Transcript - Harnessing the Power of Hope With Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Harnessing the Power of Hope With Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 531 of Live Happy Now. As we launch a brand-new season, we’re going to lead off with something we all could use, hope. I’m your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I’m talking with author, podcast host, and resiliency expert Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. Robyne’s here to talk about why hope is so important for both our physical and emotional well-being, and tells us some of the practices we can use to cultivate hope even in dark times. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:34] PF: Well, Robyne, thank you so much for being back on Live Happy Now.

[0:00:38] RHD: I am excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation to come back.

[0:00:42] PF: This is a conversation I’ve been wanting to have with you. It seemed like the perfect time and the perfect topic to open up Season 11. Because here we are, brand-new season, brand-new month, and we need some hope. And hope is so important, but it is something that can be hard to find. Right now, it really seems difficult to find. And I find it so interesting that you actually conclude your last book, Stress Wisely, with a call to action for us to embrace hope. I wanted that to be our starting point today. Can I find out what made you so interested in studying hope?

[0:01:19] RHD: Well, first and foremost, congratulations on 11 seasons. That is not a small feat.

[0:01:23] PF: Isn’t it crazy?

[0:01:25] RHD: And you just said it, it was ain’t no thing. That’s a big deal. To each and every one of you who contribute to the success of this podcast, I just hold space to say congratulations.

[0:01:35] PF: Thank you so much.

[0:01:37] RHD: And just keep shining bright. The work you do matters. Thank you. And to answer your question. As I’ve shared with you before, I was studying human resiliency and well-being for almost 20 years. And one of the themes that became so evident was this through line of hope. When we’re navigating difficult, hard, dark seasons, there is this through line of when we think about human resiliency, that hope is what gets us through that moment.

And then when I was working with people around well-being and navigating stress, hope just kept on coming to the forefront as this differentiator, that this is what we’re giving people the opportunity to find a way through. That led to, again, coming out with this third book, I Hope So.

[0:02:23] PF: Oh, I love that.

[0:02:23] RHD: – because we see that hope makes – it makes the difference. It’s definitely the game-changer.

[0:02:28] PF: And where are you at in the process with that book?

[0:02:30] RHD: Well, I’m so excited to share with you and your team. This is the first time I’ve shared it out loud. The launch date is February 10th, 2026. It feels far away, but it’s so not. As you know, time seems to go quite quickly. And I’m very excited for this work to make its way out in the world, because as you said at the top of this, I think we all need a good dose of hope right now.

[0:02:51] PF: Yeah. And can you tell me what full hope plays in resilience overall?

[0:02:56] RHD: Yeah. Again, I love that question. It’s the capacity. When we think about how first to be able to answer that question, I think it’s helpful just to do a little bit of unpacking. Because I think so often, the concept of hope gets maybe mixed up or maybe interchanged with optimism. And we know that those are actually two distinct areas, right? They’re two distinct focuses, because optimism is very much attached to an outcome. Optimism is like, “I’m hoping or I’m trusting that this is going to work out,” or whatever that might be. It’s attached to an outcome. Where hope is more of this philosophy that, come what may, I’ll be okay. It’s trusting that, no matter what, we’re going to be able to find a way through this. It’s leaning into that kind of faith in the unknown, but trusting it enough that it allows us to make the next right step.

[0:03:49] PF: I love that because that’s a differentiation I hadn’t heard presented like that. And that is true. A lot of us don’t feel optimistic right now. But if we can remain hopeful, that can completely change the journey.

[0:04:04] RHD: Absolutely. And that ability to stay hope-filled, it’s very much an inside job. It’s not attached to outcomes. It’s not attached to political parties. It’s not attached to bosses. It’s not attached to all of these external forces. It’s very much this fuel in terms of how do I make sure that my head and heart are in alignment so I can show up boldly even when it’s scary, even when these are uncertain times. It’s very much this practice of learning to let go of what happens next, but being confident that we can take wise directions and steps in that right direction.

[0:04:40] PF: No, that’s so tough.

