One of the most important things we can do for young people is teach them how to hope. Not wishful thinking, but active, grounded hope that equips students to face difficulty and keep moving forward. As a school speaker who works with students across Australia, I have found that hope is not a passive quality. It is a skill that can be developed, modelled and taught.
Below are five strategies I call the “Five H’s of Hope.” These are ideas you can integrate into your teaching, parenting or school presentations to make a real difference to disengaged or unmotivated students.
A true genius admits that he or she knows nothing.
Albert Einstein
1. Humour
When we are young, we are full of hope. Children naturally attune themselves to wonder, play and joy. Research shows that adults smile on average 20 times a day, while children smile around 380 times. As adults, we can all do more to intentionally seek out activities that bring us joy, so that we become genuine carriers of hope for the young people around us.
Humour also increases a person’s capacity to hope. Researchers demonstrated this when they gave participants a short comedy video to watch. Those who watched it showed statistically significant increases in their hopefulness scores compared with those who did not. Humour is a powerful classroom tool and one that teachers rarely use enough.
When I work as a school speaker, I lean into humour deliberately. Laughter lowers defences, builds connection and creates the kind of environment where students feel safe enough to be vulnerable and open to new ideas. If you want to teach hope, start by creating a space where joy is welcome.
2. Humility
Humility is an attitude that lowers our resistance to new ways of thinking and doing. It also helps clear away what I call “corrosive biases,” habitual thought patterns that cause us to form opinions based on past experiences rather than present possibilities.
Being humble is not about accepting every new idea without thought. It is about keeping your mind open to what you do not yet know. The humble understand that the most powerful strategic position they can take is to keep asking: “How am I insufficient, and how can I rectify that?” These questions feel counterintuitive in a world that rewards the highlights reel. But they are the questions that produce real growth.
Start with effort, not just talent
I am not talking about self-deprecation. You are talented and have tremendous worth. The goal is to honour your strengths and work on your deficiencies. As Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, puts it: “Talent counts, effort counts twice.”
Here is a practical method for teaching hope through humility. Ask your students or children to set a goal to improve in one area, even if it has no glory attached to it. A small step forward is always better than staying stuck. Have audacious goals by all means, but start small. Every great endeavour begins by adding value to a few before scaling to the many.
I recently watched a Netflix special on Beyoncé preparing for her Coachella concert. It was her comeback performance after having twins. She spoke about how difficult it was to feel like she was starting all over again. She said: “The reason why people don’t like to rehearse is because you have to be humble and willing to look awkward. You’ve got to study and be a student again.” If Beyoncé can embrace humility, we all can.
3. Hunger
Hunger is more important than talent. You can have great ambitions and great opportunities, but if you cannot execute them with energy and drive, your plans will fall flat. When teaching hope, I remind students that greatness does not result from spontaneous combustion. It builds through a growing appetite for learning and growth.
Those who achieve remarkable things are not just the ones with exceptional skills. They are the ones who constantly expand their skills into new territory. The discipline to keep expanding matters more than the original skill, because the overall trajectory keeps you moving forward.
We live in a time of unprecedented possibility. The tools to change the world are in everyone’s hands, but only the hungry make real use of them. Consider that Kylie Jenner took a social media platform and used it to build one of the most recognised beauty brands in the world. She did not wait for permission. She was hungry, and she acted.
As Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, observed: “Many successful founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success.”
4. Honour the Struggle
One thing I have learnt across four decades of life is this: life is going to be hard, whether you pursue your dream or not. Since it is going to be hard anyway, why not spend your time doing something you love?
Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear a path. Before you judge a difficult moment, sit back and see what it could become. If you label a season as pure despair, it cannot transform into anything else. But if you choose to honour the struggle, it becomes a teacher.
Many people fail to pursue their dreams because they believe there are only two possible outcomes: colossal success or epic failure. What I have found, in pursuing my own goals and in speaking at hundreds of schools, is that neither extreme is typical. The reality is you succeed a little, encounter some hurdles, learn some lessons, rework the plan, and repeat the cycle many times over. Eventually, you arrive at something great. The finished product rarely looks like the original plan, and that is the whole point.
“In order to appreciate your successes, you must first appreciate your struggles.” Nishan Panwar
5. Hustle
I am not a fan of hustle culture as people often portray it, because it means very different things to different people. But when it comes to teaching hope, my definition of hustle is simple: have the discipline and mindset to keep walking, even when the path is not clear.
Mindset is more important than strategy. You do not build something meaningful purely by knowing the technical steps. You build it by backing yourself, refusing to stop and taking consistent action. Think of it this way: almost everyone knows how to make a new friend. The strategy is simple. Be kind, listen well, show genuine interest. What we often lack is the courage and discipline to act, to actually say hello to someone new.
Action over strategy
When young people say “I do not know what to do,” I tell them: nobody really does at the start. It is perfectly fine to do the best thing you can think of right now. Hopeful students understand that even a flawed plan, consistently executed, builds discipline, which leads to wisdom, which leads to insight, which leads to a better plan.
Some of the world’s most impactful inventions began as accidents. Post-it notes, Teflon and cornflakes all started as mistakes. Their creators started vaguely and kept adjusting until they stumbled onto something great. Teaching hope means sharing this truth: sometimes when the thing you were doing fails, it leads to the very thing you were meant to find all along.
Some succeed because they are destined to. But most succeed because they are determined to. Many young people today feel hopeless, but this can change. Apply these five strategies in your classroom, at home, or in how you engage with the students in your care, and you will start to see the difference that hope can make.
Want to bring hope into your school? I present to students across Australia on hope, resilience and character. Book a school presentation or visit The HopeFULL Institute to learn more.