During the times of yore, my siblings and I would always lie in wait for a magazine to read the comic section. These pages took us on an adventure with Phantom and his entourage, his girlfriend Diana and best friend Guran! No sooner had we finished reading the strip than we would begin to eagerly anticipate the next week’s comic, wondering what would happen to Phantom in the next issue. It was the anticipation of the episode that carried the maximum thrill.
This was equally true when anticipating a long-awaited vacation — the exhilarating feeling of looking forward to the holiday fills you with eagerness and expectation, more fulfilling than arriving at the holiday destination itself. Whether it is anticipating a special event or fulfilling an aspiration, anticipation holds the potential to motivate and to inspire. By leveraging this emotion, one can fuel the imagination, ignite dreams, even breathe life into an aspiration besides enhancing productivity at work in the bargain. Now how do we turn this powerful human emotion into an advantage? The natural next step would be to harness somehow this blend of excitement, curiosity and hope and set the stage for positive experiences not only during a holiday period but during ones work life as well?
Anticipation can be often used deliberately to enhance an experience. Sales and marketing personnel often capitalise on this emotion by using it as a marketing tool. Teasers are unveiled, or sneak peeks are provided to generate excitement and anticipation among potential customers. Consider the enjoyment derived from savouring the moments leading up to an event or activity. The promotion of a new movie for instance is done by making the actors and actresses appear on a prominent television talk show. Throughout the programme, the host asks several questions that succeed in heightening the appreciation for the complete experience. By mindfully embracing anticipation, we feel like watching the movie itself specially after absorbing the banter between the host and the actors and getting further curious about the movie.
Having spent a considerable part of my career in sales and marketing, I realised this emotion could help visualise the desired outcome of a project by helping me identify potential obstacles and develop effective strategies to overcome them. By anticipating roadblocks and challenges in advance, I could equip myself to proactively mitigate risks and increase the likelihood of success. On the ground however, this anticipation aided my supervisors more than me, specially during the budget and target setting sessions, as they started to drastically increase my work load and budget figures for evaluating my annual performance, forcing me to visualise and anticipate the most optimistic scenarios.
It is the anticipation of new experiences, challenges and goals that propels us forward, and success comes to those who push themselves beyond their comfort zones, they would often say during target setting sessions, quoting the renowned entrepreneur Richard Branson who had once said, “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” Looking back, the stretched targets did improve overall performance, though at that time it meant an increased struggle and a greater challenge.
These days, in the evening of my life, I spend a great deal of time watching television serials, only it seems to be old wine in a new bottle! After I have finished watching the day’s episode, I am extremely curious to anticipate what will happen the next day. It always is as if it is the next episode that is more exciting then what I see today! So much for anticipation, its always the next episode that seems to carry the maximum thrill.
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