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This is the first of a two-part blog by guest author Daniel Wilsher, Founder of LivedX.
There is a truth I come back to time and time again when I’m working in schools: you can’t expect a young person to thrive in the system if they’ve stopped believing the system has anything good in store for them. We ask so much of our young people, to turn up, to behave, to achieve, to make the right choices and yet for so many of them, especially those who’ve become disengaged from traditional learning, the tank is running on empty.
In my experience, they are rarely lacking ability. What they are lacking is hope.
One of the most important lessons I have learned after speaking to tens of thousands of young people across the country is that hope is not just a fluffy or intangible feel-good idea that you can’t put your finger on. It is teachable. It is buildable, and when we get it right, it changes absolutely everything.
One young person I met recently reminded me of exactly that.
The power of hope to shift identity and behaviour
Not too long ago I was getting set up in the staff room of a school first thing in the morning and before I’d even had my coffee, three different members of staff came over to give me the heads up about one particular Year 8 boy who would be present in my workshop that day. They said I might find him tough because of the behaviour he was presenting around school and that he was on the verge of suspension. However, most importantly they also told me he was a brilliant young man with a big heart who was just a little lost at the moment.
It was a lads-only session that day and as each one walked through the door, I shook their hand, looked them in the eye and welcomed them in with a smile. I had some music playing in the background and gave them five minutes to settle, just to chat before we got going. I used that time to start building a relationship with this particular lad from the very outset and to find out a bit more about who he actually was.
The session itself was all about understanding who we are, connecting to ourselves and to our future by getting clear on our values and the person we want to become. From the start I made a point of praising him, giving him little bits of responsibility, like jobs to do in the room. He engaged brilliantly. He became the most vocal, the most switched on and I kept holding his answers up to the rest of the group as the example, by saying things such as, “This is what brilliant looks like.”
Then we hit a moment midway through where I asked the lads to write down twenty things they love about themselves. He suddenly got up and walked out.
I followed him and I could see he wasn’t himself. So, I gently asked, “Can I have a guess at why that’s hard? Is it tough to think of twenty things you like about yourself?” He looked at me and said, “No, it’s not that. I just can’t remember the last time anyone complimented me. It feels really, really nice” and wiped his eyes as he said it.
I spent the next ten minutes with him, doing nothing more than shining a light on the brilliance and the magic that was already in him, helping him see his own strengths, helping him connect to himself and to the future he could build.
For the next three days running, that same lad which the teachers had warned me about, messaged me to tell me that he hadn’t been shouted at, hadn’t been kicked out and hadn’t been in a scrap of trouble, and how proud he was of himself for it. It’s a moment I genuinely won’t forget.
Even now whenever I’m back in that school, even when I’m not working with his year group, he will come and find me to tell me what he is working on and how he is feeling. Because when we help a young person who feels lost find a sense of direction and help them see the strong, beautiful parts of themselves, we shift their identity and help to shift behaviour.
So, what is hope, really?
The example above was not brought about by chance but is underpinned by psychology. Back in the 1990s, a researcher called Charles Snyder developed what’s known as Hope Theory, which has reshaped how I think about every single young person I work with. Snyder argued that hopeful people aren’t just optimists crossing their fingers. Hopeful people are those who can set meaningful goals, find pathways to reach them and crucially believe in their own ability to get there.
What Snyder showed is that hope rests on three things working together. First, a young person needs goals that are genuinely worth moving towards. Second, they need to be able to see the routes to get there, the strategies and the practical steps. Thirdly and most crucially, they need to believe in their own ability to actually set off and walk those routes.
Take any one of those away and hope starts to crumble. A young person with big dreams but no visible path forward soon gets frustrated and gives up. A young person who can see the path but doesn’t believe in themselves never takes the first step.
The research is clear – hope can be taught and built. Higher hope scores predict better academic achievement and better attendance. In children, hope is strongly linked to self-esteem, social competence and emotional adjustment. In young people facing real adversity and disadvantage, building hope genuinely softens the blow of that adversity and helps them keep going when things get hard. Hope, in other words, isn’t a nice to have. It’s one of the most protective things we can instil in a child.
Part 2 of this blog will be published soon and will explore how the language that young people hear about themselves is essential for building the self and re-engaging those who have drifted furthest.
