Pictures: How One Word Became My Hope Habit

A few months ago, I turned 60.  Somewhere in the months leading up to that milestone, I made a decision — not a resolution, not a vague intention, but a real, committed decision — to give myself a gift, and my family too.

That decision became the most challenging and rewarding personal journey of my life.

I’m not going to go deep into the details of what prompted it. Let’s just say a doctor’s visit made some things very clear. What I want to share is what I learned about hope along the way — because it surprised me, and I think it might surprise you too.

Hope Is Not a Feeling

I used to think of hope as something that either showed up or it didn’t. A mood. A disposition. Something the optimists had in abundance and the rest of us had to wait for.

I learned I had it all wrong.

What I discovered — through months of hard work, early mornings, and more than a few moments of wanting to quit — is that hope is something you do. It’s a practice. A habit. A series of small actions, taken consistently, in the direction of something that matters deeply to you.

That’s not just my experience. It’s backed by research. Psychologist C.R. Snyder’s Hope Theory describes hope as having two engines: agency (the belief that you can move forward) and pathways (the ability to find or create a route when the obvious one is blocked). Neither of those is passive. Both require action.

Hope, it turns out, is a verb.

The Keyword That Changed Everything

Here’s where the Agile Best Self principles came alive for me in a deeply personal way.

Early in my journey, I needed something to anchor me in the hard moments. Not a motivational poster. Not a complicated system. Something I could access instantly — at 5am when the alarm went off and every part of me wanted to stay in bed. Something that could reset my mind in seconds.

I landed on a single word: Pictures.

Here’s what that word means to me. I have a lot of life still ahead — kids graduating, getting married, building families of their own. Retirements. Milestones I can barely imagine yet. And every one of those moments will be captured in photographs that will outlive me.

What will my kids tell their grandchildren when they look at those pictures? What story will my presence — or absence, or health — tell across generations?

That’s not vanity. That’s legacy. And in my weakest moments, that single word “Pictures” could cut through all the noise and reconnect me to my deepest why.

The Principles in Action

Looking back, I can see how the Agile Best Self principles were quietly at work throughout this journey.

Principle 1 — Our highest priority is to be our best self and enable others to be their best selves. The gift I was giving myself was also a gift to my family. Being my best self and enabling others are not separate things. They are the same act.

Principle 3 — Build daily self-care habits. There is no shortcut here. The habit is the hope. Each small daily action was a vote for the future I wanted. Not a grand gesture — just a consistent, repeatable practice, one day at a time.

Principle 7 — Investing time in yourself is the primary measure of progress. The scale matters less than the investment. Every morning I showed up for myself was a win, regardless of what the numbers said that day.

Principle 12 — At regular intervals, reflect on how to become your best self, then tune and adjust behavior to be in alignment. This one kept me honest. When something wasn’t working, I didn’t quit — I adjusted. The intention stayed constant. The approach evolved.

Your Pictures

Here’s my invitation to you.

What are your pictures? What future moments are you hoping toward — not just wishing for, but actively moving toward with small, consistent steps?

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just need a keyword. A single word or image that, in your hardest moment, reconnects you to your biggest why.

Find that word. Write it down. Return to it.

That’s where the hope habit starts.

Copyright © 2018 – 2026 Michaele Gardner and Brian Hackerson