We often "pre-enjoy" future events and activities before we actually experience them.

Now moments enriched by positive anticipation nourish us in ways actual experience often doesn't.

Optimism is a potent expectation fed by hope-filled pre-constructions of experiences yet to come.

Rather than waiting for a much-anticipated event or activity to unspool in real time, we often enjoy it before we actually experience it. By bringing to mind pleasantly edited images of the activity we are yet to experience, we preview it favorably, pre-sampling the joys the activity is expected to bring us.

"I’m looking forward to it!" This is the well-worn expression used to describe our mental musings about a hope-filled, unexperienced future, musings that sprinkle a savory seasoning over our current moment, enriching it.

The Very Mortal 'Now Moment'

Our moments are always fleeting "passing" ones. But despite their brief mortality, the powerful pleasure hormone, dopamine, surges to its highest levels in those pivotal moments of anticipation when a longed-for future experience is expected to bring us big rewards.

It’s in the absence of the actual experience that we fire up the engine of joyful anticipation, causing it to roar. Indeed, the most rewarding part of our longed-for experience often comes in a version birthed in our imagination, its anticipated form. Here, a well-orchestrated effort takes place among........

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