By: Michael Bornhutter, Headway Gauteng Support Team Leader and Registered Counsellor
Hope is not just an emotion or a feeling. While many people think of hope as an emotion or an attitude, psychologists have found that hope is actually a cognitive process. It is something that can be taught, understood, and practised.
At its core, hope is made up of two components. The first is a belief that the future can be better than the present. The second is a belief that we can play a role in making that better future happen. These are known as Agency Thinking and Pathways Thinking, respectively. Without both of these elements, hope slips into wishful thinking or blanket optimism — which is not true hope.
Hope is an active process. It involves identifying a goal for the future and taking steps towards it, while recognising your own accountability along the way.
Research shows that people who can cultivate hope report higher levels of satisfaction, wellbeing, and connection with others. While it’s true that hope facilitates these things (for instance, students with greater measured levels of hope tend to perform better at school), it can also feel out of reach for some people.
Hope and brain injury
Sustaining a brain injury is a life-changing process, both for families and the survivor themselves. It rearranges one’s expectations of their future, changes one’s cognition, emotions, relationships, careers, identity and more. For any families or individuals who have experienced brain injury, hope may feel dangerous. It might feel overwhelming, or like something that a person living with a disability can’t access. This is so common in the brain injury community. For most people, recovering from and living with a brain injury is the hardest thing they have ever had to do – to find hope difficult to access is completely understandable.
Yes, hope has its benefits, but it does not guarantee anything except another chance. Researchers suggest that the opposite of hope is apathy – the sense that nothing you do matters, that there is no point in trying, leading to the question: why bother? In the long and demanding process of brain injury recovery, holding onto even a small amount of hope can make it easier to try again tomorrow.
When someone gives up entirely on the possibility of improvement, recovery often slows — or stops altogether. Holding onto the belief that tomorrow might be better than today, or even that the next hour might be better than this one, helps build resilience and motivation. It creates just enough space to try again.
In brain injury recovery, hope is essential. Without it, it is so difficult, maybe impossible, to keep moving forward, collecting small bits of wellbeing and strength as you go on.
Growing and cultivating hope
Hope can be learned. Like a muscle, it grows stronger with repeated use. One way to cultivate hope is by recognising what has already gone right. Looking backwards and finding evidence of progress supports the belief that tomorrow can be better than today.
In the context of brain injury, hope can begin very small. This might mean identifying one simple thing to look forward to each day or week — a cup of tea in the morning, the sound of rain, or watching a sunset. The aim is to hold a realistic sense of improvement without overwhelming ourselves. The familiar advice of taking things one day at a time applies here.
Practising gratitude is another practical way to strengthen hope. By intentionally noticing and naming one or two things you are grateful for each day, you train your brain to recognise what is going well, even alongside difficulty.
Hope is an active process. We practise hope when we imagine a realistic, better future and recognise our role in moving towards it. It often begins as something small, a seed rather than a finished picture. Every person’s journey is different, and no two paths will look the same. Be kind to yourself as you walk your own path, and as you grow and cultivate your own sense of hope.