Commitment requires passion and empowerment. Passion arises when we are connected to a purpose that comes from our deepest values, beliefs, and motivations. Empowerment requires feeling efficacious in a responsive environment. We also must have a sense of sufficient time to manifest our purpose. This combination of efficacy, possibility, and sufficiency is experienced as hope.

Commitment and Hope
Commitment and hope are mutually interdependent, fueling each other. Commitment without hope is futility and hope without commitment is impotent.

Being able to sustain commitment is tied to developmental accomplishments that give us a capacity for hope. Growing up in a world that allows us to make a difference based on our needs and values helps us develop the capacity to hope. If we have had the experience of making some of our goals and dreams a reality, then the possibility for more such activation is possible.

Having had a past where our potential has been realized supports a view of the future full of potential; conversely, a past in which our world was not responsive to our efforts will be remembered as restricted and constrained, presaging a similar sense of the future.

However, hope is not entirely restricted to past success, but can also be fueled through a connection to a sense of purpose. A sense of purpose can initiate our commitment, which in turn increases hope. Commitment combined with hope helps us overcome frustration, resistance, and failure; these victories incrementally enhance self-efficacy. Hope is an empowering emotion that emerges from feeling efficacious in a responsive world.

It can be a formidable challenge to sustain a commitment to change when we feel that our past was one of insurmountable limitations. This challenge is so great that many individuals will deny their history and act as if in the future anything is possible. Paradoxically, denying or distorting our history in order to foster hope and commitment may actually impair us. The denial of our history and nature will limit our capacity for constructive action in the world. When we understand our nature, both our strengths and weaknesses, we will find the tools we need for growth and change. In looking candidly at ourselves, we can accept our self and open up access to our deeper self. In the absence of a connection to the past, goals for the future tend to take on terrifying or grandiose qualities.

The capacity for living in the present along with embracing a positive view of the future is a significant psychological development, a development that is often derailed. A sense of the future is an aspect of a healthy sense of self and without a sense of self-efficacy, we may feel powerless to shape our future, feeling stuck, frozen, and unable to change or grow. The mid-ninetieth century psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion, Link felt that powerlessness results in a sense of self that oscillates between feelings of grandiosity and annihilation. He felt that psychological health necessitates being connected to the thread of continuity in time, in which we can envision our self-growing and flourishing. In the absence of feeling that there is a future in which to be efficacious, hope degrades into fantasy. In fantasy everything is possible but nothing is probable, creating a downward spiral of dashed dreams and reoccurring despair. However, dreams based on a hope grounded in our past and the potential of our future will sustain our passion and commitment.

Hope requires having a sense of time, a future offering opportunities for change and growth. A focus on the future moves us beyond the situational demands of life and into a larger context of meaning. Our desire to shape what is to come can give coherence to our thoughts and actions, as well as sustaining our commitments to manifesting our purpose.