20: Hope, the Future and Flourishing

His latest book is called Making Hope Happen, Create the Future you want for yourself and others. Thanks Shane for being here. Hey Scott, thanks for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. You've been quite influenced on my own work and on a lot of people in the field of psychology. And how long is your career at this point? Well,

I started in positive psychology in nineteen ninety nine. I attended a summit, a positive psychology summit at Gallop in Lincoln, Nebraska, and there I got to meet Marty Seligman and Ed Diener and Mike Chick sent me high and I sat next to a wonderful man named Don Clifton who came up with the Clifton Strengths Finder, so got to start working with him back in ninety nine as well. Hey, so the Clifton Strengths Finders is not the same thing

as the Character Strength Survey vi iave. Is there overlap between the kinds of strengths that are being measured by these two things these two tests, No, they're very different. Actually, the Clifton StrengthsFinder measures thirty four themes of talent that with time, energy and effort can be turned into strengths.

So like my top five on the Clifton Strengths Finder, a futuristic maximizer, a ranger, ideation, and strategic and all these strengths kind of are associated with success in different ways. So instead of measuring character and virtue, the Clifton Strengths Finding measures talents and success. I see and talent being something that's not purely genetic. Correct. So how did he come up with this list? Well, it goes back about forty years. He was asked to measure the talent of

people at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. They were trying to select better mentors for freshmen at the university, and it seems commonplace today, Scott. But his novel approach was, well, let me talk to the best of the best. I want to talk to the best mentors, and I'm going to measure the talent that they have, and then we'll look for more of that talent. In the past, what people would do was they basically say, you know, let me figure out who doesn't do this job well and

tried not to pick those things. So he just switched it up and said, I'm going to measure success and and try to try to select for success. And this is even this is before the field of politics psychology even existed. Yeah, this was back in the sixties, sixties and seventies. And he measured talent in in mentors. He

measured talent in ROTC members. Uh. And then he got into the working world and started uh measuring talent and strengths and managers and and and CEOs and eventually he even did work with the NBA and the NHL and the NFL. Wow, So when when did you start, Like, I mean, right now, you're you're you're like what a senior research scientist there or si a research director. Imagine that that meeting in nineteen nine, I imagine didn't immediately appoint you that position. So what what like, how did

that develop? Yeah, well, it's kind of a geeky story. When when they published the Clifton Stringsfinder in ninety eight, they put it online, So it was one of the first psychological inventories to be online in a big way, and that explains why it's been administered about eleven million

times to date. But when they published it, you know, they it just took off and lots of people were using it, and every now and then somebody would ask for the psychometric report, the basic measurements guidelines, you know, that explained how reliable and valid the test would be, and they basically didn't have time to sit down and write it. They were so busy making sure that people were discovering their strengths. So that was my first task

was writing the psychometric report for the Clifton Stringsfinder. So fortunately I did a really good job on that, and then I was able to to land other work with them and then become part of the team. Wow, so you split your time between lots of different things, I feel like, so you're partly still work with them, right, Yeah, you're also do you teach I teach a little bit online these days. I used to be at the University

of Kansas for a long time. I was a professor of education for ten years and then a professor of business for two years. But now I mainly teach online and you know, one off, one day teaching events. So I love teaching, but it's just not something I do every day now. I mean, you're going to be teaching in my class. I know. The next week is that? Next week, it's coming up, It's coming up. So positive psychology. How's that going for you? Oh, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah,

it's actually been a tremendous experience. Tremendous experience. You'll get a chance to meet my students next week, virtually wonderful. Yeah. So I'm trying to understand this whole timeline here. So then at what point I feel like your research and Hope predated your that ninety nine meeting. Yeah, you and I share share kind of part of an origin story. I started researching intelligence before I was researching Hope. Oh yeah. Yeah.

So I was at the one of my early jobs was at the Levenworth, VA Medical Center, and I was working with one of the top researchers on intelligence there and enjoying the work. But as you know, intelligence only tells a small part of the story. Yeah, definitely liked me unfulfilled exactly exactly so had I had a very

similar experience. So when I realized that intelligence only explained about a quarter of the variance in someone's success in life and had nothing at all to do with with their well being, I just got somewhat disillusioned and started looking for other other kinds of work to do, mainly looking for something that would explain someone's well being, someone's happiness.

And it was through my clinical work. So I was seeing a lot of clients, a lot of patients at the VA at the time, and I had this one patient who came into the clinic and at the time was suicidal and he had abandoned all hope and he was pretty committed to ending his life, and we had to do some really intensive work to get him to a safe place and make sure that he was ready to move on. And it was in that clinical work that I discovered the power of hope in a person's life.

