By Marinne Hammond
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
At the end of the day, do you ever have a hard time thinking about what went well for you?
Because life can be hard and unpredictable, it’s easy to dwell on what goes wrong within a day. Perhaps you missed the bus, lost your water bottle, and stained your favorite jacket—all in the same day. Then, you come home and conclude that the universe must be against you! While a lot of misfortunes can come our way all at once, there are also plenty of good things thrown at us! So, why do we struggle so much to focus on our daily highlights?
As humans, we have something called a negativity bias. Psychologist Shilagh Mirgain (2019) claims that this hinders our recollection of positive experiences, which, according to research, seem to actually occur 3 times more frequently than negative experiences. The good news is that we can apply something called savoring to our lives. From the MBS 101 savoring module, “savoring involves mindful awareness of positive experiences to prolong and amplify their value.”
How do we harness the power of savoring? In the following video, Mirgain explains how we can combat this negativity bias by savoring the past, present, and future.
Below are some ideas and frames of mind I personally find useful when it comes to savoring the past, present, and future.
Savoring the past: Remember a fun Friday night you spent with a friend. What did you eat? What were your favorite parts of the movie you watched together? What did you laugh at?
Savoring the present:
I’ve found that savoring the present is particularly helpful. One afternoon in the mountains of Sandy, Utah, I went on a beautiful hike up to a waterfall in the mountains. I remember hearing the rush of wind and water as I got closer to the waterfall. I remember the crisp air I felt. I loved the invigoration I felt as I forged my way higher and higher up the mountain. Many times throughout the hike, however, I felt a pull to sit down on a boulder and just soak in the scenery. Being deep in nature, I didn’t feel in a rush to be anywhere or do anything. It was on that hike that I was reminded of the beauty available to me in the outdoors, and the full ability I had to slow down and appreciate my life—not for what I wished it would be, but for what it really was right then.
Savoring the future: What do you hope to do tomorrow? Do you have plans to eat lunch with someone you haven’t seen in a while? Take time to really foster the excitement you have to see this person and plan out an outfit you’ll wear in detail.
Not only can these savoring techniques help ourselves avoid negativity, but they can also improve the way we relate to others. In a study with over 100 undergraduate students, researchers found that the students who savored the past, present, and future felt more fulfilled in their relationships (Lenger & Gordon, 2019). If we are always rushing from one thing to the next and never taking time to pause and soak in the happiest moments with our loved ones, we could be missing out on the true value of our relationships.
As you’re beginning to see, savoring can be applied to many different life situations, and it may even be a powerful tool for those who are beginning to enter their old age and start to encounter physical health problems they didn’t have to worry about in their youth. In a study by Smith and Bryant (2019), aging adults practiced savoring by thinking and writing about an important life lesson they had learned. Researchers prompted the participants to ask themselves something to the effect of ‘If no one had taught me this life lesson, how different would my life be?’ The results were powerful—if the participants had gone through this positive savoring process, they saw aging as less of a problem than those who savored negative aging aspects—for the “positive savorers”, life was something to feel good about.
Whether you are young or old, I hope that you can incorporate savoring into your life, and, in the process, become best friends with the goodness that surrounds you! Each one of us deserves to own the good fortune that comes our way.
“It always pays to dwell on the beautiful things—the more beautiful, the more slowly”
References
Channel 3000 / News 3 Now. (2019, November 12). The key to happiness: Savoring good things [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrUWpYOOlWQ
Lenger, K. A., & Gordon, C. L. (2019). To have and to savor: Examining the associations between savoring and relationship satisfaction. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 8(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000111
Smith, J. L., & Bryant, F. B. (2019). Enhancing positive perceptions of aging by savoring life lessons. Aging & Mental Health, 23(6), 762–770. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2018.1450840