How to Use Anticipation to Boost Your Happiness

Article Summary: 

Even if your days are heavy with stress, pressure, and uncertainty, the magic of anticipation can lift your spirits as you look ahead toward something exciting.

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Legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady won seven Super Bowl titles, five Super Bowl MVP awards, and three league MVP awards. Along the way, he set the records for career passing yards, touchdown passes, and quarterback wins. When somebody asked him which Super Bowl ring was his favorite, he replied:

“The next one.”

Brady was channeling the power of anticipation—looking forward to future experiences or events that bring you excitement and joy. In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen wrote about “that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.”

You’ve probably basked in the sweet glow of anticipation, but you may not realize just how important it is to your health and wellbeing.

 

Sweet Anticipation

Many of my sweetest childhood memories are animated by anticipation:

Christmas morning
Birthday parties
Amusement parks
Friday night pizza after soccer practice
Sleepovers
Halloween
Beach outings
Bedtime stories

Now that I’m older, my anticipation targets have changed, but they still fill me with energy and excitement.

 

How Anticipation Boosts Happiness

It turns out that there are many benefits of anticipation. For example, it can:

• improve your mood, happiness, quality of life, and mental health
• boost your job satisfaction (by shifting your focus from challenges and stressors to sought-after achievements and rewards)
• prevent or reduce burnout
• help you build your perseverance and resilience

“Anticipating fun times and enjoyable experiences is great for our mental health. It lifts our spirits and our mood. It also motivates us to persevere through challenges.” -Kelly Nardella, psychologist

How does this work? According to researchers, when you’re anticipating something, the reward centers in your brain activate, and these play an important role in your motivation and wellbeing.

The simple act of anticipating something enjoyable prompts your brain to release mood-enhancing chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Anticipation can also amplify the enjoyment of the reward when it finally arrives.

According to researchers, the anticipation effect is so strong that looking forward to a positive event can boost your wellbeing even more than remembering one that already happened. One study found that positive anticipation can boost your mood even when you’re facing something stressful. For example, planning a fun night out after a pressure-filled workday can significantly alter your outlook for that day.

The effects even show up physiologically. In a 2018 study, participants were asked to anticipate a positive event while in a functional MRI machine. The brain scans revealed that this anticipation triggered the release of dopamine—a neurotransmitter tied to pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation.*

Looking forward to positive experiences can also strengthen your resilience, according to researchers. By thinking about future successes or joys, you can gain motivation and a sense of purpose. Anticipating positive events redirects your attention from today’s stress to tomorrow’s rewards.

 

Ways to Bring More Anticipation into Your Life

So what can you do with this? Here are things you can do to leverage the power of anticipation in your life and work:

1. Take charge of your free time. If you don’t actively plan your free time, it can fizzle out in the busyness of daily life. Without deliberately setting up enjoyable and meaningful activities, you won’t have enough exciting experiences to look forward to, and you’ll miss out on the emotional boost that anticipation provides.

2. Plan fun activities. Set aside regular time for enjoyment and unwinding. Hobbies. Date nights. Excursions. Adventures. Time with family and friends. Having these experiences to look forward to can reduce work stress and facilitate an enjoyable and engaging life.

3. Make anticipation a daily habit. Each evening, reflect on or jot down at least one thing you’re looking forward to.

4. Align anticipation with your priorities. What are the things that light you up most? You’re more likely to value and cherish experiences and connections with others than possessions.

5. Invest in anticipation at home. If you’re in a relationship or have a family, make an effort to give your partner and/or family members fun things to look forward to.

6. Invest in anticipation at work. If you’re a manager or have a team that you work with, make an effort to give your colleagues fun things on their future docket.

7. Savor the experiences you’ve been anticipating. Savoring lets you deeply enjoy the experience once it arrives.

8. Be grateful for the experiences you’ve had. By being thankful for an experience you’ve been anticipating, you extend its emotional benefits and reinforce your positive feelings.

 

Conclusion: Boost Your Happiness through Anticipation

These days, you probably have enough things that you dread, whether it’s boring meetings or other frustrating situations. Why not flip the script?

Anticipation is a simple but powerful tool for boosting your happiness. By planning exciting and meaningful activities and experiences to look forward to, you can create more uplifting moments. Do this and watch how it transforms not only your free time but your work, energy, and sense of fulfillment.

Anticipation can be a great way to brighten your days and lift the spirits of those around you. Here’s to bringing more fun experiences and events into our lives—and enjoying the sweet pull they have on us.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

• Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life.
• Quality of Life Assessment so you can discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
• Crafting Your Life & Work online course to help you design your next chapter and create a life and work you love.

 

Related Articles

• “A Guide to Life-Boosting Activities”
• “Taking Stock of Your Quality of Life”
• “Why We Want More Adventure in Our Lives—And How to Get It”
• “The Trap of Workaholism—And What to Do About It”
• “The Benefits of Play for Adults” (HelpGuide.org)

* “Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, 40 participants were scanned while they were performing an emotion anticipation task, in which they were instructed to anticipate the positive or neutral events. The results showed that bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) were activated during anticipation for positive events relative to neutral events, and the enhanced brain activation in MPFC was associated with higher level of well-being.” -Luo Y, Chen X, Qi S, You X, Huang X. Well-being and Anticipation for Future Positive Events: Evidences from an fMRI Study. Front Psychol. 2018 Jan 9.

 

Postscript: Inspirations on How Anticipation Boosts Happiness

• “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” -Andy Warhol
• “Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.” -David Hume
• “The pleasure isn’t in doing the thing, the pleasure is in planning it.” -John Green, Paper Towns
• “We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.” -Albert Camus
• “‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘what I like best,’ and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” -A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
• “Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work’s important, family’s important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You’re cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what’s coming.” -Nicholas Sparks, Three Weeks with My Brother
• “If you come at four in the afternoon, I’ll begin to be happy by three.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
• “Plotting a trip is nearly as enjoyable as actually taking one. Merely thinking about a pleasurable experience is itself pleasurable. Anticipation is its own reward.” -Eric Weiner

 

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!