And then I was fortunate enough to be working with Rick Snyder in a different capacity and Rick Snider was the University of Kansas psychologist who really operationalized hope and built this psychology of Hope research body. And I was able to work with him and start researching hope in ninety seven ninety eight. Wow, it's what a tremendous opportunity to meet, to meet the legend. Oh, absolutely Snyder. And then I know he's been would you say your most

important mentor in your life? Oh? By far? By far. He started in investing me in me in a major way and giving me opportunities to do what I did best back in the nineties. And even though he's passed away, I feel like his he said he gave us a lifetime guarantee on his mentoring and it meant for our lifetimes. So I feel as though he's still mentoring me today. So wonderful. And I remember his I think it was his nineteen seventy seven paper on abnormality as you need

for uniqueness, not being an indicator of abnormality. I just blew my mind. That's you have a good memory. That's one of his better regarded papers, and that work has really spread in terms of influence. It's it's still really big in the marketing, arena advertising exactly exactly. Oh yeah, you know, quoting is all about, you know, having people at least appear as though they're being unique when they

buy the same clothes. And now cars today people are trying to customize their cars in a way that sets them apart from other people. So his still work is still quite influential. Yeah. Absolutely, And he had a co author, was it Frompkins? Yep? Now tell me who this person is. I've always wondered who this person is. That that person is kind of mystery to me. You too, Yeah, oh my god. I almost was going to be embarrassed if you're like, this person's a legend. But actually I've never

heard of this, Like I've been wondering who this person is. No, no, and and and Rick was great about pulling people onto papers and and and tapping them for you know, the contributions they could make. So you'll notice that there are lots of I mean, he rarely published a paper by himself. Every now and then he did, but he rarely published a paper by himself, and and a lot of the folks he did publish with went on to have you know,

significant careers and contribute to the research. But there were some folks who are one time authors, and I'm not sure if Frompkins was that person, but that kind of guy, but no, I don't I don't know who who Prompts is. I'm googling him, Howard Frumpkin. If any I feel, you know, if any of my listeners have any information on who Howard Frumpkin is, please let us know. It's the search for Howard Frompkin. I can see this. It's going to

be a documentary one day. I mean, he's like, he's like a caulther On one of my favorite papers of all time. And yet he's he's there's not a trace of him on the internet. It's just fascinating, isn't it. It is? It is Okay, I'll get over it. Oh, get over it. Okay. So hope. You got interest hope. And the thing I think is interesting about the consumptation of hope that you get involved in is it's not

a stereotypical conception of hope. Even the way that Martin Selgman talks about hope in the Character Strengths Survey, Like the way hope is defined as a character strength is different than the way you define it am I correct? Yeah, yeah, I hope. It's about three types of thinking kind of combined.

It's goals thinking plus pathways thinking plus agency thinking. So having that expectancy that something good will happen is kind of wrapped up into the goals thinking and then coming up with multiple ways to get from where you are today to realizing that goal. That's what Rick called pathways thinking. And then having the necessary requisite energy and drive to get from where you are today to that goal is

what you refer to as agency thinking. It's a social construct but has a lot of cognitive components to it, and the way we have people remember it is GPA goals thinking plus pathways thinking plus agency thinking. Why do you think he decided to go beyond the traditional conceptulation of hope. I mean he had to make an active decision to do that, right, Yeah. Yeah. He was really influenced by Carl Mininger. So I'm not sure if you remember the Miniger Miniger Clinic, but Carl Mininger wrote one

of the first papers on hope. I think it was nineteen fifty two. He wrote his presidential address for the American Psychiatric Association on the topic of hope, and in conversations with doctor minneger Rick. Snyder thought that it goes beyond expectancy, that there are other components. So if hope was to be really active in a person's life, you had to have that that that energy and drive combined with some routes to get from where you are to where you want to be. So he thought that that

his conceptualization was was more robust and potent. See, I see, And it's so interesting because like I feel like even today, like people use hope differently, and and you know, there isn't like a consensus in the literature. There's like you know, there's like yr and his conceptulation for hope. And then I see, I see studies like in the positive psychology literature on like the link between cardiobascor disease, for instance, and they I see optimism. Hope is used as a

synonym for optimism. Have you noticed that too? Yeah? Yeah, I must drive you crazy. You must heads explode when you see that. If I was Shane Wolpez, my head would explode if it does. And there are lots of folks who use one idem measures of hope. Yeah, exactly, And and that confuses the the science as well, so you know, it would be nice if we all agreed