[0:04:42] RHD: Yeah.

[0:04:42] PF: And we’re going to get into that. But you know, I love it when people talk nerdy to me. I wondered. You’re so scientific. Can you explain where hope sits in our brain and why that’s important? A process as it controls.

[0:04:59] RHD: Yeah, there’s so many different ways hope actually is part of our physiology and our psychology and, again, even our biology. For example, we know that when we exercise and our body starts to release these endorphins and we start to kind of feel good, that’s actually referred to as hope molecules. It’s literally hope permeating all these different aspects of our biology. They’re actually called hope molecules. It gives us a sense of lightness, this sense of ease, even though it’s hard. And we just start to feel this like — what some people would say, a runner’s high, or whatever that might be. But the way that we describe it in physiology is that those are hope molecules literally just polluting our body with goodness.

On a physiological level, it’s something that actually moves through our bloodstream. From a psychological perspective, it’s a way in which we process information where we’re able to maintain perspective. We’re able to still have those moments of trusting in the dark, right? Being able to walk forward in uncertainty. And it’s that little voice that says, “You know you’re going to be okay,” right?

Or it could even look a little bit like grace. I think sometimes when you’re about to say something, maybe in a relationship conversation, or you’re doing relationship repair, and you’re about to say something. And it’s that little whisper that says, “Don’t say it. You can’t take that back,” right? It’s just knowing that there’s this deep intuition that is in our philosophy, it’s in our psychology, it’s in our physiology. And we know it makes a difference.

[0:06:33] PF: And it also makes our amygdala less reactive.

[0:06:35] RHD: Correct. Absolutely.

[0:06:38] PF: To explain why that’s important, and for those of us who aren’t as well-versed in the brain as you are, what is the benefit of having a less reactive amygdala?

[0:06:48] RHD: Right. What it does is it puts us in the driver’s seat, where we’re able to respond versus react. And so, often, we talk about as the four F’s, right? That’s that fight, flight, freezing, and fawning. When those reflexes are enacted, or are acting out, or are engaged, we’re not really making sound decisions. We often talk about this idea that stressed behavior is not our best behavior. It’s literally the behavior that’s just trying to survive, it’s just trying to get out of that situation, it’s just trying to minimize the risk or the harm. That isn’t our wisest parts of ourselves making good decisions.

Whenever we can kind of soothe that amygdala — and if we even think about it, sometimes I remember when I was working early in my career, Paula, with children, we would talk about the amygdala. It’s like the shape of a little almond in our brain, about that size. And literally it’d be like, “Okay, let’s just pet the almond,” right? Let’s just soothe that almond. Let them know that you are in control of what’s within your control, and you are safe, and you’re okay, and you’re really well resourced to navigate this.

[0:07:55] PF: Oh my gosh, that’s what we all need. We need like a Live Happy shirt that says pet the almond.

[0:08:02] RHD: 100%. Soothe the almond, right? Smooth and steady. And again, sometimes it’s that same idea of you look at boiling water, you cannot see your reflection. But when you look at calm water, you can see your reflection. Again, that same kind of adage plays true that when we are calm and we’re able to work with our nervous system, we’re able to stay in that place where we can make really wise decisions.

[0:08:26] PF: And it also has amazing effects on our health.

[0:08:31] RHD: Absolutely.

[0:08:31] PF: I know so many people right now who are having just weird health things going on. And as you talk to them, it’s like, “Yeah, they’re not sleeping. They’re pretty amped up about things.” They’re very worried, very stressed out. Can you talk about how it benefits not just our emotional well-being, but it’s also a huge physical factor for us?

[0:08:52] RHD: Absolutely. And the research on hope is so strong in terms of its impact on physiology that there were even studies, for example, when they were looking at cure rates of different diseases or recovery rates, that they actually had to control for hope and the variable of spirituality because it was skewing the results. Things were happening that science could not explain. The only way that they could actually make sense of it, Paula, was actually to kind of put this wee bit of a — this group of people to the side who had spiritual practices or had hope-filled practices because it was skewing all the data. We just couldn’t explain things when we don’t control for that variable. We know that it has things that we don’t even really know about yet, we know it has a huge part of it.

