Is it time to start planning your next vacation?
From Joe: That looks like an odd question to find at TheFittestLoser. But I recently encountered some information about vacation planning that made me wonder if thinking and planning about vacations might be similar to thinking and planning other journeys – real and metaphorical – we take in life. In a recent “how to” article giving tips for planning vacations, Michelle Higgins summarizes what scientists have found about how your happiness is affected by vacation trips. It turns out that your anticipation of the vacation plays an extremely important role in the effect your vacation will have on your overall happiness. In many cases, the anticipation and planning of the vacation will create more happiness than the vacation itself! Hence, Ms. Higgins advises us to relish the anticipation of the event:
Planning early brings many people more joy than the actual vacation. A 2010 study by Jeroen Nawijn, a tourism research lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, examined the behavior of 1,530 Dutch adults and found that the 974 individuals who took a vacation achieved the greatest amount of happiness leading up to the trip.
His findings were in line with studies led by the psychologists Leigh Thompson of Northwestern University and Terence Mitchell of the University of Washington that examined travelers’ anticipation of, actual experiences on, and memories of vacations. The results, published in 1997 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that regardless of the type of trip, vacationers were happier in the period leading up to their time off than during the vacation itself.
So booking your trip well ahead not only gives you an edge when it comes to logistics (getting the best room and often the best deal), it also helps build anticipation, which can boost happiness.
If framing a vacation in positive terms and actively planning it creates conditions for maximum happiness, we can probably draw some other conclusions and inferences from that information:
- Framing the vacation in negative or indifferent terms or not
fantasizing about it at all or turning all the planning over to
someone else will probably decrease the journey’s impact on your
happiness in life.
- Rituals – holidays, family rituals, etc. – are similar to
vacation journeys in regard to anticipation: Planning the
ritual, framing it positively, collaborating on it with other
people – it is well known that these kinds of anticipatory
activities strongly affect the happiness that will be generated
by the ritual.
- Anticipation and planning does not happen automatically. To
get those going, we have to create a space for them in terms of
time, effort and attention.
Now we ask, do these lessons about vacation trips apply to other
trips?
For example – you knew this was coming – how about your trips to the
gym or your journeys to shop for healthy food or your rituals for
eating a healthy meal? Do you eagerly anticipate your next workout
or are you indifferent about it or even dread the trip? Do you view
your upcoming meal with pleasurable anticipation or are you framing
it as an exercise in restraint and self-deprivation?
The whole time I was reading these articles, I was remembering how
the fit people I’ve known throughout my life talked about the gym
trip, the meals they ate, etc. Invariably, they had learned to frame
all their fitness activities in positive terms that led to
pleasurable anticipation, even when they might not be working out
hard: “I was so stressed out at work I could not wait to get here to
exercise.” “I was exhausted, but at least I’m here to get some steam
and see some of my friends.” “All I can do tonight is walk the
track. All day long I have been thinking about getting a little
private time.” “Work was really boring and I could not wait to get
to the gym and really hit the weights.”
So the big question for you is how do you anticipate your workouts?
Do you make a space for positive anticipation in your life? Do the
workouts or even their anticipation increase your overall happiness
in life or have no effect or a negative one? How did you learn to
frame these things in positive terms?
