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Hope is a capacity, built through presence.

Goal-setting alone isn't enough when facing compound complexity.

Feeling the full weight of what one is carrying is where real hope begins.

A colleague I hold with deep regard lost his father last year. While he was still navigating the raw, ragged edges of that grief, the estate, the belongings, the impossible paperwork of closing down a life, his health began to falter. It was the kind of diagnosis that rearranges your relationship with your own body in a heartbeat. And then, three months later, his family's house burned down.

I have spent more than 20 years sitting with people in their most uncertain moments as a business psychologist. And somehow watching this unfold, the sheer accumulation of it, rocked me to my core.

Rather than trying to reframe it or find a silver lining, I sat with it. I tried to feel the weight of what he and his family were holding and noticed where it landed, in my chest, in the tightness of my breath, in the question it kept asking me: What do you actually believe about hope when the hits don't stop coming?

The psychology of hope, 1.0

Five years ago, I wrote about the psychology of hope during the pandemic. I believed hope was essentially a strategy: Set goals, find pathways, and stay focused on what you can control. That piece resonated because it gave people something to do with their fear.

It was also incomplete.

The........

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