on on one conceptualization of hope. But uh, you know, we let a thousand flowers bloom in positive psychology and and I think it in riches are you know, deepens our understanding of of of what what all positive expectations are, whether it's hope or optimism. But we do need to clean it up so that you know, the folks outside our field can understand it better. Absolutely, so tell me,

uh and my listeners, why does hope matter? Wow? You know, we we're at the point where we can tell you pretty definitively why hope matters and just go for it. Hope hope on this right? Yeah, Yeah, Hope accounts for a letter grade in school. So if you're thinking about why hope matters to uh, let's say a young person or a college student, how hopeful you are determines how well you'll do in school. So it accounts for a

full letter grade of academic success. It accounts for a day's worth of prodativity out of a one week, seven day work week, so it certainly accounts for a whole bunch of projects getting done and burgers getting made and quarterly goals being met. And also it accounts for a ten percent boost and well being. So whether you're talking about success in schools, talking about success at work, or talking about happiness in life, hope is a really good

indicator of how well you'll be doing. That sounds great, and it's specifically it's the kind of hope that you're talking about. Whether these these the will, the will and the ways to get there? The will in the ways right, So that's that's agent see in pathways correct? Is the will part? Is that the same thing as like grit,

as what Angel Duckworth is studying. It's very close. It has significant overlap with grit, and it has a perseverance element to it, and it overlaps with all agenic thoughts, so it overlaps with self determination, it overlaps with grit, and there's a whole body of research on the agenic self, so it overlaps with that research as well. And from a Big five personality perspective, do the different components of

hope differentially correlate with different personality traits? You know, not systematically. We haven't. We haven't looked at that to a large you know, to in a major way. But when we have the hope components don't overlap systematically with with conscientiousness and openness and as such, but the wills in the ways that that significally correlates with each other. Yeah, those are related at about a point four correlation, correct, So it's justified to call them both the same construct, an

overarching construct hope. Yeah. Yeah, it's a two factor solution when we when we UH, when we UH do the factor analysis. But yeah, they're they're hanging together in a meaningful way and and and representing this this operationalization of hope. So why is the past not a preview? Wow? You know, we put so much reliance on on the the past and determining how well we do today. So if you think about all that work that the past is the best predictor of the future, that's not really really the

truth in a lot of situations in our lives. Well hold on, that's like a dramatic revising of what everyone thinks is true. Well, well you tell me so. So intelligence so so your intelligence in the fifth grade, let's say, is that a great predictor of how well you'll do into the work world? No? No, right, oh no, I hate I agree with you, brothers, I agree with you. I'm just saying, like, let's let's digest this before you go on. Let's yeah, let's like hold on, because that's

going to be a revolution to some people listening to this. Well, I think I think it's become an American ideal. You know, it's something you know, just like, Uh, follow your passion is the hottest career advice. That's probably the most dangerous career advice you know that we have in America. What should you be doing with your passion? Well, you should

be creating your passion while you're on the job. Okay, you should land a good job with great people and be systematic about doing so, and then create passion every day like you do with your work, Scott, create passion every day and and and build it and then spread it to others. But but the past is not a preview.

I mean, when we look at just the measures that we hold up as as big predictors of success, so whether it's intelligence, high school GPA, A C T S AT scores, L SAT scores, uh, those don't really tell us a whole lot about how people will do in the future. In fact, one of my colleagues, Kevin Rand did a study looking at LSAT scores, the law school admission tests, and and HOPE scores to determine ranking in law school. And hope was a better predictor of ranking

in law school than the LSAT scores. Yes, I so love that finding. I've cited that, and I said that and un gifted. Well in all these you know, all these industries are built up, you know, basically around the notion that that the past is the best predictor of the future. And and what we have to realize is

the past is is a predictor of the future. There's some knowledge to be gained from someone's past and past strivings and past successes and past demonstrated abilities, but there's so much more that we need to know, and the future pulls us forward in a way that we need to understand a whole lot better. I love that. So what an implications there for our conceptulation of potential? Wow? Yeah, you know, I think that's wide open when we measure

things like hope and even someone's strengths. So imagine if you knew someone's strengths, whether it's from the Values and Action Survey or the Clifton Strengths Finder, and you knew someone's hope and you knew someone's grit, wouldn't that tell you a whole lot more about their potential for doing a job well than just knowing high school GPA and intelligence.

