Family, Mental Health
This Is Why We Need Something To Look Forward To
Positive anticipation is good for us, and I want to know when I can go to Disneyland!
What are you looking forward to right now?
If you’re like me, you had to think about that. I started 2020 with a lot of fun events on the horizon. Nine months in, and most of those events didn’t happen.
I’ve shrugged off the disappointment because you can reschedule trips, and safety is more important. People are dying, so I’m not going to cry because I didn’t go to the Grand Canyon or Disneyland.
But something is unsettling about not having anything to anticipate. I decided to research the effect anticipation has on mental health. I was not surprised to find a study demonstrating the beneficial effects of anticipation of future positive events.
The study pointed out that anticipating negative events can lead to depression and anxiety. So it makes sense that the opposite would also be true. The study correlated anticipation with goals and demonstrated that achieving goals created a sense of well-being.
Positive anticipation was good for my soul.
In 2016 my husband Patrick died, and the future stretched out in front of me, and, for a while, it seemed like I wasn’t anticipating any happy events. Even things that generally brought pleasant anticipation, such as holidays, were tempered by his absence.
I found that we had improved moods any time we had planned trips or events. I planned trips to places we hadn’t been to in the past. For Father’s Day, we spent the day at Universal Studios. For Thanksgiving, we found a small Inn that would accommodate our entire extended family, and we spent the weekend together.
We took trips to Catalina, Hawaii, and Nebraska. We also spent a lot of time at Disneyland, which I wish we had done more when Patrick was alive. All of these trips gave us different things to look forward to, and that lifted our spirits.
Favorite anticipation
Disneyland is one of my favorite places to be. I have many memories of trips there over the years, but the past few years have been the best experiences.
The girls and I spent Mother’s Day there one year, and two of us had annual passes for a year.
My husband Bruce and I took a mini-honeymoon (Minnie-moon) at Disneyland after our wedding in November and purchased annual passes we had planned to use this year. Our first anniversary is coming up and my hopes of spending it there have been dashed.
I am finding something to anticipate.
Since there are no plans to open Disneyland and most large gatherings are still discouraged, it’s essential to find something to anticipate. I am looking forward to a small dinner to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday, which will involve a trip to the coast.
I am also looking forward to my daughter’s visits home and my mom’s small wedding in November. I’ll try to add other small plans as the pandemic stretches on. And I am also going to be looking forward to the pandemic ending and the world returning to normalcy.