Reactivating hope in your healthcare career
A free, online, one hour class for health professionals looking for practical steps towards thriving in healthcare.
Hope as inspiration, mentor and a pathway to thriving for health workers
Inspiration for healthcare workers:
I think that dreaming requires action on your own part.
Our world is abundant with quiet, hidden lives of beauty and courage and goodness. There are millions of people at any given moment, young and old, giving themselves over to service, risking hope, and all the while ennobling us all.
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.
Quotes guiding healthcare workers towards hope:
Excerpt from the Red Hand Files #190
The following two excerpts are taken from Issue #190 of The Red Hand Files, where a writer, Valerio, shares his worry about losing faith in humanity and Nick Cave responds:
"It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people.
It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help.
It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.
...
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth.
Hopefulness is not a neutral position either.
It is adversarial.
It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.
Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in.
In time, we come to find that it is so".
Nick Cave
The Red Hand Files *
April 2022
When there’s a sense of severed belonging, of disconnection, it undermines hope. It cuts us off from our full being-ness. It cuts us off from that field of possibility. Reconnecting with presence is a process that gives us hope.
Presence with pain is a gateway to hope; being with what’s real.
Excerpt from the Red Hand Files #308
The following two excerpts are taken from Issue #308 of The Red Hand Files, where the question is asked, "Where is hope? What is hope?" and Nick Cave responds:
"So, what is hope, and what is hope for?
Hope is an emotional temper that emboldens the heart to be active, it is a condition, a mood, an aura of being.
It is a feat of the imagination, both courageous and ingenious, a vitality that inspires us to take innovative action to defend the world.
Hope is essential to our survival and our flourishing.
We achieve this vitality of spirit by rejecting the relentless promotion of despair and opening our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be.
We try to view the world not as it is packaged, presented and sold to us but as we imagine it could be. We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope - the necessary driver of change - to inspire us to action.
I wrote in Faith, Hope and Carnage, ‘Hope is optimism with a broken heart'.
This means that hope has an earned understanding of the sorrowful or corrupted nature of things, yet it rises to attend to the world even still.
We understand that our demoralisation becomes the most serious impediment to bettering the world. In its active form, hope is a supreme gesture of love, a radical and audacious duty, whereas despair is a stagnant rejection of life itself.
Hope becomes the energy of change".
Nick Cave
The Red Hand Files *
January 2025
Mature or 'holy hope' is an attitude of the soul that’s open and receptive to how reality is unfolding through our unique human forms; being fully available to this life.
The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.
Inspiring hopeful pathway of action for healthcare workers:
Hope is a verb.
Excerpt from 'The Gifts of Imperfection' by Brené Brown
"Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.
Emotions play a supporting role, but hope is really a thought process made up of what Snyder calls a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.
In very simple terms, hope happens when:
- We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go).
- We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes (I know how to get there, I’m persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try again).
- We believe in ourselves (I can do this!)".
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection **
Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort. Hope is forged when our goals, pathways, and agency are tested and when change is actually possible.
Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
As stated above, these quotes are offered here as inspiration, guidance and possible pathways towards hope for healthcare workers who might be feeling demoralised.
Stay tuned for a deepening into this topic in coming weeks!
Questions? Thoughts? Reflections? Let Minky know here.
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Header image: Sandra Grünewald