July 3, 2025 – It's 2025, and if you feel like everything is on fire, well, you're not alone. The world is living through what feels like a rolling existential crisis. Climate change is speeding up, global conflicts are building, and political divides have ripped apart families and friends.
This year, the U.S. fell to its lowest ranking ever (24th) on the 2025 World Happiness Report. According to a national poll released earlier this year by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, more than half of Americans under 30 report no sense of belonging and feeling "depressed, down, or hopeless."
We're all doomscrolling – and taking the doom to heart. And when someone tells you to "just stay positive," it can feel like being handed a juice box after a house fire. How are we supposed to stay hopeful? Is that even a reasonable goal anymore?
A new study from the University of Missouri offers a timely reminder: Hope isn't just a luxury – it supports our sense of meaning and direction. Researchers found that people who report higher levels of hope are significantly more likely to find their lives meaningful.
Psychologists, researchers, and philosophers believe hope is still possible, but not in the ways we might expect. It isn't about ignoring reality or forcing ourselves to stay positive. It's about something deeper and more durable. It's about showing up for your own life, even when it's messy. It's about making space for grief and humor and gratitude and allowing it all to live side by side.
Hope Begins With Telling the Truth
Robin Stern, PhD, co-founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, says hope starts not with forced optimism but with giving yourself permission to feel terrible. "It grows out of emotional honesty," she explains. When we stop judging our sadness or grief and simply sit with it, we create "the conditions for hope to take root, not as an instant fix, but as a quiet return to possibility."
This is the heart of what Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl dubbed "tragic optimism." Frankl introduced the concept in his 1983 lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, describing it as "being optimistic in spite of the 'tragic triad' " – three unavoidable parts of human existence: pain, guilt, and death.
Frankl first explored this idea in his seminal book Man's Search for Meaning, published in 1946, where he chronicled his experiences in Nazi concentration camps and his observations that those who found purpose, even in the most horrifying circumstances, were more likely to endure. Tragic optimism is not naive hopefulness; it's the defiant belief that meaning can be found even in suffering.
As modern research has shown, this kind of emotional flexibility is a cornerstone of resilience. A 2003 study of U.S. college students after 9/11 found that those who went through both grief and gratitude, fear and hope, fared better emotionally than those who tried to deny or suppress negative feelings.
Why Hope Isn't Just Optimism in a Party Hat
At first glance, hope and optimism might seem interchangeable. Both suggest a sunny outlook on the future. But some psychologists argue they're fundamentally different creatures – and understanding that difference could be key to emotional survival.
"Optimism is generic," says psychologist Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, author of Learned Hopefulness and academic director at Columbia University's Spirituality Mind Body Institute. "A sense of agency accompanies hope. If I say, 'I think tomorrow is going to be good,' that's optimism. If I ask, 'How can I make tomorrow better?' That's hope."
Hope, he explains, is not passive. It's not just waiting for good things to happen. It's a decision, a process – a skill, even. "Hope is unique among all the positive emotions," Tomasulo says. "And this requires us to think about it, research it, and utilize it in a very different way."
He compares it to the raw forces of nature: "Wind, water, and the sun are life-giving, but they're also incredibly destructive when they create tornadoes, floods, or cause skin cancer. But when harnessed properly, they can turn windmills, generate power, and create new life. Hope is like that. It's learning how to transform obstacles into opportunities and tragedies into triumphs."
Kristi Nelson, executive director of A Network for Grateful Living, puts it even more bluntly: "I'm not an optimist. I actually don't believe in optimism so wholeheartedly." Diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 33, Nelson says the experience rewired her understanding of what it means to look toward the future.
She prefers to call herself a "possibilist," someone who believes in potential rather than prediction. "Optimism is grounded in a set of certainties, just like pessimism is," she says. "Optimism already has its mind made up that everything will be fine." But life, she says, doesn't always cooperate.
Instead, Nelson believes in making peace with uncertainty. "Everything is actually unfolding in the moment, all the time," she says. "That leaves room for possibility."
In other words, hope doesn't deny that bad things happen. It doesn't promise that everything will work out. What it does promise is this: We're still part of the equation. "If everything were already written," Nelson says, "it would negate our own contributions to it."
Both Nelson and Tomasulo agree that hope is ultimately about engagement. Not blind faith or wishful thinking, but an active relationship with possibility. It's about asking, What can I do next? How do I keep showing up? In a world that often feels unstable and unfair, those questions may be our most powerful tools.
Gratitude Without the Guilt Trip
Telling someone who's just gone through trauma or loss to "count their blessings" is usually a terrible idea. It can feel invalidating, even cruel. Gratitude researcher Robert Emmons, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, warns of this very thing, calling it the "tyranny of gratitude." Forcing yourself to feel thankful in the middle of tragedy often makes things worse.
"We are infected by the virus of toxic positivity," Emmons says, referencing a scene from the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook where Bradley Cooper's character rages against Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms for not having a happy ending. "The world's hard enough as it is, guys!" he exclaims to his parents. "Can't somebody say, 'Hey, let's be positive?' "
It's a metaphor for how uncomfortable our culture is with emotional complexity. "Above all else," Emmons adds, we're told that "we must think positive. Always. No matter what."
