It's early on a Monday morning, still dark, and I've been thinking about two words people use as though they mean the same thing.
Hope. Faith.
Both sound good. Both sound like something you'd want. If you asked most people whether they'd like more of either, they'd say yes to both without a second thought. But they aren't the same, and the difference between them has shaped my life more than almost any other distinction I know.
What is the difference between hope and faith?
Hope is a positive expectation about a future you aren't sure of. Faith is a settled knowing about an outcome or an idea, not necessarily religious. Hope makes a hard situation bearable. Faith gives you the conviction to climb through it. Hope says maybe. Faith says this is already so, and acts like it.
Neither is better in every moment. But if you've been living on hope for a long time and nothing has moved, it's worth knowing which one you've been running on.
What does hope actually do for us?
Hope is a gift, and I don't want to undersell it.
When someone's in pain, hope can be the thread that holds them. The belief that it will stop someday, that things can get better, makes the present bearable. I know this from the inside. There was a time in my life when I had lost almost everything, when I considered myself a failure and blamed the world for it. And then, despite all of it, hope came from nowhere. That small, unreasonable hope kept me going long enough for my life to change.
What I did with that hope is what made the difference. I didn't sit with it and wait. I gathered what little I had and took one more step, and then another. The hope got me to the door. Something else walked me through it.
So hope matters. It's often the first light. But hope on its own has a limit. It's an optimistic attitude toward a future you don't control. It comforts. It rarely commits.
Are there different kinds of hope?
Yes, two, and one of them we're better off without.
All hope feels positive on the surface. It lets us picture the outcome we want, and that picture brings a bit of comfort. But look at what happens next.
The first kind of hope pictures things turning out well and then waits. Waits for the economy, the partner, the boss, the lucky break, someone else to make it happen. This hope feels pleasant, but it quietly makes you passive. Years can go by in it. It's one of the most comfortable ways there is to stay stuck.
The second kind of hope pictures things turning out well and then takes it upon itself to move toward them. It gets you into action. And if you follow it through, you discover something that changes you: it was always up to you. The door was yours to open.
Think of a door you keep almost opening. Every time you walk away, the hinges rust a little more. The first kind of hope stands in front of that door for years, hoping it opens by itself. The second kind reaches for the handle.
Why does faith move mountains when hope doesn't?
Because faith doesn't wait.
Faith, in the sense I mean, is an unwavering belief in something. When you have faith in an outcome, you don't need the evidence first. You behave as if it's already on its way, and that behaviour is what brings it. Faith gives you motivation that doesn't run out, trust, conviction, energy, devotion. It gives you congruence: all of you pointing the same direction.
I've been fortunate to work with people at the very top of their fields, among them billionaires. Not one of them ever told me they spent their days sitting and hoping their life would turn around someday. They had hope, certainly. But more than that, they had faith in something, and they worked on their belief in themselves, and they did what had to be done.
That isn't a story about money. The same thing is true of every person I've watched change their life in any direction: a relationship healed, a pattern ended, a calling finally answered. At some point hope turned into faith, and faith turned into movement. You can read some of those stories on our stories page.
Could I have faith and not know it?
Almost certainly. Everyone has faith. The question is what it's in.
Here's the strange part. Some people say they don't have faith in anything, and yet they believe, with total conviction, that they'll never be good enough, that nothing works out for them, that people always leave. They live that belief so fully that they are, in a sense, deeply faithful. Just to the wrong thing.
That's what I mean when I say: don't be the person who places their faith against themselves. Don't bet on anything less than your own success. It's the same misplaced faith that sits underneath so much fear of failure. The verdict feels like realism. It's actually a creed, and it was handed to you before you were old enough to question it.
Where is my faith really placed?
Try this now. It takes about two minutes, and you'll need to be willing to hear the answer.
Think of something you want and haven't yet gone for. Then finish this sentence out loud or in writing, as quickly as you can, without thinking: deep down, I believe that if I try this, what will happen is
Whatever came after those words is your faith. Not your hope, your faith. The thing you're actually certain of.
If it came out as something like, it'll work out, then your faith is on your side. If it came out as, I'll fail, or they'll laugh, or it won't last, notice that. You've just found where your faith has been placed. Notice, too, how quickly it arrived. Faith is always fast. It doesn't need to think.
Don't argue with it right now. Just see it clearly. Seeing is the first step to moving it.
Then try the sentence once more, slowly, and this time notice your body as you say it. A misplaced faith usually sits somewhere physical, a heaviness, a flinch, a tightening in the throat. That sensation is where the old verdict is stored, and it's the part that has to be released for your faith to move.
How do I place my faith in myself?
By remembering something that's already true.
You were born successful. Against extraordinary odds, you arrived, and you won just by being here. Take it easy with your definitions of success, and start from that fact instead. You already have the inner resources to create the experiences and the life you want. The old verdicts that say otherwise weren't yours. They were learned, and what was learned can come off.
That's the heart of what I've written about in my book, Unbecome. Faith in yourself isn't something you pump up with affirmations. It's what's left when you remove everything that was betting against you. And it's the reason people really can change, sometimes far faster than they hoped.
For what it's worth, I have faith in you. Which means you could have it too, and more than I ever could.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.