Skip to main content

5 Way to Evoke and Enhance Savoring


Psychologists define savoring as the ability to tune in to, appreciate, and enhance the enjoyment associated with a positive experience (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Though you can savor the past (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 a warm bath, receiving a compliment, spending time with a good friend, enjoying the 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 you are capable of savoring it. Savoring requires not only an active capacity to feel pleasure but also the capacity to find, manipulate, 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 “mini-vacation.” The steps of this technique are as follows:
  • Set aside at least 20 minutes 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 during 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 mental image of the positive event and the associated feelings.
  • 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 follows:
  • 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 feelings such as 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 a vacation may be associated with 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.





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7 Questions That Will Help You Overcome Anxiety, Fear and Panic

Anxiety, fear, and panic are associated with irrational thoughts involving themes of threat or danger. These irrational thoughts take the form of “if” or “what if” beliefs. For example, a person who is afraid of heights may think, “If I am on the elevator alone and it gets stuck, no one will be able to save me,” or a person with panic disorder may believe, “If my heart beats too fast, it means that I am probably having a heart attack.” The “if” and “what if” thinking in anxiety disorders is a byproduct of your irrational thought patterns, including magnification, catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, and “should” and “must statements.” Sometimes, anxiety is a result of genuine problems or situations that have no solutions. How does one then decide to challenge one's irrational thinking or problem-solve, or try acceptance strategies? The seven questions that will help you guide your decision to choose one path over another to overcome anxiety are as follows:  What is the likelihoo...
2 comments
Read more

Situational Analysis: An Effective Tool to Address Maladaptive Social Patterns in Chronic Depression

Approximately 30% of individuals with depressed mood develop a chronic course as defined by the criteria for persistent depressive disorder (PDD) (Struck et al., 2021). Research shows that depressed individuals have difficulties in handling another person's negative state or suffering, getting overwhelmed in emotionally tense situations, a condition called empathic distress. This leads to an avoidant interpersonal style due to fear of interaction with others, which in turn deprives these individuals of positive interpersonal experiences, thus perpetuating depressive symptoms (Struck et al., 2021). Situational analysis is a technique used in the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP). CBASP is one of the few psychotherapies effective for chronic depression and PDD (Wiersma et al., 2014; Wiersma et al., 2021). CBASP combines behavioral and cognitive strategies with a problem-solving focus and emphasizes interpersonal issues. Its primary goals are to help indivi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Depression is Not

When one is feeling low, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is going through the throes of clinical depression, i.e., major depressive disorder. There are several conditions that may mimic clinical depression but don’t reach the severity or pervasiveness of the former condition or are symptomatically distinct. It is important to recognize these so that one may not unnecessarily get prescribed medications or started on psychotherapy as some of these conditions are time limited or may remit on their own. At the same time, some of these conditions such as complicated grief may need specialized therapy. Conditions that resemble depression but are not depression include the following: Sadness: Depression is more than the normal pangs of sadness one gets when experiencing a stressful situation. Depression is a more pervasive and persistent change in your mood along with changes in your physiological functions such as sleep, appetite, and energy level. Although stress can trig...
4 comments
Read more