Hope is one of our most extraordinary human capacities.
It allows us to sense possibility before we can fully see the path toward it.
To imagine that something new can emerge from the conditions we are in now.
And perhaps some of the deepest forms of hope are spacious enough to hold the full complexity of being human:
our grief and anger, our uncertainty and longing, our capacity for action,
and the moments when what we need most is to become still and listen.
Hope can be something we practice.
Something we create together.
Something that changes the way we meet the conditions in front of us — and the possibilities we are able to perceive within them.
My guest today is my longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Kari Grain, an educator, researcher and author at the University of British Columbia whose work explores critical hope, experiential education, and community engagement. She is the author of Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change. We co-wrote one of the chapters of her book about the neuroscience of Hope. So I hope you all get a chance to check it out.
In this conversation, Kari and I explore hope through the lenses of neuroscience, emotion, leadership, complexity and human change.
We talk about anger and grief, the power of small and repeated actions, what happens when the path we imagined is interrupted, and what water can teach us about adaptation, community, stillness and finding our way forward.
And ultimately, about how we continue to participate in creating what we hope is possible.
"one of the principles of critical hope is that anger and grief have a seat at the table"
-Dr. Kari Grain, Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change.
Hope and despair, anger, grief or uncertainty are often seen as contradictory or opposing feelings.
But our brain-body system is more complex than that.
We move through many different states. Some give us energy to move, confront an obstacle or take action. Others quiet us into reflection or withdrawal from taking any concrete action. Our attention turns inward. We stop trying to force an answer or immediately do something.
All of these are reflected in brain activity that can both serve us or keep us stuck.
We may need ALL of it.. to find our way forward.
Different states can give us access to different kinds of information and energy.
Hope - in many ways - is like having space enough for all of them.
From a neuroscience perspective, hope doesn't need to mean deleting or replacing an uncomfortable state with a more pleasant one.
I can think of no more potent combination to be feeling when you're trying to make a change than to be angry as hell about something and really to have that forward momentum that anger can give you - Dr. Kari Grain
It can look more like openness, agency and flexibility: our brain-body system being able to shift, adapt, and see different possibilities and paths forward.
Sometimes possibility looks like action.. sometimes it's quieter than that, a processing and integrating - not visible to others (or even ourselves)...
And sometimes it starts to emerge when we stop trying to know exactly what comes next.
This connects to something Dr. Kari Grain and I explored when we co-wrote a chapter on the neurobiology of critical hope: hope is closely connected to our ability to see possible pathways forward and to have some sense of agency within them.
Hope isn't a rose-colored glasses type of certainty that everything will work out.
And it can be helpful to believe in what Kari calls "relentless incrementalism"...
As she states, "we tend to think about change as these giant, heroic leaps forward when in reality it's, it's almost indiscernible sometimes on a daily basis. There's a quote I love about a river.. that it carves stone not by force but by showing up day after day until the earth remembers."
It is the capacity to let our different states have a seat at the table... all while remaining open to micro-moments of what becomes possible from here.
A conversation many years in the making
Kari and I first worked together many years ago in an organization serving immigrant and refugee youth and families. Years later, we brought our work together again to co-write the neuroscience chapter of her book, Critical Hope, exploring how the brain and nervous system shape our access to hope, agency and possibility.
(I love that we got to continue that conversation on the podcast.)
Dr. Kari Grain is an educator, researcher and author whose work explores critical hope, experiential education and community engagement. She is the author of Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change.
In this episode, we explore hope, the nervous system, agency, small acts of change — and what it means to keep participating in a future we cannot fully see yet.
Learn more about her work:
Her blog: https://karigrain.com/
Her UBC blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/karigrain/
For coaches, leaders and helping professionals:
Explore how to boost buy-in and gain new audiences and opportunities using the neuroscience behind "soft skills".
For coaches, leaders and helping professionals:
Explore how to boost buy-in and gain new audiences and opportunities using the neuroscience behind "soft skills".
And.. for high-touch, high-support, community experience:
THE SUPER-REGULATORS NEUROSCIENCE ACADEMY.
Become more sought after for the work you are here to do..
What happens when neuroscience meets an idea you already believe in?
One of the things I love about my work with Kari is that critical hope was already her work.
She had spent years studying it, teaching it and writing about it.. what we explored was how the brain and nervous system could help us see inside her idea more deeply.
- What might be happening biologically when we can hold complexity without collapsing into certainty?
- How might different nervous system states give us access to different kinds of information, energy and possibility?
- What does the science of agency, prediction and adaptation add to a conversation about hope?
Kari has told me that when she presents her work, the slides exploring the neuroscience of critical hope are often among the ones news outlets highlight.. and the ones that spark deeper conversation.
That is exactly what I want to help people do inside the Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy.
We integrate neuroscience to support ideas, wisdom or frameworks you've spent years developing. We explore the biological mechanisms that may help explain why your ideas and work matters.
And sometimes, that gives other people an entirely new doorway into an idea you've been trying to communicate .
If you've ever wondered what the neuroscience might reveal inside your own work, that's what I want us to explore together.
On-Demand Academy: $497
Live Group Experiential 6-week program: $997
EXPLORE THE SUPER-REGULATORS™ NEUROSCIENCE ACADEMY →
