The Discipline of Hope

This post pulls from a live HmntyCntrd session, including a Q&A with Alba Villamil, partner and facilitator at HmntyCntrd, who brings a sociology and equity-centered lens to the conversation. Between us we cover the difference between helplessness and powerlessness, why grief has to be part of any honest conversation about hope, and the actual rituals we use when the discipline gets hard to keep. Note: this post may have affiliate links and we donate 100% of those funds to non-profits and a children's group home🫶🏾

Most people reach for hope the way they reach for a blanket. Something to pull over the bad news until it stops being cold. That is not what hope is for, and treating it that way is how people end up either burned out on forced positivity or fully at home in despair, unpacking boxes in a hallway they were only ever supposed to pass through.

I recorded this session in a season where I needed it more than the people listening did. I was thinking about the year ahead, about hard conversations waiting on both sides of my working life, about a nephew whose school is 95 percent Mexican preschoolers and what the plan is if that school ever gets raided. I was not teaching from a place of having it figured out. I was teaching myself back into a discipline I was actively losing grip on. If you are doing work that requires you to care about other people and the systems they are stuck in, there will be seasons where you wonder if you are only alive to suffer. That is not a personal failure. It is what happens when you take integrity and justice seriously inside a hyper-capitalistic culture long enough.

The Difference Between Helplessness and Powerlessness

Before any of this makes sense, you have to separate two feelings that get treated as the same thing.

Helplessness starts inside you. It is the belief, built out of past failure or fear or a narrative you absorbed somewhere along the way, that you cannot do something even when you technically can. Someone avoids learning to swim because they have decided they are not the athletic type. Nothing external is stopping them. The block is internal, which means there is still room to move.

Powerlessness starts outside you. A storm damages your house and you wait on an insurance company. A highway shuts down and you sit in traffic with nowhere to go. No amount of mindset work changes a blocked road or a canceled flight. The constraint is real, and pretending otherwise just adds shame to an already bad situation.

The reason this distinction matters is not academic. Helplessness is where you have leverage, because a belief that was learned can be unlearned. Powerlessness is where the work is different: naming what actually cannot move, and putting your energy toward the parts that can. Most of us spend our lives responding to both feelings with the same script, which means we either fight things we cannot change or sit still on things we could.

Grief Is a Hallway, Not a Home

Hope that skips grief is not hope. It is denial with better branding.

I think of grief as a hallway. It is a passage, not a place you were ever meant to live. And yet people move in anyway. They hang pictures on the walls, bring in furniture, unpack like they're staying. The discipline of hope is not pretending the hallway doesn't exist. It's remembering there's a door at the end of it, one that doesn't erase what you carried through the passage but does ask you to keep walking toward it.

I told my therapist once that I didn't have time to sit with the hard stuff, I had things to do. She told me sitting with it was the work. What I've come to understand since is that it's a choice, not always an immediate one, but a real one, and every time you take even the smallest step forward in that hallway, you are rebelling against despair whether it feels like it or not.

"Hope isn't an emotion. Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline and we have to practice it every single day." — Vivianne

What This Actually Looks Like When You're Losing Grip on It

Talking about hope as a discipline is easy. Practicing it is the part nobody wants to hear about, so here's what I actually do.

A ritual of celebration. Two lists, personal and professional, of things nobody else would know to be proud of. Not the version you'd post. The version where showering counted as a win on a hard week. Mark the small ones and the big ones separately, then notice which column has more, and what that tells you about where you've actually been living lately.

A burning bowl ritual. Twice a year, sometimes more when a season demands it, I sit with a stack of index cards and a set of prompts: what lies about myself do I need to let go, what beliefs about work and career, what fears, what family patterns, what's causing guilt or shame that isn't mine to carry. One answer per card. Then a small fire, and each card goes in one at a time while you pray or cry or sit in silence, whatever the moment calls for. The same names show up on that list more than once. That's not failure. That's just how long some things take to actually release.

Remembering who you are. Ask five people who know you and care about you the same two questions at once: what shows up when I do, and what do I bring into a room. Write the answers down and put them in an envelope for the day your own head can't be trusted to answer honestly.

Creating your Ariki. A Yoruba naming tradition, built from your name, your lineage, and a string of self-chosen titles that throw humility out entirely. Mine reads, in part: builder and revere of dreams, taker of stages, conqueror of corporate chaos, protector of her joy. Most workplaces will never see you fully. This is how you remind yourself before you need someone else to.

Boundaries Are Not the Opposite of a Soft Heart

There's a version of self-protection that hardens you, and a version that keeps you soft. The difference is worth naming because most advice about boundaries only teaches the first one.

Alba described boundaries as a set of rings, closer people held to tighter trust, and the discipline being honest about whether someone's actual behavior has earned their ring, not just their history with you. I think of the same idea as a marble jar. Every time someone is a good steward of something you shared, a marble goes in. Enough marbles, and you know you can trust them with more. Test people in low stakes before you hand them the real thing, and pay attention when the jar stops filling.

I also protect my energy in ways that sound small and aren't. I've muted words on LinkedIn. I've stepped back from an entire industry's worth of conferences because the scarcity in the room was costing me more than any panel was worth. None of that is withdrawal from care. It's the redirection of it, toward the people and rooms that actually give something back. And it's worth being honest about the difference between friendship and trauma bonding, because a connection built entirely on mutual complaint about a shared boss usually doesn't survive either person leaving the job.

What To Do With This This Week

You don't need the whole framework to start.

Try the audit version first. What's costing you energy right now, and what's actually feeding it. Where is the gap widening between the two, and what's one thing you could move closer to or further from this week to close it. If you can't answer what's bringing you joy right now, that's the signal, not the failure.

And if you're in the middle of a transition that has more grief in it than anyone warned you about, know that the wave usually doesn't hit on day one. It shows up about thirty days in, after the adrenaline of the decision wears off. That's not a sign you chose wrong. That's just what the hallway feels like from the inside.

Hope isn't free. It asks something of you every time you choose it again. But the alternative is building your whole life inside a hallway you were only ever supposed to pass through, and that was never the plan.

Originally aired as Episode 20: The Discipline of Hope (Revisited) on the Choose Courage Inc. podcast.