Hope is a broad word. It gets tossed around in superhero movies, college advising offices, holiday commercials, lottery ads, email signatures, and hallmark cards.

But hope is just a word — just like love, or calling something beautiful or amazing — it can be full of meaning or blissfully empty. The power of hope comes not in saying it, but what follows.

You can hope you’ll live a long life, but there are things you can do today for your own health and wellbeing. You can hope to have a meaningful career, but there are decisions you’ll have to make to stop or start doing things you find valuable. You can hope your relationships grow deeper, but what are you doing to care for and learn about the ones you love?

Hope is powerful, and yet it has a shadow side — a way to just inflate a topic and then back away from the challenges necessary for meaningful change.

Hope needs action. And action needs hope.

PS: This week's full issue of Wednesday Words was packed with helpful resources to move from hope to action. Subscribe to future issues at: https://bit.ly/wednesdaywords