Savor the moment

I just returned from a weekend getaway and I'm aware that many of you are either on vacation or heading on one soon. Savoring is a fabulous way to increase your positive thoughts, which in turn increases your mood. Time from work gives us a perfect opportunity to set the practice of savoring in motion. Once we develop the ability on vacation, we can take it back home and make it part of our daily lives. If you don't have a vacation on the horizon, try starting on the weekend.

Savoring in Positive Psychology terms is defined as "thoughts or behaviors capable of 'generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment' "(Lyubomirsky, 191).

Fred B.Bryant, author of Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience, extensively researched and shared benefits to savoring. Beyond increasing positive emotions, savoring helps build stronger relationships, improves mental and physical health, and leads us to find more creative solutions to problems. Lyubomirsky also adds that people who tend to savor are more confident, extroverted, and gratified, while feeling less hopeless and neurotic (192). How perfect is that for when you have to get back to the daily grind?

Putting savoring into practice

In Positive Psychology For Overcoming Depression, Miriam Akhtar shares the basics for how you approach savoring a moment:

• Slow down and stretch out the experience
• Engage your full attention
• Use all of your senses
• Reflect on the source of the enjoyment. ​

Getting started
 There are endless opportunities to implement savoring  on vacation. Here are a few suggestions:

​​Experience the taste
of a popular local dish
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Photograph a storm


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Watch a complete sunrise or sunset



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Visit local markets and take
in the sights and smells

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Try a new activity


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Watch the locals doing
​ everyday life events


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Cook with the locals

Bask in the history of a site




Fully engage in playing with children

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Watch the movement
​ of an animal


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​Sit mindfully in a quiet
space in nature​



 

​Take a nature hike and
focus on the smells in nature



​

Savoring after the vacation

- Share photos on social media and reminisce
​- Tell stories about your adventures with those interested
- Prepare a meal from where you traveled
- Read back over your travel journal

Sometimes we fill our vacations with long itineraries and forget to "be" in the moment. We forget to slow down and soak in special experiences. Take time to enjoy your vacation and remember that, according to Bryant, savoring “... is like swishing the experience around … in your mind." Put savoring on your itinerary.

Akhtar, Miriam. Positive Psychology for Overcoming Depression: Self-help Strategies for Happiness, Inner Strength and Well-being. London: Watkins, 2012. Print.
Bryant, Fred Boyd, and Joseph Veroff. Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Print.
Lyubomirsky, Sonja. The How of Happiness. NY:Penguin Press, 2008. Print.
Photos are mine.