You Were Born to Live a Life of Hope

Hope is what pushes you to achieve your most worthwhile goals. We weren’t born to live mediocre lives. The brain needs hope in order to function properly, just like the heart needs it in order to pump blood through your veins.

When you live without hope, you suffer a deficit of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, which can lead to mood disorders.

Humans have a tremendous need for hope. The brain has a perfectly organized system that optimizes all of the abilities involved in achieving our dreams. This is how we’re able to experience imagined pleasure. When you want something, dopamine levels rise in the limbic system, which produces a strong feeling of pleasure.

Positive psychology has become widely popular in the last few decades, and has highlighted the role of hope as a motivator to take action. The goal of this branch of psychology goes beyond just studying illnesses. It also studies people who are completely happy or successful and attempts to figure out why they are.

Does the brain need hope?

The prefrontal lobe of the brain is where our most advanced cognitions take place, such as evaluating alternatives to solve problems and make decisions. The prefrontal lobe is influenced by the limbic system, an important part of the brain where hope can improve the superior functions of the brain and increase the body’s immune defenses.

The complete opposite happens when you live a life without hope. Hopelessness weakens the immune system, which makes you more likely to develop illnesses.

Psychoneuroimmunobiology is the study of the connection between thought, words, the mind, and the functioning of the body. Hope is a form of vital energy that is able to interact with the body and produce physical changes. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906, stated that “every human being can sculpt his own brain if he wishes.”

Why should we encourage hope?

There’s a directly proportional relationship between health and level of hope. A study done by the Official College of Psychologists of Madrid (2014), found that healthy people are more hopeful than the average Spaniard. 

On the other hand, sick people tend to lose hope. From this data, it can be concluded that it’s highly important to encourage hope and use it as a tool for personal development. Never forget about the energy that it can provide.

Hope can be spontaneous, but it would be really beneficial to learn how to conjure it whenever you want. That way, anybody can obtain it with enough time and proper training, and therefore use it to move their life forward.

Setting goals with realistic expectations, taking care of yourself and feeling good about yourself, accepting failure as a part of life, and valuing your effort will help you be more hopeful.

In order to recover or maintain hope, it’s important to strengthen your relationships with other people. This will induce many positive emotions that will improve the quality of your daily life.