But gratitude, when it's not coerced, can be transformational and a key ingredient in hope. It doesn't erase pain, it coexists with it. According to Emmons, even small acknowledgments – the loyalty of a pet, a warm exchange with a friend, the rhythm of a daily walk – can serve as psychological anchors. They help us re-orient in a disoriented life.
Research backs this up. A study done during the first unsettling months of the COVID-19 pandemic found that 56% of people reported feeling grateful – more than any other positive emotion. Even more astonishing: Nearly 70% expected to feel gratitude in the near future, despite the ongoing uncertainty.
Richard Tedeschi, PhD, who leads the Boulder Crest Institute for Posttraumatic Growth, says that people often find meaning after trauma through connection and contribution. He calls for the presence of "expert companions" – empathetic listeners who can reflect your strengths back to you and help you visualize a future grounded in realistic hope.
We often underestimate our own resilience, says Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. "There's this bias where we think our worst fears will destroy us," he explains. When they actually happen, however, we tend to rise to the occasion.
His advice? Pair emotional validation with the absurd. "I just don't take anything seriously anymore. It's really wonderful," Kaufman says. "We underappreciate absurd humor. I've been exploring improvisation a lot lately. The lesson of improv is learning how to 'yes, and' life."
What does he mean by "yes, and" life? In improv comedy, the rule of "yes, and" is a foundational principle: Never deny what's offered to you. If someone says you're on a spaceship, you don't argue – you agree (the "yes") and then build on it (the "and"). It's about accepting what is, and then adding to it.
Kaufman sees this as a metaphor for resilience: Acknowledge your reality, even if it's difficult, and still find ways to move forward with creativity, humor, and agency. It's a mindset of engagement, not avoidance – and it might be one of the most flexible, psychologically healthy ways to respond to life's chaos. It means learning to coexist with it, adding meaning where you can, and moving forward anyway.
Harvesting Gratitude, Cultivating 'Aliveness'
Emmons describes gratitude not just as a feeling but as a worldview. He shares stories of people who, in the middle of crises – addiction, grief, incarceration, chronic illness – found grounding through gratitude. A student who lost her mother told him that "her grief was her gratitude," reframing her sorrow as a form of love.
"An adult survivor of child abuse was able to achieve closure when she realized she had gifts to share with the world, made possible only when she recognized the giftedness of what she had received from those who had supported and sustained her," he says. "Inspiring story after inspiring story reveals that gratitude brings a new lease on life and is the place where we can find our true selves."
Seeing life as full of gifts, even during suffering, builds a narrative of continuity and meaning. Gratitude, Emmons argues, isn't about pretending life is good. It's about recognizing that we're still capable of giving and receiving good things – and that doing so defines who we are.
Tomasulo has found that one of the most powerful ways to help people rediscover hope is to begin with gratitude – not forced or fabricated, but harvested. "You don't need to invent anything," he explains. "Something good has already existed. Your job is to go back and gather it."
He recommends a deceptively simple practice: Each morning, write down three specific things from the previous day that you're grateful for. Not sweeping generalizations, but vivid snapshots. A kind gesture. A surprising moment of laughter. The way the sunlight hit the kitchen floor.
Understand: This isn't busywork. It has a point. And daily repetition is a big part of it.
After about a month, Tomasulo says, something remarkable begins to happen. The task gets easier, and the brain starts to shift. That's because the default mode of the brain is autobiographical. It's constantly reviewing and summarizing our recent past to form a narrative. If our memories are mostly meh, our life story becomes meh by default.
"It's like typing into Google," he says. "If I search 'how to cook fish,' I get a billion answers. But if I search 'how to cook tuna on an open barbecue,' I get exactly what I want." Specificity yields clarity. The more we practice searching our memories for meaningful, positive moments, the more our brain learns to highlight them. Over time, the balance tips.
It's not about ignoring the bad. It's about giving equal airtime to the good. And over time, that small mental habit – three specific gratitudes, once a day – can rewire how we experience the past, and what we expect from the future.
Cancer survivor Nelson has experienced this rewiring in the most profound way. After multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation, she beat her cancer. And what got her through, she says, was learning how to be present and living it.
"There's a profound importance to learning how to more fully occupy the present moment," she says. "That's really challenging, because we're so future-oriented, or stuck in the past. But the question becomes: What makes me feel alive right now?"
For Nelson, hope was less about certainty and more about aliveness. Not necessarily joy, and definitely not cheeriness, but a visceral sense of engagement with the moment she was in. "Even if I'm told I'm going to die," she says, "can I still feel love, still feel joy, still participate in life? That's aliveness. And that's what matters."
Aliveness, she explains, doesn't require a grin or good vibes. It means being awake to what moves you. It might be music. Or trees. Or the absurdity of your cat. It might be telling someone you love them or simply noticing that you can still breathe in and out.
"Even if you're dying," she says, "you can be fully alive all the way to the very end."
