Last week, we looked at how Fred Bryant savored a real-life “mountain top” moment.
Savoring is: “The capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life,” Fred and his co-author Joseph Veroff write in Savoring: A New Model o Positive Experience.
When we savor an experience, we call forth feelings of joy, gratitude, pride, awe, or pleasure. Savoring also enhances our sense of connection with other people and the larger world around us.
And it doesn’t stop there. Savoring also adds to our “quest for personal meaning,” write Fred and Joe. “Being able to mindfully appreciate the moment increases the likelihood that [we will] find purpose, fulfillment, and meaning in our life.”
Here’s to that!
So, how exactly do we access all these powerful, positive forces in our lives?
Step one is to focus on being 100% present with the experience at hand, write Fred and Joe. We cultivate “a sense of immediacy, of something happening here and now.”
We make a point to put away our phones and watches. We choose intentionally to avoid multi-tasking and to focus our attention as narrowly as possible.
Next, we bring “a willful intention to relax and divert attention from ongoing esteem or social concerns,” the authors suggest. We are then “free to focus [our] attention mindfully on the present experience” in real-time.
Our goal? “Simply experiencing the ongoing positive event as it is unfolding,” write Fred and Joe.
More next week!
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Reflection: Do I spend enough time savoring the meaningful moments in my life?
Action: Slow down. Pay attention. Be grateful.
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