We have often been told that when life gives you lemons, take the time to appreciate them, enjoy them, and make the most out of the situation. One way to do it is to Savor or Cherish. Bryant and Veroff (2007) define savoring as attending, appreciating, and enhancing positive experiences that occur in one’s life.
Savoring is paying attention to and appreciating the good things in our lives. It can be a conscious or unconscious process but can significantly impact our happiness. To savor an experience, one must possess and apply a certain degree of mindfulness and meta-awareness. Savoring means fully feeling, enjoying, and extending our positive experiences. Savoring is a great way to develop a stable stream of positive thoughts and emotions because positive events cannot always be relied on to make you happier.
Types of savoring
- Savoring the past, also known as reminiscence. For example, remembering funny moments from school with a friend.
- Savoring the present or savoring the moment, for instance, enjoying a new meal by drawing your attention to the flavors and smells.
- Savoring the future, also referred to as anticipation. For example, visualize the trip you planned with your family this summer.
- Share it with others: Sharing our happiness makes us feel good and the people around us feel good. The news you share does not have to be significant.
Levels of savoring
1. Savoring experiences: While sitting at the beach, feeling the ocean breeze while watching the sunset, focus on your sensations, emotions, perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors
2. Savoring processes: Connect a happy event to positive emotions by modulating different positive states.
3. Savoring responses: You can tune your savoring by amplifying the good or dampening the bad feelings. While there, focus on the intensity and duration of positive emotions rather than negative ones.
How Does it Help? Researchers have identified myriad benefits to savoring, including stronger relationships, improved mental and physical health, and finding more creative solutions to problems.
- Counterbalances the experience of unpleasant emotions during stressful events. People with negative emotions and events benefit the most.
- Predicts higher levels of life satisfaction, happiness, and perceived control in adolescents and older adults
- By savoring, we take time to appreciate the good things that we have. This can help us to feel more grateful and content with our lives.
- Predicts reduced levels of depression and anxiety
- Relational savoring, such as explicit disclosure of positive events to a partner, increases relationship quality and self-esteem.
- Wealthier people report less savoring ability. Quoidbach and others found that when exposed to a reminder of wealth, people could not savor and enjoy a piece of chocolate.
Try these exercises to increase your savoring ability
- Sharing with others: You should actively seek and include others in positive personal experiences. It amplifies our emotions and increases bonding while spreading joy.
- Take a mental picture or video and build your positive memories.
Pause momentarily and be aware of all five senses you want to remember later. Taking a mental picture of an event or keeping a journal to document special moments are examples of building memories. - Congratulate yourself: Don’t hesitate to pat yourself on the back and take credit for your hard work. Savoring success by relishing achievements is another way to amplify positive feelings.
- Sensory-perceptual sharpening: Getting in touch with your senses—or taking the time to use them more consciously—also flexes savoring muscles. It would be best to enhance a sense while shutting down the other distracting ones.
- Do compare with the past event or worse outcome: Another savoring strategy is reflecting on how a particular experience is better. Comparing good experiences with unpleasant ones gives us a reference point and makes our current situation seem better.
- Absorption: Studies of positive experiences indicate that people most enjoy themselves when absorbed in a task or moment, losing their sense of time and place—a state psychologists call “flow.” This can promote the sensation of slowing down and the feeling of prolonged positive moments.
- Behavioral expression: Some examples of expressing emotion may include laughing, shouting, and clapping while celebrating a special occasion.
- This shall pass. Remember that good moments pass quickly; tell yourself to relish the moment consciously. Realizing how short-lived certain moments are and wishing they could last longer encourage you to enjoy them while they’re happening.
- Counting blessings: People can foster positive feelings by attending to and reflecting on a positive experience and why one might be grateful for that experience.
- Avoid killjoy thinking: Studies show that the more negative thoughts people have after a personal achievement, the less likely they are to enjoy it.
After discovering the concept of savoring, I suggest choosing one activity from each category to focus on. Start by reminiscing about a positive past experience (Reminiscence), fully immerse yourself in something enjoyable in the present moment (savor the moment), and finally, meditate on a future event that will bring you happiness (anticipation).Do reach out to me at tarak@vasavada.us
Tarak Vasavada, MD
Medical director,
Live Well Foundation of Madison County Medical Society
