One of the 24 character strengths
Expecting things to work out, and acting like it. Looking for what's good in a situation, especially when it isn't obvious.
Hope is the strength of expecting things to work out, and behaving accordingly. The behaving is what separates it from wishing.
Somebody who leads here looks at a poor situation and finds the part of it that could still go well, then acts on that part. The looking is quick and it is not a decision they remember making. It is simply where the attention goes first.
The important half is the acting. This strength predicts a person starting something on the belief that it can work, which is why it does more visible work in a life than a mood ever could. A good expectation nobody acts on changes nothing.
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96 questions · about 9 min · free
Start your free assessmentA project loses half its budget on a Friday. By Monday one person has already worked out which two thirds of it are still possible and started on those.
The good version of the future can be believed too early. Somebody who leads here can commit to a plan on the strength of how it could go, and be the last person in the room to accept that it will not. Contingency plans feel like disloyalty to the main one.
It gets read as refusing to see what is in front of somebody. Leading here usually means seeing it clearly and deciding where to put the attention anyway, which is a choice rather than a blind spot. The version that genuinely cannot see the problem is something else, and it is rarer.
Both bring energy into a room. Zest is about how fully somebody goes at what is in front of them; Hope is about what they expect at the end of it.
Both keep somebody going through a bad patch. Hope supplies the belief it will be worth it; Perseverance supplies the staying whether or not that belief is there.
Everybody has all 24 of these. A result puts them in order within one person, so a strength near the bottom of somebody's list is one they reach for less often rather than one they are missing.
That also means nothing here compares one person with another. There is no reference sample behind these scales, and an order made of somebody's own answers cannot say where they stand next to anybody.
Or start with what the 24 character strengths are.
Two hundred and thirteen questions, about twenty minutes. You get all 24 put in your own order, free, with the ones that lead in you named at the top.
96 questions · about 9 min · free
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