Among everything I’ve ever learned from my parents, I will never forget the day that what seemed to be just another “pearl of wisdom” from my mother finally clicked with me. A few months prior to my epiphany, my mom and I were conversing at the dinner table. She kept bringing up how important it is to create and plan events to look forward to after times of stress and high workload, but I was preoccupied trying to not burn my tongue on the hot sweet potato chunk that I was attempting to eat. She was talking about the importance of planning dates that you can pinpoint on the calendar, and then counting down to these dates. My mom went on to describe the benefits, but at this point I was too busy thinking about something funny that had happened the night before. I went on through the night, and through the next few months, not really thinking about my mom’s words. It was almost as if she had never said anything at all!
It all changed one night when I yelled up the stairs to my mom: “Dinner!” I then sat down at the same island in the kitchen we always eat at, and we began talking. Except this time, I was actually listening to what she was saying. All of a sudden, I heard her mumble something about how valuable it is to plan things to look forward to. I thought to myself for a second: “Plan things to look forward to…”, and it clicked. Reflecting on the weeks leading up to this discussion, I realized I had been doing what my mom was telling me about before; I was planning something at the end of every week!
Something that I look forward to is spending time with my family or friends. I realized that although I had not planned the family skiing vacation, it still counted as something that I had looked forward to. I then realized that for the last couple of weeks, I had been making plans with friends every weekend to do something fun and new, like going for a hike we had never been on before, or doing something relaxing, like ordering in and then hopping in the jacuzzi. The day my mom subtly reiterated what she had once told me, directly, was the day it clicked. I discovered that I was taking her advice all along; her words, at the time, seemed to go in one ear and out the other, but my actions said otherwise.
Now, why is this advice so amazing? Because having something to look forward to provides you with the motivation and desire to get through the more difficult times. Knowing that in twenty days you will be lying on a beautiful, sunny beach in Florida on vacation can aid you in finding the will to do those last three math problems in class. If you are going through a challenging situation, having that date on the calendar is a little reminder that the struggle is temporary.
In addition, you can be assured that when you get to that “something” that you were looking forward to, and you’ve put in the work to get there, it will feel incredible because you earned it. For me at least, I enjoy going out with friends for dinner or unwinding in the jacuzzi a million times more if I feel like I put in the work to get to that place. Simply put, playing hard feels better if you’ve been working hard. So next time you’re feeling down or don’t see an end-goal in sight, I say get out that calendar and start marking it up!