Top Highlights

• High-hope thinking provides a special advantage when things get tough. In many instances in life, our paths are impeded by something or someone. In such times, high-hope people begin to think of alternative routes to their goals and then apply themselves to the pathway that appears most likely to work.29 In other words, high-hope people channel the...
• I learned this at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live that life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. —H...
• The following pages tell the unfolding scientific story about this empowering way of thinking.
• The verdict on hope appears to turn on whether it is perceived as being realistic.3 Questioning whether hope is built on anything substantial, many have viewed it as a curse. That is to say, hope is portrayed as an illusion, totally lacking a basis in reality.
• Historically speaking, hope is rather hopeless for those who assume it totally lacks a realistic basis. But suppose hope is tied to something realistic. As Samuel Coleridge, in his Work Without Hope, put it, “Hope without an object cannot live.”