Anticipating future fun events is a powerful mood booster, and a lack of things to look forward to is likely contributing to our national state of melancholy.

Psychological research suggests that your brain evolved to prioritize future events so that you could appropriately prepare for them and increase your odds of survival. If humans weren’t forward-looking, our ancestors wouldn’t have made it through cold winters, food shortages, or potential enemy attacks. But the future isn’t always negative, and you have neural circuitry that anticipates positive events, too. Looking forward to good things in the future is a key element of well-being.

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Source:  Inside Your Head, a newsletter by Elemental.