Self-Management of Depression

In layman’s terms, hope is the expectation that your future can somehow be better, no matter the present circumstances. In contrast, psychologists define hope in a more structured way so that they can measure this attribute. According to them, hope is the pursuit of your goals with the knowledge that you have the capacity and the motivation to achieve them (Snyder et al., 2006). In other words, hope has two key elements: 1. A sense of successful determination in meeting past, present, and future goals. 2. A sense of being able to generate successful plans to meet the goals. The first element is called the agency , and the second element is called the pathway , which, in layman’s terms, translates into the will and the way, respectively. These two components of hope are reciprocal and work synergistically but are not synonymous (Snyder et al., 1991). People with the will to achieve their goals may not have the ways to do it and vice versa. Both the will and the way are necessary