Believe enough in better outcomes to build conditions that support them.

Believing a good outcome is possible is only useful if it leads you to build the conditions where it could happen. Outcomes arrive out of arrangements: relationships, skills, resources, position. Optimism that stops at expectation leaves the arrangements unbuilt.

Ask what would need to be in place for the thing you hope for to occur, and build one piece of it this month. Treat the hope as a specification rather than a wish. That is how expectation turns into likelihood.