Well, I am when this gets published :0)
I am not actually now as I write. Although I cannot say I have never taken my laptop or work phone on holiday (lessons had to be learned!) but I have no intention of doing that this time.
So for those that like holiday talk - I am going to Sicily. I love love love Italy and have been to a few places on the mainland but never to this little football of an island. To say I am looking forward to it doesn't quite give my feelings justice! The food (can't be a nutritionist without loving food! As always this is my opinion - other opinions are available), the sun, the people, the culture, omg bring it all on!
So I thought I would use future pacing or visualising to create the best experience ever. Those are perhaps coach-y terms but basically you know when you were a kid and you just couldn't wait for something that was due to happen (Christmas or a trip to Alton Towers) you spent hours just imagining it? That's it.
As an adult you will also do it, but usually when there is something coming up that you aren't looking forward to. Perhaps a meeting or presentation, or having the in-laws stay, or your credit card bill to arrive.
Funny how the focus and time we spend living in the future changed from good to bad without our noticing. Just part of growing up? Well, whatever the reason we can always use these superpowers of ours for good. If we want to.
So I want to. I keep replaying setting off at 2:30am, arriving and finding the parking place, handing over our luggage, queueing up for security, getting into the waiting part, buying snacks for the plane, looking and trying hard to resist buying any more books, waiting to board the plane, and then whoop one of my favourite bits - when the pilot puts his foot down - whooshhhh haha and yes just typing this is heightening my excitement and anticipation (our body's don't know the difference between what's happening now and what's only imagined - hence butterflies weeks in advance of things).
But also the fact that everything goes really well in this version, that I have had just the right amount of nap, that the drive is perfectly smooth (ha very likely at 2:30am ha), that the queues are just long enough to help me enjoy the experience of each stage of the process. I wouldn't want it to go by too quickly!
By repeating this version I am not only enjoying the experience multiple times over, I am creating an expectation. And the brain likes to be right with its expectations (it makes it feel safe and like it knows what it's doing). So it looks for evidence I am right and disregards evidence to the contrary - to the point that it doesn't allow my conscious to notice something if it doesn't 'fit'.
And yes I would argue this is a superpower. Basically a form of using my brain to create my future experience as I would wish for it to be (and my 'now' experience come to think of it :0) !) - how is that anything less than amazing and superpower-y?