I think so, I've I don't think everyone thinks so, so I think that you get a lot of diehard uh IO traditional people suggesting that you know, they'll say, well, the reviews have shown that IQ is a better predictor than any personality trait, and if you add in personality you get very slight incremental additions. Now, the way you

worded it is in align with that you said. You basically said additionally, right, so that saves you because you said, but but but what if, like you know, what if it's like very you you you only have a certain amount of time and you have to decide or you know, like I would be as so bold as to say I'd pick the hope and grit over the IQ and then and then that would get me in trouble. Like the way you word it was perfectly you know, like everyone's going to agree, Yeah, I would, you know, I'm

put you on the hot seat. I hear you, I hear you, I would go I would want to know some ones. And this is how I do. I mean, I picked graduate students for years and years, and and I cared a whole lot less about GRE scores than I did about their demonstrated abilities to get things done number one and number two, their vision of what they wanted to do in the future, and how compelled they were to pursue that future in a hot, passionate way.

So I also picked graduate students based on their strengths. I needed reliable, dependable folks who were who had a lot to offer my team. So I, uh, you know, I picked a lot of graduate students Scott believe it or not, with with gres and verbal and quantitative under five hundred. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And I knew I would have a lot of work to do with them around writing and and and you know, some stats work and things like that. But I also knew that

they had potential, uh that was untapped. And I was rewarded almost every single time. I can't say every single time, but I was rewarded almost every single time. Wow, that that's great. Thanks for telling me that. It's really great. So I think a lot of this does have implications for for our education system then in terms of a selection too into graduated into college admissions, and even going back further in terms of what we reward in the classroom.

So let's let's maybe let's talk about both. But let's start with going back to uh, like elementary school or middle school. I mean, have you done work on on interventions to see if these kinds of if hope can be increased in school system? We have, absolutely. I'll tell you about a neat project we did that. We haven't tested the you know, the the actual effectiveness, but but it's it's one that demonstrates the kind of interventions we

could do in the future. At the Omaha Children's Museum, we worked with a tech company to build something called the Fantastic Future Me. Yeah, yeah, sound of that. Oh it was really it's a really cool. It's an ongoing exhibit at the Children's Museum and about a quarter million kids go to this museum every year, so it gets played with quite a lot. And what you do as a little one, and these are typically three to eight year olds, you stand in front of the Fantastic Future

Me and you take a selfie. So the gadget takes a picture of you, and then you're able to crop it in just the right way so that your face shows up on the screen in this little oval. And then you pick from all these adornments of what you want to be in your future life. So we have thirty or so different outfits of different professionals and craftsmen

and uh, skilled workers of all types. And you adorn that picture of yourself with these different outfits, and then you become let's say, a plumber astronaut, because you can put on more than one outfit. And then that to that picture is then sent to mom or dad via email to create conversations about what this little guy wants to be when they grow up. So that that really is at the heart of all of our interventions, trying to get kids to figure out a story they can

tell about their future selves. So as you and I know, and the listeners know, we're all strangers to our future selves, and that well, you know, we we don't really have a yourself as present company excluded. I got it, but you know we don't. We don't know really where we're going to end up in a year or five years. We can tell a story about it, but we don't

know what circumstances of life will come about. So just like the way you landed the current job you're in, I mean, you couldn't have predicted how that would unfold in your life. You knew good things would happen, but you couldn't predict exactly where you'd be. Kids just have this, and I learned this from one of your writings as well. We all have this capacity for daydreaming, and what we try to do is aim that capacity for daydreaming at the future and get kids thinking about what they want

to be in the future. So long story short, our five session programs that we do with kids. First, we get them to focus on goals that they're wildly excited about. Then we get them to come up with pathways to those goals, and then finally we get them to come up with ways to maintain the will to get to those pathways. It's very direct programming, but we've been able to demonstrate in both in elementary, middle and high school

that the program is effective. And in addition to that, another another Hope researcher out of Rick's Lab created a ninety minute Hope intervention for college freshmen that's very similar to the work we've done in schools, and he too was able to demonstrate his name is David Feldman. He too was able to demonstrate that we're able to boost hope in these brief, brief interventions. Now, when you say effective,

what are your dependent measures? Yeah, yeah, we're most interested in hope increases, so we're actually doing test retests with pretest post tests with with rix hope measures, but we also look at satisfaction with life and other well being met. So the work we've done with students in Portugal showed that we were able to increase hope, but we were also able to increase satisfaction with life and overall well being. Oh well, these are pretty important things, absolutely, And again

these are fairly brief interventions. So David Feldman's is ninety minutes, and our interventions typically run about five forty minute sessions, so two hundred minutes. So these are fairly brief interventions. And to date we've been able to demonstrate that the changes are pretty stable. So if we come back six weeks or six months later, we still have that hope boost has been maintained. That's great, and I know that you're also on the advisory board of the Future Project. Yeah,

