BookYol

Concept

Savoring

Savoring is the deliberate act of noticing, stretching and deepening a good experience, whether by anticipating it, slowing down while it happens or recalling and sharing it afterwards, so that its pleasure lasts longer than the moment itself.

Lyubomirsky includes savoring among the happiness activities in The How of Happiness, drawing on the work of the psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff, who studied how people make the most of positive experiences. Savoring runs in three directions of time. People savor the past by reminiscing, alone or with others who were there; the present by slowing down and giving full attention to a meal, a walk or a conversation; and the future by anticipating something good and imagining it in detail. The research points to a handful of techniques: sharing the experience with someone, sharpening the senses by focusing on one detail, building a memory on purpose by noting what you want to keep, and resisting the habit of rushing on to the next thing. Savoring matters because the good parts of a day are usually there already and pass unnoticed, especially once they become familiar; it is a direct counter to hedonic adaptation. It also has a limit: an experience analysed too closely loses some of its charm. Savoring is a pause to enjoy, not a project to measure.

A real-life example

Nesrin, an architect in Trabzon, used to drink her morning tea on the balcony while reading emails. For one week she left the phone inside for those ten minutes and looked at one thing each morning: the fog on the hills, the steam rising from the glass, the first ship leaving the harbour. On Friday evening she told her sister, on the phone, the best moment of her week. The tea did not change; what she kept of it did.

How to use it

  1. 1Choose one ordinary pleasure today and give it your full attention for a few minutes, without a screen.
  2. 2Tell someone about a good moment the same day; sharing it makes it last.
  3. 3Before a good event, spend a minute anticipating it in detail; afterwards, recall it once without analysing it.