We also know that hope is so important in terms of recovery, but also in prevention. What we know, for example, is that when things get left unaddressed, when people think, “I’m not going to go to the doctor because I’m scared on what they’re going to uncover,” and they avoid treatment, they avoid early intervention, they’re putting themselves at greater risk.

When we live hope-filled, we trust that, “You know what, if we even get bad information or a diagnosis that might feel really overwhelming or scary, it’s trusting that we’re going to be able to find a way through.” As you know, prevention is such a big deal when it comes to our physical health and well-being.

[0:10:18] PF: That’s absolutely true. And in 2016, my mother-in-law had a very bad attack of Guillain-Barre. She now has a distinction of being the only human in history that has survived four major attacks. And when she was in a hospital facility, she was — what they call lockdown, basically comatose. And we were told that she would not survive that. And my partner was like, “Well, you don’t know my mom.” She came out of that. And then they said, “Well, she’s never going to walk again. And again, it’s like, “You don’t know my mom.”

Long story short, Rachel, her mom, now serves on the board of the hospital. And one of the first things that she told them was, “You have to give people hope.” Not just the patient but you have to give the family hope and you have to give the staff hope. Because she unequivocally says that is what helped her get through that experience.

[0:11:15] RHD: Yeah. Oh my God. What a powerful story. What a beautiful testament to hope. That’s her testament to hope. That is so powerful. And you’re absolutely right. And it reminds me of one of the kind of ways that I started to try to introduce the importance of hope as part of a diagnosis or part of a treatment plan is even if we take that a step further, when people are given a diagnosis, whatever it might be, let’s say physical elements, if there’s an ailment physical, like a cancer diagnosis or something quite significant, people send casseroles. People show up and they surround that person and they talk about cure rates. They talk about their chances, which is so important.

But one of the things that I saw very early in my research in this area though, Paula, when we’re talking about mental health diagnosis is nobody’s bringing casseroles. When someone is diagnosed with schizophrenia, nobody is showing up your house with a charity to go for a five kilometer run, right? Nobody’s showing up with pink ribbons. Nobody is rallying around families. If we think about how hope is so precarious, even in physical health conditions, when we think about mental health conditions, it’s even more absent.

And you’re absolutely right when your mother-in-law says hope is the difference. Hope is that differentiator. And we need to cultivate hope practices. And I could share it really quickly. Often people say to me, “Well, oh, Robyne, we don’t want to get their hopes up. We don’t want to get their hopes up.” And it’s like, “Are you kidding me?” Absolutely, I want to get people’s hopes up again. And they’re like, “Well, what happens if it doesn’t work out?” It’s like, “Well, what happens if it does? What happens if it does?” Why are we basically trying to prevent disappointment or prevent our well-being at the cost of trying to control something that’s outside of our control, versus we’re going to go through this experience? We might as well go through it as hope-filled as possible.

[0:13:06] PF: Yeah, because even if the outcome, the end outcome is not what you wanted, at least you enjoyed the experience getting there much more than if you were feeling like you’re walking through doom and gloom.

[0:13:19] RHD: Exactly. And what we know is that walking through doom and gloom taxes our cognitive resources. It creates more worry. It has us trapped in this feeling of anxiety, which is our thoughts are trapped in the future. Or we get trapped in the past and we feel depressed, and we feel helpless, and we feel scarcity. Again, it’s not setting up the conditions that are going to allow those good things to come into our space because we do know whether people subscribe to kind of some of Einstein work or not. He was right. Like attracts like. Likeness attracts likeness. It’s a law of nature.