I'm so well aligned with your mission. Well, they're doing just fantastic work. I mean, just imagine if we all had the benefit of having that kind of coaching in our lives, if someone was able to kind of help us figure out what our futures were going to be and then rally us every day and keep us moving towards those coveted futures. Gosh, I mean, they could change high school in America, and that's I'm betting on them to do that, because we really need a big wow factor,

something new and different in our high schools today. What happens in schools in America, it's gotten. This is from the work I do I Gallop on the Gallop Student Poll, is that kids get decreasingly engaged in school starting in about the sixth grade. So you're most engaged in school in the fifth grade, and then starting in the sixth grade and then seventh, eighth and so on, you become

less and less engaged. So by the time you hit high school, a significant portion around fifty percent of studentudents are not engaged in school. So tragedy, oh my gosh, it certainly is and and we need some kind of disruption to to to help students become more engaged and and and pursue those dreams that that may have gone dormant. Yeah, yeah, I like that's an interesting idea. The dreams have gone dormant?

What what? What does that mean exactly? Well, you know, I worked my wife had a literally literally what does that mean? Yeah? Yeah, Well, my wife had a not for profit in Omaha for a while where she was having students write stories about their futures and then helping them basically with with learning how to write. But but we had I think it was forty six students in

this program at one time. And what was interesting is we asked them to write had a story about, you know, their expectations for the future, and there were there was a different prompt, something much more engaging than that, but a lot of students just stared back at us kind of doe eyde. They they really didn't understand what they were supposed to be thinking about. They their their capacity to think about the future hadn't been used in so long that that the skill, the ability to to do

that was was just not there. So I think we have a lot of high schoolers walking around who are who have this wide open future and really don't know how to describe it, really don't know how to how to pitch it, how to pursue it. Yeah, I love that a lot of ps come up with a new P model. Okay, so what what does future casting? Did you coin that term? Uh? Maybe, I don't know. It's possible, It's possible, it's possible. I hate to say I I coined something when when there might be someone out there

who used it first. You need more hootsut than that own it. Own it. I've never heard anyone else use it before until until I hear someone else own it. I'm I'm, I'm that's Shane Wilpez. Yeah. Future casting is is just it is just what we do every day, you know, in our in our thinking about the future. So it's not full on hope, but it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of what Babe Ruth did when he pointed toward the uh, the right field fence and said, I'm going to hit this out on you.

You know, it's making big, bold predictions about your future. It's really putting yourself out there having some hoodspy as you said and saying, you know, this is what I want my future to look like. And then when you announce it to the world, what's interesting is is you get other people excited about it, yeah, or you get

your parents not excited about it. But do you have a story that relates to that's I mean no, but I can just imagine situations where you lay out there and what you want to be and that's not exactly what your parents vision for you. Yeah, oh I would, that's true. I talked to a guy last night whose daughter, ten year old daughter wants to be a fashion designer here you go, and he's somewhat reserved about the whole notion,

but it's supporting her nonetheless. I mean he sits up with her and watched his Project Runway with her, So he's supporting supporting her dream. Oh it's probably his favorite TV shows. He probably loves it. Oh man. So yeah, so this future can so how can we like, how can we have structures in an education system that is facilitates future casting? Like can we have like a future casting recess where everyone goes around and like talks about like makes a bold decoration. You know, we we did

that in a school system in Omaha, Nebraska. So Omaha is a hotbed of hope stuff because Gallup is located there. It is it is so so a whole school district decided to have a future casting day where they they did exactly what you said. They they walked around and they they spent time think daydreaming about the future, so and and writing down what they wanted from their own for their own lives, but also for other people's lives. And what what people realize is that we just don't

spend enough time thinking about the future in a complex way. Uh, that we just let those those flirty thoughts just just pass us by, and and we don't spend enough time engaging in our thoughts about the future. So I liken this to meditation. So when when you're thinking about the present, you should be perfectly in the present, and you should meditate on the now and be as centered and present as you can be. But when you're thinking about the future,

you should be perfectly in the future. You should be thinking about the future in a way that really is rewarding to you and and helps you paint a picture of where you want to be in a week or month, a year, and meditate on the future in such a way that it has some benefits for you. So I would definitely agree with that, and I try to think of how your work is reconciled or compatible with Gabriel

