Anticipation: make it work for you

In the immortal words of Lemmy Kilmister, "the chase is better than the catch." Put another way sometimes the anticipation of something is better than the actual experience. How often do we feel let down by the reality of a situation that we have been looking forward to for months? I feel it is very important to enjoy, even to relish the anticipatory emotions leading up to every "big deal" in our lives. Too often we downplay expectations hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the experience. This does not allow us to fully enjoy or take advantage of the warm fuzzy feeling that we generally call anticipation. Why do we deny ourselves this basic pleasure? Chalk it up to lowering expectations, avoiding disappointment, fear of failure, etc. The point, in my view, is that any time we are given the opportunity to feel good about something, we should take it. In fact looking forward to things is a sign of high self-esteem. The optimist has several serious advantages over the pessimist. For example optimists are happier, healthier, and more successful than pessimists.* Pessimists on the other hand do tend to be more realistic than optimists. So, which would you rather be: healthy, happy and successful or realistic and tempted to slit your wrists? I'll take happy anticipation every time!

For those practical people out there think of it this way: optimists visualize positive outcomes. A pessimist sees themselves failing and often this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are about to make a sales call and you visualize it going badly you may unconsciously contribute to that failure by making a bad pitch or communicating negative feelings non-verbally to your client. If you walk into the same meeting with positive anticipation you can unconsciously pass positive messages to the client and even improve your sales pitch. Do you think professional athletes warm up with thoughts of failure running through their heads? Rather, most high performing pro athletes anticipate success during every practice. They visualize that perfect play, the last minute buzzer shot, the long pass for a touchdown, being the first to break the tape, etc.* Can you apply this to your work, to your life? 

The next time you are looking forward to something and your friends or even the little voice inside your head tells you, "don't get too excited" make sure you remember you have a choice in the matter. Take responsibility for your own happiness and choose to mentally frolic in your anticipation. Just before your next presentation or project take a little time to anticipate success and embrace the idea that this next experience will change your life in the best possible way.

*statistical information on these topics can be found in Human Relations: Strategies for Success 2nd Edition by Lowell H. Lamberton, Leslie Minor-Evans