• Inspiring Savoring Activities
  • Sharing with others
    Actively seeking and including other people in personal positive experiences and listening to shared stories about past events or future plans can amplify positive emotions. They might point out relevant positive details we may have missed from an event. Also, watching their emotional response can increase one’s own positive emotions.
  • Memory building
    By intentionally creating a memory, people can choose the elements from that experience that evoke more pleasure in order to savor that moment to the fullest. Taking a mental picture of an event or keeping a journal or scrapbook to document special moments are some examples of how to build memories.
  • Self-congratulation
    Savoring individual or collective success by relishing achievements is another way to amplify positive feelings.
  • Sensory-perceptual sharpening
    Purposefully focusing attention on specific features of an experience can enable people to deepen their positive experience or explore it in more detail. Sitting in front of the ocean with your eyes closed while listening to the sound of the waves is a way to narrow your attention and enhance the inner delight generated from the sound.
  • Comparing
    Taking time to reflect on how a particular experience is better is another savoring strategy. You can compare the experience to a different setting (counterfactual comparison), the past (temporal comparison), or what other people experience (social comparison) to increase and prolong positive emotions.
  • Absorption
    Although similar to flow, absorption requires periods of awareness of positive emotions while being immersed and engaged in a particular experience. This can promote the sensation of slowing down and the feeling of positive moments being prolonged.
  • Behavioral expression
    By physically manifesting positive emotions, people can amplify those feelings. Some examples of expressing emotion may include laughing, shouting, and clapping while celebrating a special occasion.
  • Temporal awareness
    Bringing awareness to the fleeting nature of a positive experience can motivate people to savor the moment and make the most out of it before it ends.
  • Counting blessings
    By attending to and reflecting on a positive experience and the reasons one might be grateful for that experience, people can foster positive feelings.
  • Avoiding kill-joy thinking
  • Evading downplay and devaluation of positive experiences by not focusing on imperfections can promote lasting positive feelings. However, this might apply only to some cultures, since some contexts value dampening strategies to regulate positive emotions

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