Hope Is Not a Feeling: It’s a Practice Worth Building
- Copyright
- A Note to the Reader
Hope Is Not a Feeling: It's a Practice Worth Building
This book is 33% completeLast updated on 2026-06-11
Anyone who has tried to find more hope and run out of ideas that actually hold. You don't need a particular faith tradition, a certain personality type, or a life that's going well. You need to be willing to do the work of building toward something.
Minimum price
$7.99
$20.00
You pay
Author earns
PDF
EPUB
About
About the Book
Most people think hope is a feeling. You wait for it, and when life gets better, it shows up. I have learned this definition is not quite right, and that had a personal cost.
Hope is a practice. It can be built deliberately, maintained under pressure, and recovered when it goes missing. That's what this book is about.
I spent decades waiting for hope to arrive on its own terms. It didn't. What changed wasn't my circumstances — it was a February 2025 doctor's visit, a set of lab numbers I couldn't ignore, and a decision on the drive home to stop waiting and start building. Part One covers the foundation: what hope actually is, what gets in the way of it, and how the physical practices of sleep, exercise, nutrition, and connection directly shape the brain's capacity to sustain it.
This is not a motivational book. It doesn't ask you to think positively or believe harder. It asks you to build the system that makes hope structurally available, even when life is working against you.
**This is a living book.** Part One is complete. Parts Two and Three are in progress. Everyone who buys now gets every future update at no additional cost. It's the right model for a book built around the idea that iteration produces better outcomes than waiting for perfect.
Feedback
Author
About the Author
Brian Hackerson
Brian Hackerson is an IT consultant, Agile practitioner, and co-creator of the Agile Best Self mindset — a framework for applying the principles of continuous improvement to personal growth. He has spent more than two decades helping organizations build better ways of working, and the last several years building a better version of himself.
Hope Is Not a Feeling is the book that emerged from that work. It started with a doctor's visit in February 2025, a set of lab numbers Brian couldn't ignore, and a decision on the drive home to stop waiting for things to get better and start building the conditions that make better possible. What followed was a year of deliberate practice — in the gym, in the kitchen, in the quiet before the day started — grounded in research on hope, neuroscience, and behavior change, and tested against real life.
Brian lives in Minnesota with his wife Debby and their two cats. He writes and speaks on hope, resilience, and the daily practice of becoming.
Contents
Table of Contents
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $15 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.