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I think people assume there\u2019s naivety if you\u2019re not cynical or if you\u2019re not pessimistic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
There\u2019s an old quote: \u201cAlways predict the worst, and you\u2019ll be hailed as a prophet.\u201d I do think that there is an inherent sense that negativity and wisdom are the same thing. And you see this everywhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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There\u2019s evidence from psychology that bears this out. Research finds that 70 percent of people believe that cynical folks who have a negative outlook on humanity are smarter than non-cynical individuals, and 85 percent of people think that cynics are socially smarter \u2014 that they\u2019re better able to tell who\u2019s lying and who\u2019s telling the truth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That\u2019s a stereotype in our culture, but it\u2019s also one that\u2019s wrong. The data actually find that cynical people are not any smarter than non-cynics, and they\u2019re actually worse at knowing who\u2019s lying and who\u2019s telling the truth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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What do we know about people who are able to maintain hope in dark times? What makes them able to do that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
When I think about hopeful people, I think about activists. Was Nelson Mandela optimistic and thinking that everything was going to turn out great when he was in his jail cell? Hope is a stubborn, active sense of the world. It\u2019s an acknowledgement that things are not what we want now, but a sense that they could improve and that we have something to do about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Hopeful people, as the science bears out, have the ability to envision that better future. They also have a will to pursue it. They have that grit and that passion to actually continue going for a goal, even if it\u2019s difficult. And they have something known as waypower, which is that they\u2019re able to map a path between where they are and where they want to be, and oftentimes that waypower requires not being alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Hopeful people often aren\u2019t hopeful just as individuals. They find communities of people who want the same positive change that they do, and they work together towards creating that change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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What makes someone that way? Are we predispositioned to be hopeful or cynical?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
There\u2019s a bunch of research using twins where they look at the difference between levels of optimism and hope among identical twins versus fraternal twins. The idea is if identical twins are more similar, that\u2019s probably due to their genetics. And that research suggests that things like optimism, pessimism, and hope have a little bit of a genetic component, but not much. Twenty-five percent of how hopeful or optimistic you are appears to be explained by your genes, which leaves the vast majority to be explained by your experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI think of cultivating hope as a practice of noticing \u2014 not a practice of ignoring the bad side, but a practice of balancing that with real attention to what is beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A lot of that experience has to do with what happens to us early in life. If you come from a nurturing, warm household, you tend to be more optimistic and hopeful, but there\u2019s also evidence that we can make a difference for ourselves. Therapy, for instance, tends to be a practice that increases people\u2019s sense of hope. So if you don\u2019t feel like a very hopeful person, that\u2019s not like a life sentence, you can do things to change the way that you perceive the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Every week we ask people to call in, and when we asked people how they\u2019re cultivating optimism in their lives, I honestly thought, \u201cOh, no, people aren\u2019t going to call. They won\u2019t have anything to say. Everything is bad.\u201d But, I was wrong! <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think it\u2019s worth acknowledging that wrongness that you had, because that\u2019s something I think a lot of people are wrong about. If we\u2019re experiencing the world through our screens, it seems like first, everything is terrible, and second, everybody knows that everything is terrible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The funny thing is that when we return to our local communities, when we actually ask people about their lives, they\u2019re doing wonderful things and you realize how excellent the average person is on a bunch of dimensions. A great thing about human beings, in my opinion, is that we like each other more the closer we get to one another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Research finds, for instance, that most Americans do not think that most people can be trusted. We\u2019ve become a very cynical nation. But if you ask people, what about the folks in their neighborhood \u2014 and this is not just your friends and family, but your grocer, your bus driver, your barber \u2014 people feel so much better about the folks that they actually encounter in real life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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People also told us their hobbies bring them joy. I remember people were trying all kinds of stuff at the height of the pandemic, and it seems like it\u2019s still the case. I called 2026 the year of the hobby. I\u2019m just going outside and trying things. What makes that such an effective strategy?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Well, first tell me about your 2026 hobbies. Which one has brought you the most joy?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ve gotten back into film photography. I used to do it in high school, and I just go shoot film all around the city.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Does it bring you a sense of hope or optimism to do this?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Oh, yeah. You just look at the world a little bit differently. It\u2019s like, oh, look at that shadow. Look at that angle. What\u2019s the reflection off that building? But also, when you have a camera, especially a film camera, people love to stop and talk to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I love this idea of noticing more. A lot of the data from my lab, from lots of other labs, suggest that yes, we don\u2019t want to gaslight people into ignoring the bad things in life, but a lot of us go around missing the good things in life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I think of cultivating hope as a practice of noticing \u2014 not a practice of ignoring the bad side, but a practice of balancing that with real attention to what is beautiful. I think in general, hobbies are a chance for us to pay attention to things that we care about and often bring us in connection to people who turn out to be often pretty great.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Something that I feel like needs to be acknowledged is that this is not the only time in the world where life has been hard. Humanity has survived a lot, and our listeners called in and really reminded us of that.<\/strong> People told us about grandparents who were civil activists, grandparents who survived and met in Auschwitz. Is that an argument that resonates with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Absolutely. One practice that I use is to think back to what life was like for my parents or for their parents. We\u2019ve been through so much, and I\u2019m not saying that everything will turn out well, but generally speaking, we are a resilient species, especially when we\u2019re able to come together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.vox.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Explain It Me, we try to give you useful information to help you navigate and understand the world around you. But lately there\u2019s been an elephant in the room: Life feels kind of\u2026bad. Polling suggests that Americans are unsatisfied with their lives now, and with prospects for the future. It\u2019s understandable why: We\u2019re on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2373807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[461824,22240,23522],"class_list":["post-2373806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-explain-it-to-me","tag-life","tag-podcasts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Why-you-should-be-hopeful.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2373808,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373806\/revisions\/2373808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2373807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}