This weekend I had the joy of celebrating Mother’s Day with my amazing mother-in-law. As Victor and I were flying back, I realized neither of us took any pictures. But this led me to ponder how too often we let the good moments pass without truly celebrating them.
A quiet evening out with our partner, a friend makes us laugh, celebrating Mother’s Day, or a rainbow stretching across the sky — these are just tiny moments, and the positive emotions associated with them fade . . . but they don't have to. We just have to savor them.
What is savoring?
Savoring just means that we feel joy and be fully present in the moment. Savoring is a powerful tool to build positivity.
Try these different savoring techniques to see what works best for you.
1. Savor the past
Savoring a memory is perhaps the easiest way to practice. Just spend a few minutes thinking about a happy, joyful, or pleasant event that happened to you in the last week or month. For example, you could think about when you spent time with “someone special,” or completed an important project.
As you are thinking back on the pleasant event, think about the person, physical sensations, sights, smells and sounds that you experienced. Think about these, and try to recreate the positive emotions you felt around the time of the event. As you are savoring, let your thoughts wander to anything else about the happy experience that made you feel good.
Take a deep breath and pay attention to how these emotions feel in your body. Let the emotions fade on their own until you are ready to go back to whatever else you were doing.
2. Savor the present.
Are you that person who’s too busy taking pictures to notice and appreciate the small pleasures life has to offer? If so, then you could greatly benefit from practicing the present. You do this by paying attention any time you are experiencing something positive.
Whenever you notice yourself feeling good, mentally hold onto the feeling by thinking about the positive emotions and what caused them. You may also want to practice gratitude by reminding yourself that you’re grateful for whatever or whoever caused these positive emotions.
3. Savor the future.
Did you know we often experience positive emotions when just thinking about something we desire to accomplish, even before we have achieved it? How? By using our imagination to increase happiness.For example, you might be looking forward to a vacation this summer. If so, you could practice savoring by thinking about what you’ll do, who will be there, and the positive emotions you hope to feel. As a result, you’ll generate good feelings from an experience that hasn’t even happened yet.
At the end of it all, I realized that while having some pictures of the Mother’s Day gathering would’ve been great, we were fully steeped in savoring our precious moments together. What could be better than that?