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5 Way to Evoke and Enhance Savoring

Psychologists define savoring as the ability to tune into, appreciate, and enhance enjoyment associated with a positive experience (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Though you can savor the past as in positive reminiscing or the future (anticipatory savoring), in its most widely used clinical application, savoring refers to intensifying and prolonging the enjoyment of positive events as and when they happen. A savoring experience consists of your sensations, perceptions, thoughts, behaviors, and feelings when you mindfully attend to and appreciate something positive (Bryant et al., 2011). Common examples of savoring include eating a gourmet meal, listening to a musical performance, soaking in warm bath, receiving a compliment, spending time with a good friend, enjoying outdoors, or winning an honor or reward. Besides positive things happening around you, you can also savor internal thoughts or feelings (e.g., that you are blessed with good health). However, just because you experience a positive event or emotion doesn’t mean that you are capable of savoring. Savoring requires not only an active capacity to feel pleasure but also the capacity to find it, manipulate it, and sustain it (Bryant, 2003). Here are five ways to evoke a sense of savoring and enhance your savoring experience.

1. Daily savoring: Once a day, take the time to enjoy something that you usually hurry through (e.g., eating a meal, drinking your coffee, taking a shower, getting ready for work, walking somewhere). When it is over, you may write down what you did, how you did it differently, and how it felt compared to when you rushed through it (Seligman et al., 2006).

2. Mindful photography: Once a week, throughout the course of the day, you will take at least five photographs of your everyday life. As you do this exercise, think about the things in your life that bring happiness or joy. Although this is highly personal, some examples might include your favorite scenic view, your closest friends, or your favorite hobby. Don’t rush through this activity, and make sure you stay engaged with the experience rather than worrying about the quality of the photos. This is not a photo contest! View the photos from time to time to savor the memories. Or you could post them on social media to share the experience (Akhtar, 2012; Kurtz & Lyubomirsky, 2013).

3. Daily vacation exercise: Bryant and Veroff (2007) discuss this technique, which involves taking a sort of a “mini-vacation.” The steps of this technique are as below:
  • Take at least 20 minutes out from each day for one week to plan and participate in an enjoyable activity. These include everyday activities such as going for a walk, sitting quietly in a garden, reading a book, treating yourself to a cup of coffee or tea, visiting a museum, seeing a friend, going out to eat, soaking in a bathtub, etc. Don’t repeat the same activity over the course of the week.
  • Before you embark on the activity, ensure that you are free of worries, concerns, distractions, and responsibilities for the time of the activity.
  • While you savor the activity, remind yourself not to be judgmental, but try to see things as if for the first or last time.
  • Close your eyes and build a memory of the positive event and the associated feelings in your mind.
  • At the end of the 20 minutes, plan on your daily vacation for tomorrow and begin to look forward to it.
  • At the end of the day, reflect on your daily vacation and recall and rekindle the positive feelings you savored.
  • At the end of the week, reflect on your daily vacations for the entire week and try to re-experience the positive emotions you felt during each daily vacation.
  • Notice if there is any difference between how you have felt over the past week when you did the daily vacation exercise compared to your typical week.

4. Identify and label your emotions: Telling yourself how you feel about a positive experience enhances your ability to savor (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Some pointers in this direction are as below:
  • When going through a positive experience, take a moment to try to identify the specific positive feelings you are experiencing.
  • Find words to describe the positive feelings you are experiencing. People use these mood states to describe such feelings – happy, pleased, satisfied, content, glad, relieved, elated, awesome, affectionate, mellow, energizing, uplifting, exciting, empowering, fun, fulfilling, comforting, inspiring, prideful, grateful, or heartwarming.
  • It is OK to experience more than one positive feeling at a time and try to identify all your feelings.
  • Once you have put your feelings into words, tell yourself that you are feeling this way in that moment. For example, “I am in awe of this scenic beauty,” or “I feel relaxed when I soak myself in the bathtub.”
  • When you label your emotions, try to truly feel the essence of the object being savored rather than engaging in mechanical mental labeling.

5. Planning and anticipating: The act of planning for a positive experience can itself be pleasurable and savored for its own sake (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Planning gives you a sense of perceived control over positive outcomes. For example, planning for vacation itself may be associated with a feeling of excitement about meeting your family or exploring a new location. Thinking about a future positive experience, also called anticipation, evokes savoring by imagining pleasant feelings you may experience in the future. However, a caveat here is to be realistic in your expectations of a future positive experience to avoid feeling let down later.

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that promote mental health and well-being, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Akhtar, M. (2012). Positive psychology for overcoming depression. London, UK: Watkins Publishing.

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.

Bryant, F. B., Chadwick, E. D., & Kluwe, K. (2011). Understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience: unsolved problems and future directions for theory and research on savoring. International Journal of Wellbeing, 1(1), 107-126.

Kurtz, J., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2013). Happiness promotion: using mindful photography to increase positive emotion and appreciation. In J. J. Froh & A. C. Parks (Eds.), Activities for teaching positive psychology: A guide for instructors (pp. 133-136). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned optimism. New York, NY: Vintage Books.





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