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The Science of Hope Applied to Holiday Eating

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As we move into the holidays and start planning the 60-day sprint, I am reflecting on what has helped me through crunch times and sprints this year. HOPE made a difference.

In October, I was blessed to speak at the Kitsap County Resilience Summit. The keynote speaker was Chan Hellman Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. For the last decade he has been researching hope with individuals with high ACES (Adverse Childhood Events Scores). His new book, Hope Rising: How the Science of HOPE Can Change Your Life, will be available on Amazon in late November. I highly recommend it!

Here is a summary. He distinguishes hope from wishes. “Hope is the belief that a thriving future is possible and that you have the power to make it so. A wish is something that has no steps towards making it real and that you don’t have any influence over.” (p31 Hope Rising).

So let’s set our goals and raise our HOPE to get through the holidays with a little more self-compassion and self-care, and enter the new year with renewed resilience.

According to Dr. Hellman we need two things to raise our hopes and move toward them. Willpower and Waypower. Willpower is a combination of personal motivation for the goal and fuel supply for the brain to have the energy and mental clarity to stay focused on the goal and hold onto the hope. Waypower is the pathway to get it done. It’s the small little steps of success that lead you down the path toward your goal. We often need support from others for both the willpower and the waypower. I love the definition of hope used at Camp HOPE, a camp for children surviving domestic violence, that is shared in this book. Hope is “believing in yourself, believing in others, and believing in your dreams.”

Hope Image.png

So what are your holiday hopes? Do you have steps identified along a path to achieve them? Are they really goals that you, personally, want for you or your family? Which ones are you sure of? Which ones do you need to strengthen your Hope Plan around?

Here are some Hopes that I often hear people talking about for the Holidays:

  • Seeing family or having solitude

  • Going hiking, seeing a holiday show

  • Cooking traditional or non-traditional food

  • Seeing the holiday lights

  • Not over eating

  • Managing holiday winter depression

For those who want to learn more, here is a link to a presentation given by Chan Hellman on this topic, titled Pathways of Hope. He also has a number of videos on YouTube.