Anticipation
My granddaughter Marilyn at the Beach - Thanksgiving, 2021
It is here, officially… the Holiday Season. I noticed the anticipation begining to build a little early this year, even before Thanksgiving. Anticipation is a funny thing . . . my mom has always said that she loves looking forward to Christmas much more than the actual Christmas morning. She creates feelings of joy, surprise and excitement all month long. The joy that she has is contagious, I can’t help but smile when I think of the happy days ahead.
Sometimes, however, we use anticipation in a more negative way. We worry about the “what if’s” … and visualize all the ways it can go wrong. We feed the fear and anxiety we harbor by rehearsing these ideas in our head and we create feelings of anxiety, fear or loneliness long before the situation has happened. This robs us of the present moment. It may be that the anticipated negative situation will play out in the exact way we fear, but do we need to feel the negative feelings twice? Do we need to worry and fret beforehand and also when it actually happens?
I watched this happen with one of my grandchildren recently. She was visiting for Thanksgiving week and on Day 1 she said..”This trip is going too fast!” Each day she worried and complained about not having enough time here. Now… to be honest, I love a grandchild who cries when he/she leaves my house. It totally warms my heart and I generally love it, but in this case, I saw how much her anticipation of leaving infringed upon the time she was here. The anticipation and dread of leaving actually caused her to shorten the time she was having fun here. Isn’t that unfortunate? I can think of so many examples of when and how we all do this.
I wonder if this happens more during the holidays? Keep an eye on your thoughts this month as you do all the things. Push back on the thoughts that are robbing you of your precious today and the small moments that matter. Allow yourself to experience all of it. There will be joy and there will be frustration, there will be both highs and lows. Anticipate that the holidays will be wonderful and that they will be exhausting. Be kind to yourself about it all and don’t rob yourself of the amazing moments with worry about the future.
That is the plan. Life is 50% positive and 50% negative and we get to experience all of it.
Let me know if you want to learn more or if I can help!