Savoring (Bryant and Veroff)

OVERVIEW

If coping is our ability to handle adversity, what’s the opposite – the counterpart to enduring suffering? Authors Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff think it’s savouring, the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in your life. I picked up their book Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience for its connection to meaning in life. This book is an account (mostly academic) of how to luxuriate in your living – how to make life richer, more delicious. Whatever a meaningful life is, it includes the story we tell ourselves about our experiences, and savouring is all about absorbing the sweetness from each experience.

The message is clear: if you want more from life, learn how to savour.

What it is and how to enhance it

Savouring is either world-focused or self-focused, and is either experiential (perceptual engrossment) or introspective (cognitive reflection). Within the cross-sections of these categories there are four main savouring processes: thanksgiving, marveling, basking, and luxuriating.

·         Thanksgiving (world-focused, introspective): in thanksgiving we acknowledge or express profound gratitude for life experiences – we reflect on our lives, our good fortune, and feel a swell of deep appreciation. Thanksgiving is reverent reflection.

·         Marveling (world-focused, experiential): to marvel is to be struck with awe by some external stimulus, or to lose your sense of time and self. Awesome majesty, power, rarity, or mystery all serve as suitable stimuli (your first view of the Grand Canyon, listening to a symphony, or stepping through a sequoia grove). Marveling is reverent absorption.

·         Basking (self-focused, introspective): to bask is to joyfully receive praise or congratulations from others (or from yourself) – to revel in a personal victory or accomplishment. Award ceremonies, social compliments, or other forms of celebration can all be triggers. Basking is self-praise/self-admiration.

·         Luxuriating (self-focused, experiential): luxuriating is indulging in pleasurable physical sensations, like soaking in a Jacuzzi tub, getting a massage, or enjoying a gourmet meal. It’s physical ecstasy, gratifying sensations. Luxuriating is experiential absorption in physical delight.

World-focused savouring allows us to surrender our sense of self, to feel compelled by something more than our own individual person, like a work of art, a sweeping vista, or self-surrender to a social connection. World-focused savouring is transcendence and elevation, it’s to be overwhelmed with gratitude or awe, or to feel part of something bigger than yourself. Self-focused savouring, rather, anchors to the self. It feels like you’re wringing every drop of pleasure from the moment (luxuriating) or delighting in a self-esteem boost (basking). Self-focused savouring is to relish sunbathing on the beach; world-focused savouring is to be awestruck by the huge expanse of sky and ocean. Self-focused savouring is the warm glow when you receive an award; world-focused savouring is to be overwhelmed with gratitude at the recognition.

There are several things that will affect the intensity of your savouring: your degree of focus, the novelty, duration, and sensory complexity of the experience, and how unstressed you are. You can amplify and prolong savouring by blocking out interfering stimuli, heightening your focus, and using anticipation and recall (at the extremes of age, the gift of youth is dreaming of the future and the gift of age reminiscing on the past). Also, try:

·         Sharing your experience with others

·         Taking mental pictures, attending to every sensory input (this is called active memory building)

·         Becoming immersed in the moment, allowing yourself to be a sponge

·         Expressing your feelings physically (laughing, raising up your arms, jumping up and down)

·         Reminding yourself how transient and fleeting this moment will be

·         Counting your blessings

All of these will help you actively derive pleasure and fulfillment from your positive experiences. Savouring is the active process of enjoyment.

Spirituality and Meaning

Savouring also offers up a new definition for spirituality (from which we can find the secular thread). Bryant and Veroff define spirituality as a process of meaning-making where the “meaning” rests on something bigger than us – seeking value or goodness beyond ourselves. “In the simplest of terms, therefore, we argue that savoring facilitates the process of making meaning in life by connecting people with what they see as the larger enduring forces outside their physical worlds.” The world-focused types of savouring, in other words, have the potential to engage spiritual connection, finding yourself:

“…in awe of the grandeur of nature; overwhelmed by the magnificence of a symphonic performance; astonished by the elegant order of a brilliant scientific theory; […] swept up in the love of another person; moved by the goodness or grace of another; or overcome by a deep sense of gratitude for the good fortune that life […] has bestowed on them. The important thing in all these world-focused instances of savoring, we argue, is that people lose most of the constraints on their physical existence, for the moment at least, and under these conditions encounter a force larger than themselves. In other words, they experience spiritual connection.”

For Bryant and Veroff, spirituality, awe, wonder, transcendence, and meaning are all connected. Spirituality is meaning-making of a savouring, world-focused origin, which therefore incorporates marveling (awe, astonishment) and thanksgiving (gratitude). In addition, savouring can support your quest for personal meaning by amplifying positive experiences and mood. Studies show that positive affect is a strong predictor for perceived meaning in life – that being in a positive mood makes your life feel more meaningful.

So, bask in a personal accomplishment, marvel at the grandeur of the world, reflect on your thankfulness, and luxuriate in pleasure, and you’ll increase your likelihood of finding purpose, fulfillment, and meaning.

WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)

Here are two exercises the authors recommend for increasing your day-to-day savouring.

Take a weekly vacation

Take 20 minutes once a week to let time pass more slowly, to go on a “vacation” (which comes from the Latin vacare, meaning to be free or exempt). Schedule some time, set aside worries or pressing responsibilities, and plan to do something you like. During your “vacation,” notice each pleasurable stimulus, sensation, and thought. Build an active memory of this moment. Tell your partner/friend about your experience. Plan your next one!

Life review exercise

Think of an experience that you savoured. When was the last time you had this experience? Write down the details of that situation, where you were, the perceptual-sensory inputs, the people you were with, the time of day, etc. Now pick another memory and do it again. Do it a third time, but this time pick an experience that you truly recall as the first time you ever savoured. Remember, reminiscence can also be a sweet kind of savouring, relishing nostalgia. Which of your memories are the most vivid, the most satisfying? Can you seek out more of those kinds of experiences?

IN SUM:

Is this book entirely secular? No.

If I had to describe the book in one sentence? What savouring is, what it isn’t, how to amplify it, and why it’s important for meaning and spirituality.

Who should read this book? Anyone with an inkling that they could get more enjoyment if they actually enjoyed more (an insight sitting right under your nose!).