Hope springs eternal. I'm sure you've all heard the saying. But have you ever stopped to think about what hope really is? In his book, "The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get Here from There", C.R. Snyder did just that. But you didn't come here looking for hope, you came looking for information about camping and getting your family outdoors, so you're probably wondering (with all due apologies to Tina Turner), what's hope got to do with it? Well, quite a bit actually.

As I've been catching up on all of the other outdoor related blogs I visit, I noticed that almost everyone is talking more about their excitement for the upcoming season's trips and activities. As spring rolls in after a long winter its natural to get excited about getting back outside and camping, hiking, paddling, etc. Folks are checking out their gear, making repairs to or buying new equipment, mapping out trips, and trying to convince family members that camping really is fun! In our own excitement, we've even posted some of our camping goals for 2010 too. And that's where hope comes in.

Snyder defines hope as the sum of the mental waypower and willpower that we have towards our goals. Like all great concepts, this is one of those ideas that seems so simple and self-evident, yet powerful, that you can't believe you didn't think of it yourself. But in reality, it took a lot of effort by Snyder to come up with it and test it. And believe me, there has been a lot of testing of this concept. It has been shown to correlate positively with athletic success, academic success, mental and physical health, and most importantly for our purposes: goal attainment. Before we get to goals, lets define the other two components.

1. Waypower: your internal motivation to achieve your goals.
2. Willpower: your mental road map for how to achieve your goals.

People low in both of these will have low hope, and ultimately will not achieve their goals. Even if you are high in one of them, but not the other, you have less of a chance of success. Think about it, if you have a lot of motivation but can't think of how to get there, you're not going anywhere. Likewise, no matter how many action steps and plans you can come up with, if you don't have the basic motivation to get off the couch and get started, you'll never get there either.

Many of the family related outdoor blogs I visit discuss, at some time, a variation of the following topic: how do I get my kids/significant other to enjoy the outdoors as much as I do? Well, I don't know if you can ever get them to love it as much as you do, but you probably can get them to enjoy it.

 In his book, Snyder discusses strategies for increasing hope (specific to each of the individual concepts) for both adults and children. Over the course of the next week or so, I'm going to break down each of the components and talk about how you can use some of those strategies to help make this the most successful camping season ever for you and your family. I'll talk more about what each of them means and strategies for making better outdoor related goals and increasing your (or your family's) waypower and willpower towards those goals.

Author's note: I had the great pleasure of having Dr. Snyder as a professor when I was at the University of Kansas. I consider him to be one of my favorite, and more influential, teachers that I had at any academic level. On top of being just an amazing person, he did this through one particular assignment (what is your philosophy of the world, and based on this, how do you help people?) and through sharing this book with me. This book has been one of my favorites and I have read it countless times. I have used the concepts in it in my own life, in therapeutic settings with adults and children, organizational development, coaching youth sports, and with my own kids. Like Dr. Snyder, I think hope is a great gift to give. The book is now out of print, but you can still pick up used copies on Amazon.