Oltensen's work. Oh sure, you know, I think that it's an unfortunate choice of words she uses to describe daydreaming. She calls it indulging, right, because I don't think, you know, every daydream has to have reality. I think some of it in and of itself can be beneficial, not as

always means to an end, but that aside. I think that a big point of her her excellent research, is that, you know, we can sometimes get lost in our day dreams or get trapped, and and and and and forget that we actually need to put in some hard work to make this stuff happen. So, if I'm correct, your consultation of Hope explicitly addresses that point and says it's well, hope, it's not this sort of just blind optimism for the future,

which is how actually some of the psychological literature describes it. Right. It is actively. There's an active component to it. There's an active component to it, and the most hopeful people we find the most realistic people. That's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, so they're they're actually testing out the future in a way that that makes them less indulgent, so they're actually able to say, well, this pathway won't work. I mean, that's kind of out of out of bounds. This pathway

won't work because I don't have those skills. This pathway will work because that's in my wheelhouse. So hopeful people are, in the way we conceptualize hope, are actually more realistic folks than less hopeful people. Now, this whole notion, though, of indulging, makes me think of wishing, and that you know, it does drive me bananas when people confuse hoping with wishing, and wishing is just so dangerous. I mean, the whole matter exactly. So you're actually hating on that song right now.

I'm hating on that song, and I'm hating on the law of attraction and the secrets and all of these uh Disney, Oh, all of these disruptive forces that have captivated people and and and made people think that if you wish hard enough, your life will improve and go. I had to complete it or else my audience would go crazy. If I think exactly, I could just feel the tension. I just think wishing is quite destructive and and we we could talk about that on a whole

whole other show. But uh, hope, Hope is more active, It has much more potential. Yeah, so that's really These are really good, meaningful distinctions that we're making here today. This is this is like my podcast at its best, in my opinion, is when my guess and I can you know, I cannot not just have forty five minutes of trite observations but can actually make some useful distinctions for the audience. So, yeah, thank you you bet so. I did say that we were going to talk about

the school structure of the network, but then beyond. So that's just been the next couple of minutes, the last couple of minutes over interviewed, just talking about beyond. There's there's always a world beyond high school. You know, college admissions, what can we do to change college admissions? How can

you incorporate hope into the college admissions process? And then ultimately as a full fledged card caring adult, you know, how can you like make a decisive decision like that You're going to be more hopeful in your daily life? So both those things if you could address them. Yeah, and I'll go with the boat and with college admissions. Okay, I'm not ready to to say we we shouldn't use the A C T and the S A T. You know,

and of course, well thankfully you don't have to make that. Well, you know, there are there are universities that have abandoned both. So but I'm not ready to say we should abandon both. I think that gives us some information about students. But I would love to see a couple of universities are small colleges try measuring hope alongside the ACT and SAT

to determine selection. But what I do know is is in the longitudinal studies we've done, and we have one paper out right now that we're trying to get published, in the longitudinal studies we've done, we've demonstrated that that hope definitely explains a good bit of the variants in students completing college on time. So when it comes to completing college in a four year stint, hope is definitely your ally. So would I would encourage colleges to measure hope.

I would encourage colleges to implement David Feldman's ninety minute hope intervention in their freshman orientation classes to boost hope. And then when it comes to being an adult, Gosh, I can't think of where I'd be without hope in my life, you know. So on a personal level, you know, I was I was born poor and smart, and somehow I got a whole lot of hope and and that's

what's carried me forward in my life. I Mean, the intelligence has done some things for me, but but really it's been it's been the hope that pulls people to me, and those people then inspire more hope in me. Uh, and then I'm able to do things that I never thought possible as a young kid. Absolutely, I developed a lot of hope along the way with inspiring teachers, and I really fundamentally believe the intelligence is valuable and that my hope and grit is what helped me develop whatever

intelligence I have today. Wow. So yeah, I obviously I have a huge ode ode to hope as well. So I think that's just a great, great place to end this interview. Was there anything else you wanted to add about the current work that you're doing right now or do when I talk about anything else? Well, right now, I'm studying people who love their jobs, and I find that those two are some of the most hopeful people

that I've ever met. So stay tuned. We'll talk more about hope and people who love their jobs next time. Oh that sounds great. I can't wait. Thanks so much, Shane, really appreciate your time. All right, Scott, thank you, thanks for all you do. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as informative and thought provoking as I did.

If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com