3 Mindful Minutes: Savouring

0:04 Hey, I'm cast doun A, my psychologist, coach, mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. Welcome to another three mindful minutes. Today, I want to talk about the idea of savoring. Savoring is a term that is used to describe maximizing your appreciation of good things and pleasant experiences as they're happening. When you savor an experience, you fully immerse yourself into that experience. You become very physically, mentally present, emotionally present, and bring your whole self to that experience. It's kind of like plumbing the joy out of the moments, the positive experiences as they're happening. We get very busy, we're very distracted. We're rushing around doing a thousand things, and we can often miss opportunities to be really present, especially when things are going well. We can savor the taste of the food that we're eating, a conversation that we're having with a friend. We can savor a beautiful sunset, just the feeling of the warm sunshine on your skin. There's loads of opportunities to savor pleasant experiences, and by doing that, what you do is you build a buffer against potential negative experiences that might happen and likely will happen. Our brain is heavily biased towards focusing on and remembering difficult and painful and unpleasant experiences. Therefore,

1:34 it's on all of us to do what we can to counteract that negativity bias by turning up the dial on positive experiences and emotions when they happen. You might think that this sounds just like mindfulness, and it is, but there are some fundamental differences. When we are mindful, we are bringing our full self and bringing our full awareness to the moment. But even when that moment is unpleasant, we can be mindful of our own anger, our fear, our anxiety. We can be very present to how that feels in our body, to what are the stories that we're telling ourselves in that moment. That is mindfulness. It's turning towards instead of turning away from difficult or unpleasant experiences.

2:19 And while we can equally be mindful of positive and joyful experiences, which is essentially what savoring is, mindfulness is all about what is happening right now in this moment. So the other difference between mindfulness and savoring is that you can also savor experiences that aren't necessarily happening in this moment. You can savor really happy memories. You can reminisce about positive experiences or times in your life. Bring to mind how that felt, how good that felt, feel that in your body, Bring all of those positive, pleasant emotions up in this present moment, even if that moment is not happening right now. Equally, you can savor the anticipation of something that you're looking forward to. And this is not about wishing your life away, but is about when something good is coming up, something that makes you feel excited or joyful or optimistic, that sense of anticipation, all of those really positive, pleasant emotions. Savor those as well.

3:22 Rick Hanson is a psychologist in the United States who wrote a book called Hardwiring Happiness, and here really emphasized this idea of savoring as a way to rewire your brain so that it is more likely to default to positive emotions, particularly if you have a very strong negativity bias, and you know that you have a tendency to default to negative or uncomfortable or painful thoughts and feelings. So I would have really encourage you to find moments that you can savor. This requires you to slow down, to get really present, and to really intentionally maximise the goodness, the positive feelings. How does it feel in your body, What are the positive thoughts that you're having, what are the positive emotions? Who are the people that you really appreciate, Get really present, really just have the intention of plumbing the joy where there is joy to be found. I hope that that is something that you can take forward into this Christmas season, the festive season, especially when although there often plenty of good things happening, plenty of joyful experiences, it can also be a time that is difficult and stressful.

4:33 So if we can find the opportunities to tap into, to really tune into and dial up the volume on those positive experiences, I hope that really helps you to get as much joy as possible out of this season. Thank you for listening to today's three Mindful Minutes. Obviously full length episodes of my podcast, Crapy Are Happy come out on Wednesdays. You'll hear more from me and from interesting, inspiring guests that I talk to that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you give us a follow so that you never miss an episode, share it with your friends, and if you would give us a five star rating and review on Apple or Spotify, that would be absolutely amazing.

5:13 I can't wait to catch you next week for another three mindful minutes