Moving From Helplessness To Hopefulness

Five principles, personal actions, and reflection questions to help you

How many people in your friendship circle are in some degree of emotional funk? Emotional funk is more than the day-to-day ups and downs of everyday living and less than the deep anguish of despair. Some may feel depressed about their ability to recover from past trauma. Others may feel anxious about their uncertain future or lonely from the isolation of the pandemic years.
 

Depression from the past, anxiety about the future, and loneliness in the present may lead to a vicious cycle of helplessness where the emotional malaise stifles actions leading to a greater emotional malaise.

In personal lives, this emotional funk may show up or lead to physical health problems (insomnia, addictions, weight gain/loss), relationship challenges (divorce, anger, loneliness), and self-doubt (inability to take risks, plan, be motivated).

In a professional work setting, this emotional funk may lead to job hopping, quiet quitting, and overall lower engagement.

Business and HR leaders who help others replace emotional funk with vigor, self-doubt with self-confidence, passivity with agency, pessimism with optimism, and helplessness with hopefulness will enable people to discover a virtuous cycle of well-being in their personal and professional lives.

If your friends or colleagues (ahem, or even you) are tending into an emotional funk, what can you offer? Let me suggest five principles, personal actions, and reflection questions based on thoughtful insights by Martin Seligman, and others. These ideas offer you a blueprint for replacing helplessness with hopefulness at work and at home.

1. Recognize Types of Well-Being: I Seek Meaning in My Life

In general, there are three levels of well-being or happiness:

Level 1: Find pleasure and have fun by doing things that you enjoy (food, entertainment, exercise).  
Level 2: Create positive processes by having good habits and patterns.
Level 3: Discover meaning by identifying and living values.

Be careful to not be distracted by constant pleasure hunting, but seek more fundamental meaning that comes from clarifying and acting on values, expressing gratitude, and serving others.

Ponder on questions like:
●    How do I define success?
●    Who am I grateful for?
●    Who can I serve today?

These questions help you explore a higher level of well-being focused on meaning.

2. Exercise Agency and Responsibility: I Am Responsible for My Choices

Focus less on circumstances and more on choices. Research shows that when animals or people face events they can’t do anything about, they experience learned helplessness and emotional funk. In contrast, when people recognize and make choices, they have learned hopefulness.

Choices come from recognizing and acting on the principle of agency. An agent is someone who accepts responsibility for action. Agency means that you clarify what you want and what price you will pay for realizing your desired outcomes. Human progress comes from agency and making choices.

In employee surveys, agency shows by up adding “did I do my best” to traditional engagement questions:
● Did I do my best to build relationships with others?
● Did I do my best to improve my skills?
● Did I do my best to earn my pay?

These questions focus your agency and responsibility for your choices.

3. Believe in Efficacy: I Can Achieve My Goals

One of the foundational theories of motivation is called expectancy theory which simply states that efforts will lead to desired outcomes. Without a high probability that actions will lead to outcomes, emotional funk continues. Efficacy encourages you that you can achieve your goals. Set stretch but achievable goals within your zone of influence. Take small actions to make short-term progress to attain longer-term goals.  

Ask yourself these questions:
●    What are my goals that I can reasonably accomplish?
●    What are some first steps in making progress to reach these goals?
●    How can I maintain confidence that I can reach my goals?

These questions help you claim ownership of your goals and actions.  

4. Learn and Practice Optimism: I Can Achieve My Goals in the Future

It is often impossible to control circumstances, but it is possible to control response to the circumstance. Turning pessimism into optimism comes by tuning into the pessimistic thoughts you might have (“I can’t do this.”) and arguing against these negative attitudes (“I can make progress on what I need to do.”)

By facing and overcoming self-defeating ideas and behaviors, you can gain confidence in your future opportunities. By looking for the positive in any situation, you can begin to learn optimism about what can happen.  

Ask yourself these questions:
●    What often gets in my way of reaching my goals?
●    What are the cognitive distortions of these self-defeating thoughts and actions?
●    What can I learn from what I have done?

These questions help you be honest and transparent with yourself to learn from your past and to look forward with optimism.    

5. Imagine a Better Future: There Are Lots of Goals I Can Achieve

It is easy to look back at what has gone wrong to learn; it is also helpful to look forward to creating what can be. When you imagine a host of possible goals for your future, your horizon is brighter than your past.  Imagining new options comes from observing what others have done that you might do, envisioning yourself in new settings, and conceiving new options that you may not have considered.  

Ask yourself these questions:
●    If I could do or accomplish anything I aspire to in the future, what would that look like?
●    What are the options for my future that I may not have considered before?
●    How do I observe others and create my next practices based on what they have done?

These questions help you imagine and envision what can be. Your unlimited imagination poses possibilities and offers hope.

Summary:

Emotional funks exist in our friends, colleagues, and ourselves. They often foster an attitude of helplessness that discourages with pessimism. Intentionally, they can be replaced with hopefulness that encourages optimism.  

When business and HR leaders help employees become hopeful, not only do individuals prosper but so do organizations and communities. Providing hope is an emerging opportunity for an emotionally vulnerable world.
 

Principle	Personal application	Example question for others
1. Recognize types of well-being	I seek meaning in my life.	• How do I define success? • What am I grateful for today? • Who can I serve?
2. Exercise agency and responsibility	I am responsible for my choices	Did I do my best to build relationships? Improve my skills? Earn my pay?
3. Believe in efficacy	I can achieve my goals	• What are my goals that I can reasonably accomplish? • What are the first steps to meeting my goals?
4. Learn and practice optimism	I can achieve my goals in the future.	• What gets in my way of reaching my goals? • How can I overcome my self-defeating behaviors?
5. Imagine a better future	There are lots of goals I can achieve.	• If I could accomplish anything, what would it be? • What are options for my future I may not have considered?

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