Dr. Julia Garcia

So it's something you've already done.

And I think a lot of people who do healing work and working through their emotions, the habits of hope will become something really simple for them to apply.

It's really just...

partnering with maybe the foundation they've already established.

Because that's the key is when we build these internal habits, it helps us reduce stress, improve our emotional regulation, bounce back and promote that resilience.

Because it activates the brain's goal-directed circuits where our planning and motivation and emotional regulation is.

And it helps us find a way forward.

So it's not saying that...

Hope, it's like we can coexist with hopelessness because we know we have a plan to get through it because of the foundation, our internal toolkit, which I believe is what you were referring to.

Hope is a cognitive science, but people know it best as a feeling.

And that's why I talk so much about feelings and why the habits of hope are based on a feeling framework.

Because even if we know the science of it, what matters is how we feel about it.

We know when we don't have hope and we know when we have it.

In the absence of hope, we know how to feel.

how dangerous that can be.

So hopelessness can be a really dark place to go, but having hope is not wishful thinking.

And the difference is wishful thinking is maybe having false hope and real hope accepts limits, but doesn't let that be the end of the story.

It takes knowing that, yeah, things maybe didn't go the way I want or I have no control of the outcome of this, but I can still see what's possible as opposed to just seeing what's gone.

I believe we all have the capacity of hope and hopelessness as well, definitely.

And I think some people have been just through the ringer, beat down, beat down, overwhelmed, burnt out, underappreciated, devalued, hit with injustices or really difficult things and to the point where it becomes really difficult to have hope