use to achieve our goals. We will be better at some things than others, and it's okay to be gentle with ourselves rather than judgmental if there are some things we find difficult or if we slip up. Each one of us has something special that will serve us well, a talent that we can utilize both for our benefit and for the benefit of others.
When I visited Portland, Oregon, I was intrigued by a beautiful statue of Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian woman who acted as interpreter on the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804 to explore the lands beyond the Mississippi. This journey across the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the western rivers was an extraordinary feat of endurance, during the course of which they encountered subzero temperatures, blizzards, hunger, disease, mosquitos, and grizzly bears!
Captured as a young girl by a raiding party, Sacagawea was enslaved and ultimately purchased by a French fur trader who was hired by Lewis and Clark. Pregnant at the time, and the only woman on the expedition, she was taken along because she spoke Shoshone. Sacagawea proved to be an important asset, not least because she had incredible self-belief and was prepared to voice her opinion about issues such as where they should best spend the winter. Her experience as a Native American woman meant that she was invaluable in being able to search for edible roots and plants and make moccasins and clothing for the party. She has subsequently become an icon of courage for women.
Another inspirational example is Ann Davison, largely unknown these days because she was not as publicity seeking as some are. She was the first woman to sail single-handed across the Atlantic—3,310 miles from Plymouth to Antigua. What is remarkable is that this was her second attempt, her first having been disastrous. She and her husband had a series of financial difficulties, and deeply in debt, they had fled their creditors to avoid having their seventy-foot boat impounded. Beset by gales, their boat eventually smashed up on Portland Bill on the south coast of England. Ann's husband died, while she survived fourteen hours adrift on a life raft and was washed ashore. Few women would have wanted to attempt the crossing again, let alone on their own. Ann pulled her life back together, however, and in memory of her late husband, and also as a personal test of everything that had gone before, she had enough self-belief to achieve her goal some years later.
We too need to believe in ourselves and put our skills to good use. When we value our life experience and are prepared to put it to the test, we flourish and can feel hopeful about the future.
I believe in myself and my abilities.
I am utilizing my talents for myself and others.
My self-belief grows stronger every day.
4. Realizing our time on earth is limited
Hope becomes crucial as we begin to age, and above all, we hope we will be blessed with good health and will achieve a measure of serenity. When we're young, we don't much think about it and assume we will live beyond the biblical three-score years and ten, yet the reality is that we don't know what may befall us, and at any point our life could come to an end.
As children, we can't wait to grow up, yet as time passes, we often wish we were younger, particularly in our youth-obsessed culture. We have to face the fact that energy begins to decline, we start to creak, we face a continuing series of losses, and generally we become frailer with old age, even though we still feel young inside.
Hope lies in having a spiritual perspective, recognizing that we are not merely the physical body, but something else altogether—a divine spark that exists beyond time. This part of us never ages.
Alice Herz-Sommer was sustained by hope and made the best of everything that happened to her during the course of her life. She was Jewish, born in Prague, and became a music teacher. She survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp, playing in concerts, along with other musicians, for the prisoners and guards. She said:
Music is magic. We performed in the council hall before an audience of 150 old, hopeless, sick and hungry people. They lived for the music. It was like food to them. If they hadn't come (to hear us), they would have died long before. As we would have.
Alice's husband died in Dachau. Her son survived, and after the war, she lived for forty years in Israel, where she taught at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. In 1986 she moved to London, close to some of her family. She practiced the piano three hours a day until the end of her life at the age of 110.
Alice knew that holding on to hope was vital. In A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, she states:
I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way.
It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad.
When we can exist without any anxiety about the future or brooding upon the past, age no longer matters. We live as fully as possible, in the present moment, whatever point we're at on our life's journey.
I know that I am much more than my physical body.
I am making the best of everything that happens to me in life.
I am free from anxiety about the future.
5. Being optimistic yet realistic
Hope is a process that we learn when we have to grapple with difficult circumstances. It's not something passive, but a courageous choice we make. It accepts the pain, yet at the same time realizes there is the possibility of change for the better. As well as a choice, hope is an action that we have to practice until it becomes a habit, for what we practice, we become.
Optimism is not quite the same as hope but is linked with it, and there is evidence that it's inbuilt. Optimism is about seeing the glass half-full rather than half-empty, which on the whole we have a natural tendency toward. It's actually inherent in our survival mechanism, possibly being hardwired by evolution into the human brain. However, both neuroscience and social science suggest we tend to be more optimistic than realistic—the so-called optimism bias; for example, we tend to overestimate how long we will live or how successful we will be, while underestimating our chances of getting divorced or being diagnosed with cancer. The bias helps protect us and inspires us to keep going. Scientific research studies show optimists tend to work longer hours, earn more, and save more; they are more likely to remarry, eat healthier diets, and exercise more. They also show that being optimistic helps make us less anxious, lowers stress levels, and improves physical health. A Harvard study in 2016, looking at more than seventy thousand women between fifty-three and eighty-three, confirmed that there were greater health benefits to optimism, with a lower risk of death from heart disease, stroke, cancer, respiratory disease, and infection.
It seems therefore that, although positive expectations enhance our chances of survival, because we can also be overoptimistic, we need to ensure that we develop our awareness and thus strike a balance with realism. We need in effect to be realistically optimistic so that we maintain the glass is half-full, but at the same time are practical, believing that things will turn out well yet taking precautions and being flexible.
Eleanor Roosevelt, the much admired wife of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had a painful childhood and a challenging marriage. This meant she was able to empathize with those who suffered, and she worked tirelessly for women's rights in the second half of her life. In You Learn by Living, she writes:
It is not wishful thinking that makes me a hopeful woman.… Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, “it can't be done.”
It's far better to have an optimistic attitude toward the challenges we face, rather than be weighed down by disappointment, worry, and self-pity. When we're negative, it does no good at all, sapping our energy and taking away hope. When we think optimistically, our energy increases.
Words