You become confident that whatever you encounter, there’s a process to engage any situation and it will yield results.

The more experience you have engaging situations with goal setting, discipline, and perseverance, and seeing that it yields results, the more often you return to the process.  The more confidence you gain in the process, the greater your hopes are about what the process yields.

Hope is a skill.  It starts with goals.