hope: It's all about how we perceive situations
Hope is acheived by having a change in mindset, an alternative way of viewing events. In part it's due to the self-deceiving tactic of rationalization, "the use of feeble but seemingly plausible arguments either to justify something that is difficult to accept or to make it seem ‘not so bad after all'" (Burton). It is the ability to recognize the positive in a seemingly overwhelmingly hopeless situation and to focus all time and energy on exploiting it. Finding meaning in a traumatic situation can lead to a shift in perspective and can end up being beneficial because it builds hope. From there, it is a domino effect, as more hope and motivation forms as a result of existing hope.
Ms. Gioia on Humans' Resiliency of Negative Situations
survival 101: find meaning
Unwanted situations are where individuals tend to put into effect ego defense mechanisms (coping methods). When dicussing how the human utilizes these methods to combat anxiety from a stressful and uncomfortable situation, rationalization and intellectualization are most closely related to the production of hope. Intellectualization involves an individual thinking "away an emotion or reaction" that he or she does not "enjoy feeling"; similarly, rationalization includes the rejection of undesired feelings through attaching some sort of positive aspect to them to make it bearable (Whitbourne).
The continued implementation of these two tactics are, in essense, having hope. To hope is "to want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true," so it is this notion that an individual wishes the opposite of a current situation is the true reality. In doing this, even the smallest possibility of that alternate reality being true can fuel this hope. Hopeless situations ask of the individual to, by all means necessary, pursue a false reality in favor of said individual's comfort.