Five Everyday Practices to Spark Hope (Even When You Feel Stuck)

When life feels heavy or uncertain, hope can feel far away—like a distant light barely flickering in the fog. But the truth is, hope is not something you either have or do not have. It is something you can cultivate, moment by moment.

While we cannot snap our fingers and force hope to appear, we can create conditions for it to grow. Just like planting a seed in the soil, we can nourish our inner landscape so that hope takes root—even when things feel stuck, slow, or messy.

These five research-supported practices are gentle, doable, and incredibly effective at shifting your internal experience. None require hours of your day—just a few conscious minutes of presence and intention.

🌿 1. Gratitude Journaling

When we are low on hope, the brain tends to hyper-focus on what is not working. This is partly due to the amygdala, the brain’s built-in alarm system, which is wired to scan for threats. However, gratitude activates the prefrontal cortex—the region associated with planning, meaning-making, and emotional regulation.¹²³

📝 Try This: Each night, write down three things that went well today and why they happened. This exercise trains your mind to recognize positive events and understand the causes behind them. Over time, it helps shift your perspective from what’s lacking to what’s thriving—nurturing hope and resilience.⁴

🌸 2. Savoring Small Joys

Hope often hides in the present moment. Savoring is the practice of noticing and lingering in moments of beauty, peace, or connection.

🧠 When we savor, we extend the lifespan of positive emotions in the brain—boosting dopamine and serotonin, and reinforcing neural pathways that support hopefulness.⁵

💡 Try This: Next time you sip your favorite drink or feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin, pause. Take three slow breaths and let it land. Savoring helps remind your system that goodness still exists.

✨ 3. Visualization of Future Possibilities

According to Snyder’s Hope Theory, hope is built from two key ingredients: agency (your belief in your ability to influence outcomes) and pathways (your ability to imagine routes to your goal).⁶ Visualization amplifies your focus on both.

🎯 Try This: Close your eyes and picture yourself achieving one of your goals. See it clearly: What would you be doing? How would it feel in your body? Imagine the steps to get there. Even if they are small or imperfect, this practice nudges the brain toward constructive forward motion. Tune in each time you perform this practice to see if the pathway changes and new doors of potential open.

🌬 4. Breathwork to Calm the Nervous System

When the nervous system is overwhelmed, even the most positive thoughts cannot land. Breathwork slows the heart rate, lowers cortisol, and helps deactivate the amygdala so we can access the prefrontal cortex—where long-term thinking and emotional clarity reside.⁷

🌬 Try This: Practice box breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold again for 4. Repeat 3–5 rounds. This creates space between stimulus and response—and within that space, hope can re-enter. Be sure the breath feels smooth and comfortable. If choppy or if you are pregnant, have high blood pressure, or have cardiovascular issues, you can leave out the breath hold and shorten the length of the breath.

🪴 5. Set (and Celebrate) Tiny Goals

Hopelessness often comes from feeling powerless. Tiny, achievable goals restore your sense of agency. They tell your brain: I can do hard things. Small wins release dopamine and motivate forward motion.^{8 9}

🎯 Try This: Set one goal per day that is so doable, you cannot fail. Examples: Take a five-minute walk, email a friend, make your bed, or drink a glass of water. Then celebrate it—aloud, in writing, or with a smile.

☁️ A Gentle Note on Timing

You do not have to rush this process. Growth is not a race. Sometimes just choosing one practice is enough. Other days, resting is the most hopeful act of all.

Remember: You are not behind. You are reorganizing.And every small step you take counts.

📘 Want more tools like this, grounded in both science and soul?Keep your eyes open for my new ebook Hope Isn’t Lost—It’s Reorganizing that expands on this journey and includes a guided meditation to help you embody the wisdom within! Join Avital's newsletter to be the first to know when it is launched and continue your transformation.

📚 References

¹ Garland, E. L., Geschwind, N., Peeters, F., & Wichers, M. (2015). Mindfulness training promotes upward spirals of positive affect and cognition: Multilevel and autoregressive latent trajectory modeling analyses. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00015

² Kim, Y., Gunstad, J., & Paul, R. H. (2017). Effects of gratitude meditation on neural network functional connectivity and heart rate. Scientific Reports, 7, 5058. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-05520-9

³ LeDoux, J. E., & Pine, D. S. (2016). Using neuroscience to help understand fear and anxiety: A two-system framework. American Journal of Psychiatry, 173(11), 1083–1093. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16030353

⁴ Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press.

⁵ Quoidbach, J., Mikolajczak, M., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Positive interventions: An emotion regulation perspective. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 655–693. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038648

⁶ Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249–275.

⁷ Brown, R. P., & Gerbarg, P. L. (2005). Sudarshan Kriya Yogic breathing in the treatment of stress, anxiety, and depression. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 11(4), 711–717.

⁸ Duckworth, A. L., Grant, H., Loew, B., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2011). Self-regulation strategies improve self-discipline in adolescents: Benefits of mental contrasting and implementation intentions. Educational Psychology, 31(1), 17–26.

⁹ Schultz, Wolfram. “Dopamine Signals for Reward Value and Risk: Basic and Recent Data.” Behavioral and Brain Functions, vol. 6, no. 1, 24, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-6-24.