“I just try to get 10 percent improvement,” he said. “When couples get that 10 percent improvement, they get hope. And when someone gets hope, anything is possible.”

It’s an amazing thought. When a struggling individual gets just a 10 percent boost in hope, almost anything becomes possible. I looked back over my life and realized that I’ve seen a 10 percent rise in hope transform horrendous situations into amazingly great ones.

Hope is so potent that you don’t need to get 50 percent more hopeful, or 40 percent, or even 25 percent. Just 10 percent more hope is enough to launch you into a new and better orbit.

That makes hope the highest-octane fuel in the universe.

• When you get 10 percent improvement, you get a higher Hope Quotient. And when your HQ is high, anything’s possible. Hope is the beginning of everything.
• When people become more hopeful about their health, they start on the path to getting in shape.
• When people get hopeful about breaking bad habits, they start winning battles they haven’t won before.
• When people become more hopeful about their kids, they find new energy to invest in those kids.
• When people get hope in their marriages, they start making better decisions.
• When people become more hopeful about their financial future, they begin to develop the patterns that lead to financial freedom.
• When people become more hopeful about their future, hope is the match that lights the fuse that sends them back to school or helps them apply for a new job or helps them grow and develop.
• When people become more hopeful that they could actually connect with God, it fuels the kind of actions that lead them to spiritual vitality and health.

Hope is the most important factor, because when you have hope, anything is possible. I’m convinced that any great thing that ever happens in your life, in your family, in your marriage, in your community, in your country, and in your world happens because someone has achieved a higher hope level.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about the four things that hope does that nothing else can do.

YOUR HQ BOOSTER

Hope is the most important factor, because when you have hope, anything is possible.

The post The 10 Percent Solution appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Over the course of my four-hour interview, it seemed that Louie’s life story could be described with three words: it gets worse.

Louie ran in the 1936 Olympic Games, but his hopes for future Olympic glory were derailed by World War II. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, but in May 1943, his bomber crashed into the Pacific.

Louie survived. Then things got worse.

For more than a month, with no food or water, Louie and the two other survivors drifted on a pair of canvas rafts before hitting land. They were near death when they were captured.

That’s where the real nightmare began.

Torture, hours of beatings, raging thirst, emaciation, maggots, mosquitoes, rats, humiliation, loneliness, interrogations, experimentations—a total loss of dignity.

And then it got worse—just when it looked like it was getting better.

Louie’s prison camp was liberated. He came home to the embrace of his family and a hero’s welcome. Louie was a celebrity, but inside he was a mess. Haunted by nightmares, he turned to alcohol for relief. As Louie told me, “Nobody back then had ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

For the first five years of his post-POW life, homicidal hatred toward his captors consumed him. Nothing in him could prevent his free fall into despair.

Yet Louis Zamperini didn’t slide into the abyss. What stopped him? His answer, in a word was, hope. Louie’s wife, in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, dragged him to a Billy Graham crusade.

Over the course of two nights, Louie encountered Jesus and everything changed. After the second night, Louie told me he went home and walked over to the liquor cabinet and threw all the bottles into the trash. He hasn’t had a drink of alcohol ever since. That night, for the first time since his liberation, the nightmares didn’t come, replaced instead by peace that passes understanding.

Infused with a new energy—he founded a boys’ camp, embarked on a worldwide speaking tour, carried the Olympic torch at five different Games, regularly ran a six-minute mile in his sixties, began skateboarding in his seventies, and in his nineties was still climbing trees that needed pruning.

I walked out of Louie’s house with a profound appreciation for the power of hope. It was hope that liberated Louie from discouragement, despair, and potential suicide. It was hope that kept him alive in a concentration camp. It was hope that replaced hatred with forgiveness. It was hope that, during the worst circumstances imaginable, allowed him to remain “unbroken.” And it is that kind of fresh hope that continues to make Louis Zamperini one of the most delightful, fun, joyful, and resilient people on the planet.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about a remarkable conversation I had with a psychologist on the transforming power of hope.

YOUR HQ BOOSTER

Even in the worst circumstances, hope gives you power not only to survive—but to thrive.

The post The Greatest Single Human Being I Have Ever Met appeared first on Hope Quotient.