Be Hopeful

4 lessons for dark times

Hope is a hell of a drug: its highs are high, and its lows are low.

Right now, it may feel like we’re in a low. A big one.

FFS, where do we start? War in Iran. Existing conflicts between Israel and Palestine. The looming threats of nuclear war, AI coming for our jobs, and (insert 500 other things).

Despite all of this, there’s a strong case to be hopeful. Hopeful people:

• Generally have better mental health¹.

• Cope with setbacks better and are more likely to achieve goals and solve problems².

• Recover from illness better and are less at risk of some diseases, like heart disease³.

• Tend to make more money⁴.

Even when things seem like they’re going to absolute shit, there are ways to find hope. And if we can find hope, we’ll not only feel better—and live longer, according to research—we’ll also be more likely to do things that improve the world.

Which is exactly what today’s post is about.

We’ll cover four mindset shifts for the dark times—whether that’s the state of the world or something happening in your life.

The science of hope and hopelessness

Feeling hopeless sucks in the moment, but it’s actually useful.

Good moods and bad moods (hope and hopelessness) likely evolved as signals that helped our ancestors direct their efforts toward actions that helped them survive.

An example: If food in the area where our ancestors lived was plentiful, these people would feel great. But if drought swept over the landscape and food became scarce, hopelessness would set in. Those low feelings would lead these people to withdraw, ruminate, and mope around—the classic signs of depression. That did two things:

1. Saved energy. The sluggishness that came from feeling hopeless conserved precious energy in times when food was hard to find⁵.

2. Often led us to think of ways to improve our situation. Rumination is a classic sign of low mood. In our example, our ancestors might consider moving to a place with more food.

That system worked really well. For about 300,000 years.

Today, most of us in the developed world live in more physical safety and comfort than any humans ever have. We don’t worry much about not having food or water, or rival tribes coming in to murder us in the night. And yet research suggests feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression keep climbing in the safest countries.

We’ve engineered away immediate, life-threatening problems and replaced them with more vague and future-oriented ones—news cycles about violence happening far away, political dread, the lingering sense that something bad will happen sometime.

The same system that once helped us survive a famine can get hijacked by our political news drug of choice: CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Newsmax, X.

That’s not a reason to dismiss bad events around the world. But it does suggest that feeling low is worth examining.

Hope isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t. It’s a skill you can build. And when it breaks down, it usually breaks in predictable ways. The good news is that it’s also fixed in predictable ways, and they’re easier than we might think.

Today you’ll learn:

• The two-part definition of hope, and why understanding it changes how you look for hope and in turn lowers your risk of heart disease, cancer, loneliness, and mental health issues.

• The formula for why we become hopeless.

• How to recognize and dismantle the psychological defense mechanism of expecting the worst.

• The true science of cynicism.

• The one question to ask yourself when you feel powerless that’s more useful than any motivational advice.

• What to do when you genuinely can’t fix anything—and why that’s not the same as giving up.

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