Hope fuels purpose, purpose drives passion, passion engages performance, and performance delivered equals results. It begins with hope and ends in results. What is this “it” that begins with hope and ends in results? The answer is, it is anything that you want “it” to be.
When we consider anything that we endeavor to do or are currently trying to do, when we add hope to it, we set off a series of other triggers that energizes our engagement. And we can energize our engagement, the execution or performance will surely follow.
We all have hope for something, we have dreams, and we have goals. We have hopes, dreams, and goals for our business and for our personal lives. If we are not where we think we should be, what we might be experiencing in both our personal and professional lives is disengagement. We have the ideas, we have written out our plans, we have started to move towards executing against our plans, and then for some reason we stop. Our interest or engagement in the project or whatever we were doing has weakened.
This week I was having this discussion with a friend of mine. She shared with me that she just seems to have lost interest in so many things. She shared that these past two years have been very hard on her mentally, physically, emotionally and even spiritually. The pandemic, society, politics and now the war have left her feeling numb and confused. She is struggling with getting excited about her work and has lost interest in the things that used to bring her joy and happiness in her personal life too.
We talked for a long time, and after a while I asked her what she was hoping for in life. At first, she said that she had lost hope, and she was feeling hopeless and helpless. We talked some more about that, and then I said that I was sure that she must have hope for something, we all do. She thought about it and still shrugged. So, I reminded her of the eight things Zig Ziglar used to say that we all have hope for: happiness, good health, prosperity, security, friendship, peace of mind, good family relationships and a brighter future. And I asked her if any of these might be something that she also had hope for in her own life.
As we dug in a little deeper on each one the eight things mentioned above, her demeanor changed. Her body language shifted from disinterested to engaged. She even started taking notes and writing reminders for herself of things she wanted to follow up on. And by the time we parted ways that day, I could literally see the hope in her eyes. My goal was not to try and resolve her issues, all I did was to give her something to think about, hope.
Look around at your family members, circle of friends, teammates and employees. Do you see hope in their eyes, does it manifest itself in their work ethic, attitude, and overall engagement? If you are seeing or experiencing disengagement at home or at work, I encourage you to start a conversation around hope. A team without hope of winning the next game will probably not practice. A student who has no hope of passing a test will more than likely not study. A salesperson with no hope of making the sale may never pick up the telephone. A spouse with no hope for the relationship will soon stop trying. Give those who matter the most the best gift you can ever give them, give them the gift of hope.
Hope is the trigger to purpose, passion, performance, and results. Hope is not a strategy; hope is the secret ingredient to engaging in our goals and dreams. Could you or anyone you know use a little hope right now? I would love to hear your story at mnorton@xinnix.com, and when we can energize our engagement with hope, it really will be a better than good year.
Michael Norton is the grateful president of XINNIX, a personal and professional coach, and a consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator to businesses of all sizes.
