Power Play: Great hope makes great men

Thomas Fuller, a prolific English author from the 1600s, is a big fan of hope and he wrote the line: “Great hope makes great men.”

Power Players have hope all the time. And especially in terrible times when all they want to do is jack-knife off a balcony. Why? Because this is when hope is most needed.

Hope is a little bit like faith. Most of the time there is absolutely no reason to have hope and most regular people would need the data and the evidence in order to be hopeful.

I met a young trader called Mitchell and he reminded me of something I had forgotten: having hope is required in order to be powerful. It’s because it means you’ve got some extra goodwill on your side and just having that additional momentum is sometimes enough to have things go your way.

It’s also quite a beautiful quality to have because it flies in the face of cynicism and despair. Hope is the line between powerless and powerful. Have some: you might find you like it.