Do you remember the anticipation leading to summer holidays as a kid? Or what about Christmas? The Anticipation for it lasted way longer than the actual event. The event came and went and you felt like you hardly blinked. Back then we knew how to anticipate and enjoy the build up for exciting things in our lives.
Recently my husband and I were out for a walk and we realized that when COVID-19 happened, all anticipation for upcoming events was taken away from us. Suddenly the world was on hold. We realized that having nothing to look forward to was no fun. We decided we needed to add some “anticipation” back into our lives.
Appreciating Anticipation
The appreciation for anticipation was a discovery for us a few years ago. I think we ended up on a trip that we were too busy to plan and get excited about. Before we knew it the trip had come and gone and we realized by not enjoying the build up we took away all the conversations and excitement leading up to the event. Whatever it was, we decided that we didn’t want to do that anymore. Sure we had our holiday, but we wanted to extend the event by enjoying the planning, preparation, research and ANTICIPATION for our upcoming adventure.
How can you enjoy the build up when there is nothing on your calendar?
When we arrived on our current posting we purchased a rolling 12 month calendar. My husband had a lot of travel with work, and we were in a new country, we wanted to see and do as much as we could. We also knew that others would want to come and visit us in our new place. In order to coordinate all of this effectively, we set up our rolling calendar. We wanted to see what was coming up and plan our lives accordingly. Many of our supper conversations centred around what our next adventure would be, or where we would take our next visitors. We very quickly got used to that tempo and loved the anticipation leading up to events.
Anticipation extends the event.
It makes it longer than a one week spring break, or the 4 day Thanksgiving long weekend. Anticipation is enjoying the build up and the waiting. If the event isn’t as amazing as you had envisioned in your mind…well, you did still get to enjoy the preparation. So it wasn’t a total bust. But, we have found that the build up prepared us to find all the good things we could do and see and experience so we didn’t miss anything!
And then… COVID-19
In March when all future plans got put on hold we did exactly that. We waited to see what would happen like the rest of the world. Eventually we had to start wiping events off of our 12 month calendar. Now we are over 3 months in and we started having this conversation about the joy of anticipation. Previously, we had the discussion in our family about the overlap of our ideal holidays that we learned from Brene Brown and I talked about in Episode 8, The Transformative Power of Creativity and Play – Part 2. When we did that exercise we realized that we love taking a cruise together. Personally I was hoping for a cheaper overlap in our holiday needs, but that didn’t happen! Just talking about what we all loved about being on a cruise together brought us closer and we all started getting excited. However, do we really want to plan a cruise now? When we don’t know when the world will open back up? In the words of our 12 year old, “I love the cruise, but I do not want to be stuck on a boat for more than a week!” We completely understood his concerns but we both inwardly giggled having both done 6 month deployments in the Navy, being “stuck on a boat” was something we had both signed up for at a young age. Nonetheless , we got his point!
How Far is too far out?
Do you start anticipating an event 2 years out? Is that too far away? We realized that our little family of three likes to get excited about things regularly. During COVID, and well, lets be honest, even pre COVID, we are a food oriented family. Friday nights at our favourite pizza joint was always highly anticipated. End of school always signaled a visit to our favourite ice cream store! Well and every other event we could think up signaled an “ice cream” celebration! We are definitely a family that likes to plan for, talk about and anticipate the things we enjoy. Traveling is just one of them. Apparently, food, is another!
We realized we needed to put ‘doable’ things back in our calendar now.
Right after we made that decision, really good friends of ours asked us if we were ready to go on an adventure with them. It was a resounding YES from all 3 of us! We realized as you start to plan for, anticipate and talk about an upcoming event you are excited about, you also talk about the last trip you took. So you get to continue the pleasure from another trip at the same time.
Where to go from here?
Let yourself Anticipate things. Even if the trip, event, holiday, or experience isn’t all you hoped it would be…anticipation for it brought you joy for longer than the actual event. Step back from the need for instant gratification, and enjoy the wait for something you are really looking forward to. Enjoy the anticipation, it extends your experiences.