Savoring positive experiences

Slow down and linger in a pleasant experience — letting it register fully rather than rushing through or narrating it away.

Why it works

Positive events often fail to produce the emotional benefit they could because attention moves on before the emotional encoding is complete. Savoring — deliberately slowing attention on a pleasant experience and prolonging engagement with it — gives positive emotional data time to register in memory and to activate the physiological states associated with wellbeing. It counteracts the habit of quickly consuming experiences and moving to the next.

How to do it

1. Notice when something pleasant is happening and deliberately pause to give it full attention.
2. Describe the sensations internally: what is this like, physically and emotionally, right now?
3. Share it with someone, mentally replay it, or take a photo as a memory-anchor (not a performance).
4. Practice anticipatory savoring too: spend a few minutes fully imagining a coming positive experience.

Evidence

Savoring has a small but growing research base. Bryant and Veroff’s work identifies savoring as a set of skills that enhance positive emotion through amplification and prolonged attention. Savoring interventions have shown wellbeing improvements in experimental studies. (observational)

Some people find savoring produces worry about losing the positive state, or guilt about enjoying while others suffer — these reactions limit its effectiveness for some individuals.

Sources

• Bryant & Veroff (2007), Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience
• Jose, Lim & Bryant (2012), savoring and wellbeing, Motivation and Emotion

Common mistake

Photographing or describing the experience to others in real time instead of experiencing it — narrating for an audience pulls attention out of the present moment and reduces the actual savoring.