Staying hopeful when things aren't improving

Hope is a goal, a few possible routes and the belief that you can take one. Look for a route you haven't tried, explain bad news as specific and temporary, and keep the next step small.

• Evidence: Some
• Takes: 20 minutes, then a few minutes a week
• Hard stretches

Right now

1. Write down what you’re hoping for, in one sentence. “A job I don’t dread.” “Feeling less tired.” Vague hopes are hard to act on.
2. Write down what you’ve already tried. Seeing it on paper makes it easier to spot what you haven’t tried.
3. Pick the smallest next step you can take today. Send one email. Book one appointment. Ask one person.

Before

Get the idea of hope straight first, because it changes what you do.

• Hope has parts you can work on. Researchers who study hope describe it as a goal, routes to that goal, and the drive to use them [1]. When you feel hopeless, one of those parts is usually missing. Maybe the goal is fuzzy, every route you know has failed, or you’ve run out of energy.
• Optimism is not pretending. Realistic optimism means expecting things can improve and expecting to work for it. “It’ll all be fine” isn’t hope. “This is hard, and there are still things I can try” is. More on this in realistic optimism.
• Watch how you explain bad news. Explaining setbacks as permanent (“it’ll always be like this”), all-encompassing (“everything’s going wrong”) and entirely your fault goes with lower mood. A meta-analysis of 104 studies with nearly 15,000 people found this pattern reliably [4].

During

When a week goes by and nothing has changed:

• Look for a new route, not more effort on the same one. List three ways to get closer to your goal that you haven’t tried. Include ones that seem unlikely, and ask someone else for ideas.
• Rewrite the setback as specific and temporary. Not “I’ll never find anything” but “these three applications didn’t work, this month”.
• Picture the good outcome, then the obstacle. Spend a minute imagining what you want. Then name the main thing inside you that gets in the way, and make an if-then plan for it. “If I feel like giving up after a rejection, then I’ll send one more application that evening.” This combination helped people reach their goals by a small-to-moderate amount across 21 studies [6].
• Notice evidence of movement, even if the big thing hasn’t changed. Skills learned, people met, options ruled out.

After

• Review once a week, not every day. Daily checking makes slow progress look like none. The weekly review gives you a simple format.
• Change the route, not necessarily the goal. If a route has failed three or four times, try another. If every route has failed for months, it may be time to adjust the goal itself.
• Rest when your drive runs low. The energy part of hope needs sleep, food and time with people. See sleepgood.now if sleep is the weak point.

Why this works

Hope as goals, routes and drive comes from C. R. Snyder’s work. His team built a questionnaire around those parts and found it predicted how people set goals and coped, beyond other self-report measures [1].

Do hope exercises work? Modestly. A meta-analysis of 27 studies with 2,154 people found small gains in hopefulness and life satisfaction, and no clear reduction in distress. The effects were larger in short lab studies with students, and there were signs of publication bias [2]. Imagining your best possible future self had small-to-moderate effects on wellbeing and optimism across 29 studies [5].

Optimism and health. Across 15 long-term studies with about 229,000 people, more optimistic people had fewer heart problems and a lower risk of dying during follow-up [3]. These are associations: optimistic people may also differ in other ways, so this doesn’t show that becoming more optimistic will protect your health.

Rated Some. The ideas are well studied and the patterns are consistent, but exercises to build hope have small effects, and most of the health findings are correlational.

Topics: Hope, Optimism, Setbacks, Goals, Motivation

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.