This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, today we're talking to a renowned psychologist who has come up with five strategies for cultivating hope.

It's our second episode on hope this week.

And just to be clear, we're talking

about hope not as a gauzy cliche or a state of complacent optimism, but instead as a trainable

and extremely useful mental skill. If you missed it, go check out Monday's episode with Jonathan Van Ness

from the Netflix show Queer Eye.

He's an amazing character.

The interview is profane and hilarious and also very moving.

Highly recommend it.

I should say these two episodes mark the second week of our month-long mental health reboot series.

As you may know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month,

and so every week this month, we're bringing you a pair of episodes on a specific theme related to mental health and well-being.

Last week was all about sleep. This week, Hope.

Today's guest says, and I'm quoting here, that hope is rooted in data, not fantasy.

Her name is Jacqueline Mattis, and she's a clinical psychologist from Rutgers University, where she's also a dean of faculty. As you're going to hear, she did not start her

career planning to study the subject of hope. She started out studying spirituality and religiosity,

specifically doing a lot of field work and interviews in African American and Afro-Caribbean

urban communities. She wanted to know why people living under high-stress conditions so often

choose to be good and compassionate. And it was that research that ultimately led her to hope.

In this conversation, we talk about how her family history influenced her relationship to

...