There's always something to look forward to. There will always be a birthday, graduation, vacation, or some other significant date to anticipate. We write down that date, circle and underline it a million times on our calendars, and even create countdowns for.

As excited as you may be for graduation, I encourage you to refrain from downloading that countdown app.

We are a fast-paced generation. We are all about instant gratification, and anything that will light up our reward centers in our brains. With that in mind, booking that vacation that's nearly a year away is a perfect opportunity for us to obsess about the future.

I'm definitely guilty of this myself. I looked up my graduation date pretty soon after I started college. I started a countdown. I had a countdown for everything – vacations, birthdays, et cetera. I even utilized the feature on a certain app that let me monitor how many days had passed since a significant date – how many days I had been alive, how long it had been since I graduated high school, or how long my relationship was.

Doing this takes away from the happiness of the now.

Living in the moment is a lifestyle, not an Instagram caption. We may applaud ourselves for setting our phones down during dinner with friends. But the real growth happens when we challenge ourselves to break those easily overlooked bad habits. By counting down the days, you're essentially writing off every day between now and that date as insignificant.

To be blunter, you are training yourself to take every single day for granted, rushing through each day to get it over with, and, ultimately, pushing you towards the end of your days without enjoying them fully. We do this without even realizing it. Not so fun to think about it that way, is it?

It's okay to give yourself milestones. Rather than counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until a certain event, try going by weeks or months instead. This way, you won't be obsessing over exactly how long you have to wait.

At the beginning of this school year, I wrote in my planner how many days between the first day of classes and my graduation date. That's the only time I will monitor how many days I have left. For me, when I have the constant knowledge of how long I have left to wait, I grow antsy. I become anxious and find it hard to focus on anything except preparing for that future event, no matter how far off it is or how much I can do in preparation.

It's okay to be excited. Especially when you have such exciting things to look forward to. Life's happy milestones are ones to celebrate. But, it's also remarkably beneficial to celebrate the smaller milestones, like the days in between. Make these days meaningful instead of a waiting room.