Upcoming Relief (…ANTICIPATION??)
I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking about things. I was thinking that (and these are my actual thoughts and words when I woke up), “Sometimes the thoughts of an upcoming relief are are as relieving as the thing of relief itself. An upcoming vacation during a stressful time, or the kids going back to school after a long, unstructured, lazy summer. That kind of thing.” As I said, those were the actual words in my thoughts at 1:30 am, or whatever ungodly hour it happened to be.
I sat up and jotted that down in my phone, plodded to the bathroom, because after 50, that’s what you do when you’re woken up in the middle of the night, and then went back to bed. As I lay there, I thought of a word! A word that fit this situation perfectly, but I didn’t want to sit back up to record it again. So, I was thinking the word over and over in my head telling myself not to forget it so that I would remember when the morning rolled around.
Well, I woke up, and the word was gone. It was A…. A… A something. I couldn’t remember what it was. And then while I was making my coffee, it hit me! ANTICIPATION!! Anticipation is the word that I forgot to remember! That concisely describes the feeling that I was thinking about when I woke up at 1:30am thinking about this whole thought.
But that’s it! That’s the key!
The ANTICIPATION of some sort of relief from a current situation is often enough to carry us through, or is as POWERFUL as the thing (that we’re anticipating) itself! The ANTICIPATION of a vacation coming up. The ANTICIPATION of the kids going back to school. The ANTICIPATION of saving enough money for that special thing we’ve been wanting! I think it’s about goals! It’s about a method of counting down or keeping track of our progress toward an experience, or a thing, or a feeling.
When we have goals (say I want a “tiny house”), we can set up a plan to get us to our goals, and we can track the progress along that trajectory. We need to define what the steps are, flesh those out, build them up. But then as we make progress, we can tick things off of our list, or mark items on plan off as “completed”. Then when things are feeling “low”, or slow, we can look back at that project plan and remind ourselves of how far we’ve come. Of the progress that we’ve made. If we want to purchase something thatwill have a relatively big impact on our financial sit uation, we have a goal to measure that against. If we spend that money on a new car, then we have less money to save each month toward that ULTIMATE goal! Is it worth it? Or do we stick with the reminder that we have a bigger goal. We’re ANTICIPATING reaching it on “X” date. But if we go ahead and purchase this new car, that other goal will be pushed back by at least 5 years. Do we want to wait that long? Or can we live with what we have for now, to reach that other goal sooner?
It comes back to… the ANTICIPATION of reaching that goal, will carry us through the more difficult times as we work toward that ultimate goal! That’s powerful!
I want to sit around and watch TV, but I’m working on my Master’s Degree. If I sit around and watch TV, my homework goes undone. And if my homework goes undone, I won’t learn what I need to, and I won’t get a passing grade. That Master’s Degree may get me into a different job that gives me more personal satisfaction, and perhaps more money. Do I want to exchange watching TV for a few hours for reading my homework, and give up the dream that I am supposed to be working toward? Sometimes maybe the TV will win out over the homework… let’s be honest. But in the long run, the homework wins out, because I have that goal to think about. The ANTICIPATION and the thought of the rewards that come with reaching that goal give leverage to tip the scales in the correct direction!
Without goals… whether you have them written down or they’re just floating around in your head… what keeps you on track? What even IS your track?
