© 2001, HOPE and Ken Hamilton, MD

A HOPE Group can be started anywhere. People who want to do something about their futures can be found in schools, hospitals, businesses, prisons, churches, and government. In virtually every group there are potential guides. We seek the intuitive, caring, concerned and thoughtful listener to whom others turn because s-he believes in them. This person must trust that the present and the future can make sense, and be willing to openly and confidently share that belief with others.

HOPE's work grew out of Ken Hamilton’s study of the experience of the entrepreneur and radio personality, Earl Nightingale. When he was twelve years old, Earl began a lifetime study of the essence of success. He and Lloyd Victor Conant founded the Nightingale-Conant Corporation in 1960 to disseminate this knowledge. Hamilton began his study of Earl’s work in 1975. He saw that these principles of success could benefit his surgical patients. From the outset, they were accepted and applied with wonderful effects. He knows that they contributed greatly to his successful surgical practise.

By the mid 1980’s, the psychological effects of this work led Hamilton to study counseling. He worked with a gifted psychiatrist, Barry Wood, MD. Through his tutor’s experience with alcoholism and cancer, he was introduced to Twelve-Step group work and the work of Bernie Siegel, MD. Siegel had developed very successful support groups in New Haven, CT, and had written an excellent book about them called, Love, Medicine and Miracles. Ken read this book and met Bernie at one of his Psychology of Illness and Art of Healing workshops.

Siegel spoke at length about his support groups, which called themselves Exceptional Cancer Patients groups. He disliked having to call people "patients" or label them with "cancer". He stated that he had wished to call the groups “HOPE” groups, but no one could figure out a good acronym for the letters. He believed that he was not to use the word unless he could develop the acronym. His belief was a gift, as we shall see.

One month after meeting Siegel, Hamilton encountered the “Attitudinal Healing” work of Jerry Jampolsky MD at another workshop and through reading Jerry’s Love is Letting Go of Fear. All of these experiences led Ken to see the potential for a support group in his own surgical practise, and a small, enthusiastic group of people joined him on February 12, 1987. They chose to call the group a HOPE Group, and, in response to Siegel’s challenge, created the acronym, Healing Of Persons Exceptional, at its second meeting! HOPE’s ideas have caught on, and now the people have come who will help develop and disseminate them.

We in HOPE have come to know that this unique work can be taught and it must be taught. Certain people who work in the field of education, counseling and health have joined HOPE to develop the methods of teaching these skills to others. Those we teach will then become guides for HOPE groups of their own. We have developed and implemented an effective training program. We plan to have the program accredited by one of our Maine colleges.

We believe that the majority of humans can come to the realization that all things can make sense. This is our simple message. It is complete with extremely effective methods for reaching its understanding. The methods have withstood the test of centuries of human experience, and they are summarized by Earl Nightingale in a gift that he gave to all those who knew him. He said: “I have three things for your success; a Formula, a Gold Mine, and a Word. The Formula is, ‘You become what you think about.’ The Gold Mine is ‘The Mind’, and the Word is ‘Attitude’.”

HOPE says that to replace fear with hope is the fundamental attitudinal shift that leads to health, which is basic to all of us… a universal birthright. This basic shift in our consciousness transforms us. HOPE groups facilitate the shift and the transformation. The experience is profound, healthy, happy, and joyful for all those who participate in HOPE’s group meetings.