Jenny Cameron Paulsen

“The future will be better than the present. I have the power to make it so. The first belief comes naturally to us.”
― Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others

“You can get there from here.” That favorite saying of Rick’s has become one of mine, too. It’s shorthand for a potent way of thinking about the future. “Here” is the present, which is in some way less desirable than our imagined future. “There” is the target of our longing. And “you” are the one moving yourself from here to there. We expect something from the future, and also from ourselves.”
― Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others

“how we hope—determines how well we live our lives. John’s transformations, from thriving to suffering and back”
― Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others

“Well, John’s IQ didn’t—and couldn’t—help him bounce back. For all his intelligence, he didn’t have a clue about how to cope with the threat of losing life’s meaning—his reason to get up every morning. And nothing I’d learned from my research on intelligence could actually help John—or my other clients or anyone else I knew—when he needed help the most. So I decided that intelligence is overrated. It is much discussed and celebrated, and it is somewhat important at school and in the workplace, but a high IQ is not essential to a good life. However, hope is like oxygen. As I saw then and continue to see every day, we can’t live without hope.”
― Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others