If we’re sitting here in this pessimistic place or this doom and gloom, the likelihood is we’re going to invite more of it in versus if we choose to hold the line. If we choose to hold that line of staying hope-filled, it’s increasing the likelihood by the laws of nature that likeness will attract likeness. And again, it’s not woo-woo, it’s actually science, it’s actually physics. This isn’t manifesting toxic positivity in unicorns and sparkles. And hey, I love a good unicorn and sparkles. But what we’re doing is setting the container to allow room for those type of … what we call those, happiness hormones — that serotonin, that oxytocin, those endorphins — to take root, because those are the conditions where hope can thrive.

[0:14:44] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

And now let’s hear more from Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe.

[0:14:56] PF: We recognize the need for hope. I don’t think anybody listening will say like, “Eh. No use for it.”

[0:15:01] RHD: Pesky hope.

[0:15:03] PF: Oh, that hope. It just gets in the way of my dreams. We know the value, but how do we get there? Because it’s one thing to see that. It’s another thing to wake up and have hope in our hearts and to live with hope. Where do we start?

[0:15:18] RHD: Where I like to start is kind of sometimes big and work our way into small, right? At a big picture, 30,000-point view, what are we thinking about? I believe this starts with this understanding of our spiritual contracts. In my heart of hearts, I believe that all of us are here for a purpose. That doesn’t mean everything happens for a reason. It means we’re here for a reason. And there’s work to be done. I believe each and every human being is this person who has a spiritual contract with something greater than ourselves. And I think hope is part of that.

And to be able to fulfill this spiritual contract, for us to be able to show up and live in our skills, and our talents, and our gifts, we actually have to create the conditions that allow those things to take root. To me, this is big deal. This is like my soul is depending on me making sure that I’m staying hope-filled, because that will allow me to fulfill my spiritual contract. What does that look like?

[0:16:15] PF: Let me say real quick, as you say that, that is incredible. Because when we take it to that bigger picture, we’ll do something for others or for our soul that we’re not going to commit to doing for ourselves. I love looking at it. It’s just not this one little hollow shell that’s depending on it. It’s a bigger picture. I love you bringing that up.

[0:16:35] RHD: Yeah. And I love this idea that it’s not just about me. And that’s one of the things that I think is so important when we think about hope, is like, “Yeah, I benefit from staying hope-filled,” right? It’s going to bring a bit of ease, and a sense of peace, and security, and feeling well-resourced into my life, but it’s going to be for me to be able to be of greater good. It’s for me to be able to be of service because it benefits everyone. I really believe, when we’re able to live in this hope-filled way, it benefits everyone.

Even though I think — again, I say it’s an inside job, it is. But it’s an inside spiritual job that allows us to fulfill our spiritual contracts. And again, how do we do that work? This is this kind of idea, and we’ve talked about this before, that it’s hard, but we’re choosing our hard. We’re choosing to find strategies and techniques to minimize the distraction, to minimize the noise, to minimize the negative influences that we’re exposed to, which means that if I’m trying to cultivate a hope-filled moment or a hope-filled day, I’m not going to start by listening to the news on repeat, right? I’m going to minimize my exposure to those things.

Something else that I know is that when I start my day, feeling gratitude, being appreciative. And we know what you are grateful for, that what you appreciate appreciates. When we start in that place of sufficiency, it’s going to be easier to be able to show up in the day because my head and my heart are in the right spot. They’re aligned.

[0:18:06] PF: What do we do during the day? We start, we get up, we have our, “This is what I’m grateful for today.” Part of my practice involves choosing my word for that day. Today, I’m going to be conscientious. Today, I’m going to be optimistic. Today, I’m going to be mindful. We go on, we get that day going. And then the overwhelm hits, or the anxiety, or we get completely derailed. How do we get back into that space of hope?

[0:18:29] RHD: Well, first and foremost, I think we need to — it doesn’t happen by chance. We actually have to build a day by design, right? I think we have this propensity, and this kind of ties back into that kind of Greek philosophy idea about Sisyphus, who’s pushing that boulder up the hill. And his punishment when he gets to the top is that he goes down and he does it again on repeat. And that was like how he was punished. He had to push this boulder up a hill, and he had to just do that in perpetuity. I think if we’re not careful, a lot of us are doing that. A lot of us are living that day in, day out, where we’re pushing this boulder up a hill just to turn around and have to do it all over again. It’s by design. I don’t think, again, this happens by chance.

