People Who Stay Hopeful Without Being Delusional Usually Have These 5 Rare Personality Traits
LOOK | Canva I have to be honest. Sometimes it’s really hard to be hopeful, and positive psychology researchers totally get it. This recently came up with clients in my practice, so I wanted to discuss it more. Digging into self-help can feel like wading through a swamp and feeling more stuck than when you first started. Wait, am I supposed to be an advocate for personal growth and change? Yes, and I am.
Staying hopeful doesn't mean ignoring reality or pretending everything is fine. Some people manage to hold optimism and realism at the same time, even when things are messy and stressful. They don't deny what's happening. Instead, they rely on these personality traits to explain how they stay hopeful without tipping into delusion.
People who stay hopeful without being delusional usually have these rare personality traits:
1. They're self-aware
Name your feelings — it takes their power away and helps you connect your experience with the feeling and where you feel it in your body. Since I love metaphors, think of it like this. You go to organize a closet that has gotten to be a huge mess. The door has been closed, so it’s easy to walk by and have it be out of sight and out of mind. When you open the door, it’s overwhelming. You have to take everything out of the closet, lay things out all over the place.
The room surrounding the closet will definitely be messier than when you started. However, you’ll start to organize it. You’ll get rid of unneeded items. You’ll put things in the proper place. You may feel overwhelmed, defeated at times, frustrated, tired, and want to stop. You may not feel hopeful that you’ll ever get the job done. But, eventually, the closet gets cleaned out and organized, just like your thoughts and feelings in personal growth work.
2. They stay in touch
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So how do you dig out the hope in the mess of all the things? Hope is a feeling of possibility, affirmation, and potential. Brené Brown, a researcher on shame and vulnerability, has found that hope is not seen as an emotion, but as hopeful thinking. She has found a good understanding of hope through psychologist C.R. Snyder’s work in positive psychology.
She explains that hope is not an emotion; it’s a cognitive process, a way of thinking about ourselves and the world. Hope has to do with the relationship among goals, pathways, and agency. So, it helps to talk to a really close, good friend who is able to listen without judgment or tell you what you should be doing.
3. They're okay not having all the answers
It’s okay to stay there until you build the grit and tenacity to figure out the next right thing to do. That’s all you have to do. Then, the next right thing is to deal with all the things. Hopefulness is about the ability to set a goal. Once the goal is set, you have to find innovative and creative ways of getting there. To reach the goal, you need to believe you can do it. Also, hope is about the ability to make a Plan B.
"When you have something hanging over your head, even something minor, it can increase your anxiety and stress levels and lead you to feel unhappy," explained life coach Kelly Rudolph. "By taking the time to stop procrastinating or 'tolerating' the problem and fixing it, you'll save yourself a lot of heartache and ease your stress."
4. They're good at processing
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Talk about your struggles. Write about them. Mull them over. Don’t numb out if you can help it. Find those who’ve experienced similar struggles either through Google or through real-life people. Knowing that someone else has survived something similar can provide relief, validation, and start giving you the first drops of hope you need.
Brown further explains that hope is a function of struggle. When we don’t expose ourselves to struggle, when we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to know failure or disappointment, we reduce our ability to be hopeful.
5. They find meaning in struggle
Confidence comes from evidence. Hope comes from struggle. What evidence do you have of overcoming previous struggles? What part of this struggle have you already dealt with?
Keep the evidence. Log everything. Every. Little. Thing. You will show yourself that you are capable of action and movement, however big or small the steps may be.
In the midst of the closet clean out, the sorting of difficult emotions in disappointment, failure, or rejection, one has to dig out their own tenacity and the perseverance to keep going. Every time this is practiced, it builds the hope muscle. It gets stronger each time you exercise it during a struggle, so that you have the hope, knowledge, and belief that you will get through it.
Anya Surnitsky is a licensed clinical social worker and a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator. She has been featured in PsychCentral, the Unapologetically Sensitive podcast, TherapyDen, and more.
