it's important to ask yourself, what am I looking foward to today?

​I was in a zoom meeting yesterday with a consulting friend who lives in Colorado. She knows I love her home state. Every time we meet, she's always sharing pictures of the mountains and the trails and the snow. Yesterday she told me her neighbor goes away for the summer, and loves to let people come stay in her house while she's gone.

You could have a cheap vacation, she said.

This friend is a researcher. So I wasn't surprised when she went on to say, "research shows that people who are looking forward to a vacation are happier people."

I thought about that for a minute, then I asked my researcher friend, "aren't people who are looking forward to ANYTHING happier people?"

She paused, thoughtfully, then gave me a nodding bit of approval - like there might be some merit to my "non-researched" hypothesis. Approval I rarely get from the researcher side of this friend.

You know, 99% of my days end with a bowl of vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup lathered on top of it, with a healthy dose of spanish peanuts filling up any un-used spaces in the bowl. I look forward to that every night.

I don't care how many calories are in that bowl.
I don't care how many of my arteries aren't as fond of that ice cream as I am.
I look forward to that bowl. And some days, that's the sweet sweet finish line to the day I cling to.

It's more than a bowl of ice cream, to be honest.

When I was a little kid - just a few years ago 🙄 - most days I'd hop off the school bus and race across the street to my great grandma's house where I'd sit at a little farmhouse table and have a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup lathered on top of it.

That old lady spoiled many a dinners.

Some days, that bowl of ice cream is a sweet reminder of better days. Sometimes, looking forward to it is a sweet reminder there are better moments ahead.

I think it's important to build things into our lives we're looking forward to. Yes, a summer vacation to Colorado would certainly be a great "I'm looking forward to that." But I think we also need more seeable and touchable things to look forward to - things not months and many states away.

Maybe it's dinner with a friend - break out the breadsticks!!
Maybe it's a run.
Maybe it's the next expisode of Shitt's Creek.
Maybe it's writing every morning.

I just think it's important to ask yourself, what am I looking foward to today? If the answer is nothing, or I don't know, then I think maybe you should create something.

Feel free to steal my bowl of ice cream. Well, not my actual bowl - I would not look forward to that - but the idea and the recipe are all yours.

I just believe the more things we create to look forward to, the happier we'll be.