When you’re young, you have lots of wishes. 

And as you get older, a couple of those wishes move to hope.  Hope is that wish plus a belief it’s possible.

Just about all of us have a hope living in our head.

And then we get stuck. 

Why?

Because taking the leap from hope to action is often snarled in a giant, internal pause we fill with reasons – or let’s be real, excuses – why we can’t move off the hope “x.”

The business you'd start if the timing worked. The decision to retire, or change jobs, or ask for a promotion if only this one project was done or my bank account had a little more padding.  The book you'd write if you had six clear months. The move you'd make if you were sure it wouldn't blow everything up.

You run that hope in your head, quietly, on a loop. You test it against every objection you can think of before anyone else gets the chance to raise one. You wait until you have the plan, the numbers, the guarantee — and then, only then, maybe you'll say that hope out loud.

This cost to this silent loop in which we keep ourselves – the “hope loop” – does one thing: it keeps the hope lonely and, well, just a hope. 

When we share a hope with someone, we do two things: first, we are no longer the only one holding it; and second, someone else can help us be accountable to move to action.

When we keep our hopes inside our heads – silent – we stay safely behind the risk wall.  The risk that someone will tell us it won’t work; the risk of having someone watch us fail; the risk of challenging the enormous self-doubt. 

But staying behind the risk wall also means the hope will never become real.

Hope turns into action when it’s shared.

When we say out loud to another: I have this idea or goal or dream or ambition or plan or whatever it is – we are giving someone else a chance to stand with us in that hope.  It’s not about having all the answers on how to make it happen; it’s about having someone else recognize this hope and help you be accountable to making it happen.

That’s where action starts. 

That's how hope survives long enough to become anything at all.

What hope are you holding?  And who could you tell, if you stopped waiting until you were sure what to do next?