Hopeful

Joel Dean, Founder of Joyful
Last updated October 30, 2026

Feeling hopeful means expecting that something good is possible, even if it isn't here yet. It looks forward, toward a job, a test result, a person or a better season. In C. R. Snyder's research, hope has two working parts, the will to get there and the ways to get there, and you can build either one.¹

Hope sits next to worry

It often arrives alongside worry. You're waiting on something, scared of one answer, and part of you keeps leaning toward the other.

Example

"The biopsy results come Thursday. I'm scared, but I keep catching myself planning the trip we talked about for spring."

Optimistic is the general lean toward things turning out well. Eager is hope with its shoes on, keen for the thing to start.

The will and the ways

Snyder measured hope as two parts that feed each other.¹ Agency is the will: "I can get there." Pathways are the ways: "Here's how, and here's another route if that one closes."¹

His Hope Scale, built on those two parts, predicted goal-related activity and coping beyond what other self-report measures did.¹ In this research, hope is a way of thinking about a goal as much as a mood that happens to you.

It also explains how hope drops.

Lose the will and you stall; lose the ways and the goal turns into a dead end, even while you still want it as much as ever.

Hopeful or optimistic?

Fred Bryant and J. A. Cvengros tested the two measures side by side and found two related, separate things.² Hope was about reaching your own specific goals, and optimism was the broader expectation of good outcomes in general.²

"I can find a way to make this happen" is hope. "Things tend to work out" is optimism. "It would be nice" is a wish, with no route attached.

The trouble with picturing only the dream

The common advice is to imagine it coming true. Heather Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen ran four experiments in which people who pictured an idealized future had less energy afterward than people who pictured other futures.³ Energy was measured by blood pressure in some studies and by how energized people said they felt in others.³

Pairing the hope with the obstacle works better. Mental contrasting with implementation intentions has you picture the wish, then the main thing in the way, then an if-then plan for it, and a meta-analysis of 21 studies with about 15,900 people found a small to medium effect on reaching goals.⁴

Hope with a route

Name the goal in one line. "I want to be working again by March." Vague hope is hard to act on.
Write the main obstacle. Pick one inside your control, like "I put off applications when I'm tired."
Make one if-then plan. "If it's 7 p.m. and I haven't applied today, I'll send one before dinner." That's the planning step from the meta-analysis.⁴
Add plan B. If the first route closes, where does the second one start? That's the pathways half of hope.¹

Journal prompt

What are you hoping for right now, and what would be a first sign of it? Then write the one obstacle most likely to get in the way, and what you'll do if it shows up.

Answer this with Joy

Questions people ask about feeling hopeful

Is hope an emotion?

Both a feeling and a way of thinking. You can feel the warm lift of it, and you can also build it by working out routes to a goal.¹

Can hope be a bad thing?

Hope with no route can keep you waiting, and pure fantasy sapped energy in the Kappes and Oettingen studies.³ Hope that comes with a plan is a different animal.

How do you stay hopeful when things are hard?

Shrink the goal until you can see a route to it, and write the next small step. If hope has been gone for weeks and nothing feels worth doing, the despair page and a doctor or therapist are the places to go.

Optimistic: expecting things to turn out well.
Eager: keen for something to start.
Despair: when hope is gone.