You can train your brain to keep hope, and any time is good for making changes, evolving mentally and emotionally, and integrating new thought patterns that you can live with better resources. Similarly, you can’t ignore one thing: intensifying everything improves directly. your mental health.
There is another factor that is no less important: not only must you be able to increase and maintain hope, but also to pass it on to others, society has reached a point where everything related to the issue of personal growth focuses on personal care. and the pursuit of well-being and happiness.
- You could almost say that people fall into a kind of somewhat selfish materialism.
- It’s also time to go beyond ourselves and consider those around us.
- It’s time to cultivate certain psychological skills to gain quality of life and be able to create supportive environments for all.
Hope is perhaps the most important emotional value and resource of the moment. Read on to find out how to keep it.
Psychologist Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of Berkeley, understands hope from a neuropsychological point of view. In his book Born to Be Good: The Science of Meaningful Life, he explains the mechanisms of areas that affect well-being and happiness, as well as mental health.
It says in this work that people are biologically prepared to live hope, this fact that, as such, can attract attention, has an explanation: it is a survival mechanism, the brain will always prioritize optimism, overcoming or face resilience. Defeatism Indeed, otherwise people would not be able to advance on the path of life.
There is also research such as those conducted at Sichuan University in China, which show that hope is an antidote to stress and anxiety. Researchers observed, using MRI, that it is possible to train the brain to maintain hope through psychological therapy.
This occurs by generating greater activation in areas such as the bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortex and by reducing the level of cortisol in the blood. All of this translates into greater motivation and confidence in yourself and in the future. Thus, researchers have developed some keys with which humans can improve this dimension:
You may still have hope if you set short-term goals instead of long-term goals, so it’s best to think about what might happen next week or next month to reduce stress and have a greater sense of control.
What can happen in 12 months is an assumption from anyone and concentrating on it can cause discomfort. It’s best to focus on what can happen in the near future.
Therefore, it is best to set simple goals for a few days from now, for example, you may think that what you want for next week is to meet friends or acquaintances to exchange ideas about your professional life.
It is quite possible that in one of these meetings someone knows an offer of work or gives you an idea that makes you feel better, just reaching this week’s goal will make you feel better, in addition, you will feel safer to do anything.
Training the brain to fuel hope necessarily means finding meaning in life. Our brain needs things, dimensions and people to anchor and find safety. Therefore, having hobbies and values and remembering what you like or would like to achieve in life acts as an anchor for safety. Also, these are things that will help you keep looking to the future.
To highlight them, take a notebook and write simple sentences that represent what is important in your daily life.
Your mind will wander obsessively in a lost yesterday that won’t let you move forward if you feel nostalgic for the past and focus on it. Training your brain to maintain hope means having control over your thoughts and attention.
As mentioned above, it is not advisable to look to a very distant future where nothing is safe and where there are only assumptions that can increase anxiety, it is also not advantageous to put yourself in a past that no longer exists.
So how do you do it? Focus your attention on the present and the short-term future. It’s your survival zone and also a zone of opportunity. You need to plant this area with new decisions for your goals to thrive. It is also the scenario in which new opportunities are hidden that you must take advantage of.
Just doing things increases your sense of hope and makes you feel safer, in conclusion, your level of hope has a direct impact on your mental health, so working on it and transmitting it to others should be your priority. .