By: Greg Harms, LCPC, CADC
It may be a little premature to start thinking about summer in Chicago, but the weather has started to finally move towards warmer temperatures. Every year numerous blogs and other media outlets trot out the idea of 100 days of summer, or some set number, to remind us before summer even begins that it is just a blink of an eye away from ending.
While the goal of most of these articles is a well-intentioned encouragement to plan something special each day of the summer, it misses the point of what summer is really about – freedom.
There’s something about the (mostly) nice weather that really improves our moods and lowers our anxieties. This can help us to feel freer to do things we might not consider at other times of the year.
However, rigidly scheduling our entire summer away robs us of that freedom and sense of infinite possibility that makes it so enjoyable in the first place.
Key to mental health is our ability to mindfully focus on the here and now. There is no ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. The more we can be in the moment and focused on what we are doing, without any sense of judgment or comparison, the better we feel.
What better time to be focused on the present moment than summer, when the present moment is usually so enjoyable?
Constantly evaluating the activity, we are engaging in to see if it measures up to what we had hoped for when we planned it or thinking ahead about the next planned activity robs us of this moment to moment enjoyment of what we are doing right now.
Even if the new activity we are trying isn’t our cup of tea, at least we tried it, and maybe we learned something about ourselves, which is always a good thing. Maybe it at least gave us a common experience with friends or family that we can commiserate about later and get some good stories from about how awful it was.
If we just write it off and jump on to the next planned activity, we deprive ourselves of these potential good aspects of the activity.
As the days keep getting nicer, we definitely want to plan some fun things, otherwise summer really will be over before we know it. However, the point is not to so slavishly follow our schedule or overbook ourselves to the point where we don’t have any time to sit back, take a deep breath, and just enjoy where we are right now, right here.
Find some free time every day to just sit out in the sun, meet up with friends for a walk in the park or on the beach, or sit at a coffee shop’s outdoor patio and enjoy a good summer read with a refreshing beverage. These small activities are just as important to our mental well-being as the new adventures we extensively plan for.
Don’t get to the end of summer and find those 100 activities checked off only to wish that you had spent more time just enjoying a moment for itself.
