When was the last time you savored an experience in its true sense, or stopped to smell the roses if you prefer the more poetic expression for savoring? With our lives wrapped around multitasking at work, caring for our loved ones, and keeping up with social media chatter, savoring has undoubtedly taken a back seat. While savoring can be construed as an art, a lot of evidence-based science extols this phenomenon's benefits. Psychologists define savoring as the ability to tune into, appreciate, and enhance enjoyment associated with a positive experience (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). There is a strong consensus amongst researchers that those inclined to savor report more optimism, life satisfaction, value fulfillment, self-esteem, and intensity and frequency of happiness. At the same time, these individuals also report fewer feelings of guilt, loss of pleasure, hopelessness, depression, and unhappy or neutral emotions (Bryant, 2003).
If you plan to rediscover how to savor, below are the 9 popular ways to savor (Bryant & Veroff, 2007):
1. Sharing with others: This involves telling others about your positive experience and sharing with them how much you value the moment. Sharing a positive experience with others compounds your enjoyment as others may point out pleasurable aspects of the experience that you may have missed. An added bonus of sharing is that in social settings, people are more likely to smile and laugh, which also increases your own expression of positive emotions. When you are in the company of others, you may use them as a role model to enhance your own savoring experience. Examples of this way to savor include sharing good news with family or friends, watching a pleasurable event with family or friends, throwing parties, vacationing with family, organizing victory celebrations, etc.
2. Taking “mental photographs”: This involves actively storing images for future recall by taking “mental photographs” and thinking of reminiscing about the event later with others. You can practice this way of savoring by searching for, noticing, and highlighting those aspects of positive experiences that you find most enjoyable. This not only enhances your positive emotions but also helps you build clearer and more vivid memories that lend themselves to easier recall and sharing later. Examples include taking “mental photographs” of a scenic place, looking carefully at the intricacies of a painting or an object of art, capturing the feeling of joy on accomplishing something, etc.
3. Congratulate yourself: This may sound a bit presumptuous, but self-congratulation does help savor your accomplishments. A type of “cognitive basking,” this way of savoring involves telling yourself how proud you are, or how impressed others may be, or reminding yourself of how long you have waited for the accomplishment to happen. Examples include self-affirmative statements such as, “I feel proud of accomplishing this,” “I have worked hard to get this and I deserve this,” or patting yourself on the back with rewards. However, there is a fine line between self-congratulation and bragging or boasting, as excessive self-promotion may antagonize others and cut short the savoring experience. In addition, self-congratulation may not be encouraged in some cultures.
4. Sharpen your sensory perceptions: This involves sharpening your senses by actively concentrating on the positive experience and blocking out distractions. For example, closing your eyes to savor music or good food, taking the time to sniff the flowers, swishing the wine on your palate to enhance the tasting experience, slowly chewing your food to appreciate the flavors, etc.
5. Get absorbed in the experience: This involves stopping your conscious thoughts and getting totally immersed or engrossed in the moment, relaxing, and existing only in the present. You can accomplish this by deliberately avoiding reflecting or analyzing your thoughts or feelings during a positive experience and just being there in the moment. This is more akin to being in a mindful state wherein you don’t judge what you experience and let the experience just flow through you. This way of savoring also resembles the state of “flow,” wherein you may lose the sense of self-awareness or sense of person, place, or time while being engrossed in a positive experience. It comes as no surprise that with the distractions of modern-day technologies, it is getting increasingly difficult for people to experience this kind of savoring.
6. Make downward comparisons: Comparing your present experience with something worse can help you savor that experience. In other words, when feeling low or unsatisfied, you can compare yourself with someone else who is worse off than you are. For example, if your car breaks down and you are mad at your car, remind yourself that there are people who don’t have a car and have to rely on other means of transportation. Besides comparing with others, you can compare your present experience with your own past when you were struggling more or were going through more difficult times (e.g., “I am better off now than I was before”). The latter strategy may be more meaningful as comparing to others who are worse off may evoke feelings of guilt, especially if one is prone to depression. Another comparison that may help you savor an experience is knowing how fortunate you are and how things could have been otherwise.
7. Express how you feel: In this way of savoring, you express your inner feelings of joy by outward behaviors such as laughing out aloud, giggling, jumping up and down, dancing around, making verbal sounds of appreciation, etc. The outward expression of positive feelings provides feedback to your mind that something positive has occurred and intensifies these feelings.
8. Remind yourself about the transient nature of the experience: You can also savor an experience by reminding yourself how transient or fleeting that moment is and that it needs to be enjoyed before it is gone. Such experiences are usually bittersweet in that you are aware that a positive experience that you are enjoying will end soon and this leads to a feeling of both happiness and sadness. Examples include a vacation coming to an end, childbirth, celebrating one’s 50th wedding anniversary, the last days of summer, watching your kids grow, etc. Being aware of the fleetingness of the experience motivates you to take full advantage of the experience and enjoy it to the fullest. However, you don’t have to wait for a bittersweet experience to occur to be able to savor it. You can remind yourself of the fleeting nature of any positive experience and relish it in here and now.
9. Count your blessings: Reflecting on how lucky or fortunate you are and how grateful you are to others for something positive in your life enhances the quality of savoring. Expressions of gratitude can be done verbally, in writing, through artwork, poetry, or song, in prayers, or by a simple “thank you.” It is important to express gratefulness with a genuine feeling of inner gratitude to reap its benefits.
While there are nine ways to savor, the one way you don't want to savor is the “killjoy” thinking. Killjoy thinking dampens savoring and usually involves thoughts such as reminding yourself of other places you should be or other things that you should be doing during a positive experience. Some people may also undermine a positive experience by thinking about how it could have been better.
To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that are proven to work for depression, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.
HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA
REFERENCES
Bryant, F. B. (2003). Savoring beliefs inventory: a scale for measuring beliefs about savoring. Journal of Mental Health, 12(2), 175-196.Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers.
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