Are there times in your life where you’ve really taken a moment to absorb yourself in an experience?

Perhaps it was at the top of a mountain you had climbed….

Or hearing your favourite band play a song…..

Maybe it was a great conversation with an old friend…..

How did that make you feel?

Imagine this.

It’s a cold, dark wintery day. You’re sitting in your home bundled under a blanket, perhaps with a good book or some nice company. A warm cup of hot chocolate sits beside you and your put it to your lips for a sip. The warmth of the cup hits your mouth, the scent of the chocolate lingers in your nose, you let the liquid sit, just for a moment, in your mouth. As you swallow it down, you pay attention to the warm liquid slowly going down your throat and warming your belly. You focus fully on this and warmth lingers just for a little longer.

This is the art of savouring.

Savouring is, in essence, the practice of focusing our attention on positive experiences. It’s a lovely technique to help us live more fully and presently.

Why practice savouring?

Savouring forces us to keep our attention on an experience and enjoy it for a little while longer.

When we focus our attention on something, we spend more of our mental moments on it and less on something else. It makes the experience more enjoyable, and makes it easier to remember at a later date. People who spend some time savouring moments tend to focus more on the positive and feel that life is more enjoyable.

“It’s like swishing the experience around……in your mind.”

– Joseph Bryant, author of Savoring: A new model of positive experience

What are things that enhance savouring?

Research from Paul Jose et al. showed that there were certain things that helped people with their savouring experiences.

• sharing the experience with another
• thinking about sharing the experience with others
• simply talking about the experience with someone else
• thinking about how lucky we are
• showing physical expressions of energy – basically jumping up and down, or simply laughing and giggling
• feeling totally absorbed in the present

Experiences are savoured more easily when we share our experiences with others, have gratitude for our experiences and fully immerse ourselves in these moments, even using physical expressions to enhance it.

How to bring more savouring into the workplace?

• Mindful eating: take a moment while you’re eating to stop and really pay attention to what you’re eating. What is the texture of the food? How does it feel to chew it? What is the feeling when it is on your tongue? Even a few seconds spent on us helps us to stay more present.

• Basking: If you’re in the hospital, like me, once in a while it’s nice to stop and take a look around at my workplace. Here there are people, working hard, often amidst chaos, to care for others who are sick and in need. It helps me to think about how lucky I am to do this for a living.

• Little things: Spend an extra moment paying attention to the little things that make your day special: The sun on your skin as you walk into work, a smile or laugh shared with a colleague, fresh coffee. If you look around, you might find more that you realize.

• Mental photograph: Take a little mental photograph of good things you experience. Capture as much detail as you can, and see how well you can recall this later.

• Looking forward: In the morning, spend a moment thinking about something at work that might be a moment to savour. What does it look like, feel like? Spend a moment playing it out in your mind.

• Remembering: If nothing else, remember a good moment in your past that you can savour. Replay it as if it was a movie you were watching in real time. Students who were asked to replay a happy memory for eight minutes a day, three days a week had huge effects in their subjective well being.

It’s a simple concept, but it’s very powerful. The more you focus your mental energy on the small aspects of things you enjoy, the more you actually enjoy them! And the more you practice this, the more you can put your mental energy into even smaller details, and a positive feedback loop ensues.

It costs you nothing and makes things better. Sounds like it’s something worth considering to me. Small changes in where you place your attention make huge differences over time.

What do you think? Have you ever tried something like this?