If you said, you start your day and all of a sudden you notice, “Okay, here I’m in this place of overwhelm, or it’s gotten really noisy, or I’ve done back-to-back-to-back meetings that I haven’t even stopped to get a glass of water or to stretch my legs.” Again, we have to revisit how we’re building our day by design.

For example, I build in breaks, right? You want to build in breaks. And those are not negotiable, right? Any time I tried to negotiate with myself for my five-minute break in between two meetings, I identify that as red flag behavior, right? That’s behavior that’s going to get me farther away from my goal. That’s not behavior that’s going to get me closer to my goal. We design it so that inevitable overwhelm is actually preventable.

[0:19:54] PF: Tell me how you do that throughout the day to have these stops built in to notice when your body or your mind is going into that place that’s going to kind of eradicate the hope that you earlier had? How do you get that back in the right trajectory?

[0:20:13] RHD: Yeah. I think it comes down to clarity, Paula. I think we need to have clarity in terms of, again, by design, what are the top three things that I need to accomplish professionally today? Now there might be a hundred things on that to-do list, but it’s the clarity of knowing which ones are the most important.

And I make sure each day, when I start, if it’s going to be a workday, that I know exactly what those three priorities are that I’m going to get accomplished. And then I’m going to have a very clear finish line. Because imagine right now, all of us are running a race. We have no idea how long it is. We have no idea if this is an ultramarathon, or if we’re running through the Grand Canyon, or if we have no idea. We just keep going and going and going. And often what happens is then we get sick. And that’s our body basically saying, “Hey, I need a pause. I need a rest.” And there’s that kind of example where they say if you don’t pick a day, your body will pick one for you.

[0:21:12] PF: Oh, yeah.

[0:21:12] RHD: Right? We want to get a bit proactive about how we’re doing that. Having clarity that these are the three things that I need to get done. And again, when possible, having that time on task or what we talk about as bunker work, where it’s like no notifications, no email checking, no interruptions. And I make sure before I open myself up to other people’s agenda for me, I got those three things finished.

And then the rest of the day feels a wee bit more flexible, right? We’re more adaptive. We have more spaciousness because we already know that we’ve got the good stuff done. Versus many of us use our email as an agenda, right? And we just go from one item to the next. And then when that finally maybe gets caught up, then we try to do our work. But the invitation is to flip it over. Because if we could use that really good rested energy, that well-caffeinated cell first thing in the morning, we’ll be able to do our work with less errors, with more ease, and then we feel pretty fantastic going into the afternoon noticing that we’ve already accomplished what we set out to do today. The rest is now just bonus.

[0:22:16] PF: Oh, what a great way to move through the day.

[0:22:18] RHD: Yeah.

[0:22:20] PF: For people out there who are feeling a sense of hopelessness in general, where we are headed as a society, where we are right now, there is like a heaviness right now that we’re experiencing. How do we use these same principles to work on something that is so much bigger than us?

[0:22:43] RHD: Yeah, you’re asking such an important question, and I don’t want to minimize the heaviness and the difficulty that people are experiencing right now because it is actually really scary. It is a scary season. It is scary times. It’s dark times. When we look back on this, this will not be, “They did it really well in 2025.” This will be a moment in history where people are going to look back and they’re going to study this.

And so, again, I don’t want to minimize just this idea like, “Oh, it’s not that big deal. Choose to be hope-filled.” It’s not about that. We hold space. And first and foremost, we acknowledge the truth. We acknowledge that this is scary, but we want to acknowledge it in such a way that we don’t become paralyzed to do anything about it. I think we want to be informed, but not overwhelmed, right? We want to make sure that we are informed, that we are showing up for one another, but not at the cost of our well-being.

How to do that is that we want to make sure that we have trusted sources for taking in information, right? We don’t want this to be playing tourism as we go through different media sources and different accounts on social media. We’re not social tourists right now taking information from all these different places and spaces. You want to have a very curated brain trust of, “This is where I get my information from. It’s reliable, it’s valid.” So that way we know we’re informed.

