Hope, Optimism, Resilience

"People without hope see themselves as failures and have no expectation that anything or anyone can help them out of their present situation. This hopelessness creates a sense of powerlessness that Miller described as the perception that one lacks the ability or capacity to affect an outcome. The powerlessness concept closely relates to others, including learned helplessness. In learned helplessness research with animals, lack of control over aversive stimuli resulted in later interference with learning. However, we know little about what produces helplessness in humans. Recently, Seligman, who has done the seminal work on helplessness, has promoted the notion of 'learned optimism' as an antidote for helplessness in humans. He maintained that individuals can choose the way they think; that thoughts are not only reactions to events, but also actually change what ensues; and that resilience in the face of defeat can be acquired. Further, Seligman believed that the key to the process of acquiring resilience in the face of defeat is hope."

From: A theory-based nursing intervention to instill hope in homeless veterans, Tollett, Jane; PhD, RN; Thomas, Sandra; PhD, RN in Advances in Nursing Science, 18(2):76-90, December 1995.