And then we want to make sure that we’re doing what is within our control, where we have agency. There’s going to be some things, Paula, that are within our control. There’s going to be a lot of things that might be somewhat within our control. And there’s going to be things that are absolutely outside of our control. There is literally nothing that you can do that is going to change influence or have any factor involved in it. And for those things where we can’t do anything about it, that’s where it comes down to surrendering. And not that we give into bad behavior, but we trust that very well-intended, well-educated, well-supported people are going to be the ones that are going to be able to have those positive change.

And what is somewhat within our control is how we support those people, right? How we show up for those people, how we elevate those people’s voices. What’s within our control is how we looked after our loved ones, how we looked after our loved ones, how we show up for our loved ones. Because we want to make sure, especially our littles, that they’re getting age-appropriate information in what’s going on right now. Because we don’t want to essentially traumatize the next group of littles because we don’t know how to put some guardrails around the information that they’re being exposed to.

[0:25:28] PF: That’s excellent advice. And at what point does someone know that they might need to get help with this? That they can’t manage all these emotions on their own?

[0:25:41] RHD: My rule of thumb, I have used this for years and years as somebody who used to do therapy in terms of with patients. Now I do a little bit more coaching. I’ve shifted my model in terms of what I do. But what I tell people is to trust yourself. Listen. Because that intuitive voice, that part of you that wants you to be safe, that wants you to feel well-resourced, that wants you to be okay, you know when you need help.

And I think so often people put a lot of energy on these external factors, you know. And one of the things that we also know about this, Paula, is that the greatest driver of someone’s change behavior is when they get tired of their own nonsense, right? Nothing will change behavior faster than getting tired of your own nonsense. And if it doesn’t motivate you to change it, it’s still serving a purpose.

Again, trusting our intuition. Again, asking yourself, like, “Is this something that I can handle? Is this taking up way too much time, way too much energy? Is this impacting my relationships? Is this allowing me to live value-aligned and locked in?” And I believe people are their own experts. We know when we’re off base. We know when we need some support. And then the question then becomes, “What are the conditions that we can set up around ourselves and each other that it’s okay to ask for help?

[0:27:00] PF: That’s great. We’re going to tell our listeners where they can find you, find your books, find more about you. You have so much to offer, your podcast. There’s a lot to dig into with you. But for right now, anyone listening right now, sitting in their car driving to work, what’s something they can do right now to start building that muscle of hope?

[0:27:20] RHD: My gentle invitation is to slow down. It’s a lot easier to catch a moment, to be able to see the good around, to be able to trust that we’re going to be okay if we just slow down. And right now, there’s this false sense of urgency that we are hurry, hurry, go, go, go, hustle, achieve, perform. But my gentle invitation is just take a moment to slow down because it’s all around us.

And I love how Einstein actually said, “We either need to accept that everything’s a miracle or nothing is a miracle.” And when we slow down and we see all of it, even in moments of despair and even in dark seasons, there are still moments of good. And that is a through line of the human experience that’s never going to break.

[0:28:07] PF: Love it. As always, you have a terrific insight to share. Thank you for taking this time to sit down with me and share just a tiny bit of your expertise with us. And look forward to talking with you again.

[0:28:21] RHD: Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Paula.

[0:28:26] PF: That was Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe talking about hope. If you’d like to learn more about Robyne, listen to her podcast, discover her books, or follow her on social media. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why hope is biologically and psychologically beneficial. (Hello, hope molecules!)
How to design your day to support resilience and emotional well-being.
The difference between hope and optimism — and why it matters.

Check out Dr. Robyne’s podcasts.

Visit Dr. Robyne’s website here.

Discover Dr. Robyne’s latest book, Stress Wisely: How to Be Well in an Unwell World.

Follow Dr. Robyne on Social Media:

Instagram: @dr_robynehd
LinkedIn: drrobynehd
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_robynehd

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