How to Increase Your Happiness in 10 Seconds
Hello friends! Today’s newsletter is way behind schedule - I’m curled up in bed with a cold that’s knocked me out, so I’ll be brief (and hopefully, lucid!)
But I’m savoring the fact that despite this momentary setback, today’s newsletter marks six months of The New Happy! Thank you to all of you for reading it, for your questions, your feedback, and your friendship. I’m feeling so grateful for this amazing community.
To be honest, I’d normally blow right past this date, without acknowledging it or mentioning it to anyone. I’d notice it quickly, in a business-like manner, as though I’m seeing an email come through with some boring-yet-maybe-useful information, and then just zoom right past it. Can anyone relate? 🙋
We have this tendency to pour our heart and soul into something and then just completely ignore the little moments of joy that come from it - turning play into work, or work into drudgery.
I’m trying to do a better job of pausing to savor the good in life, and this is a perfect moment to do that. And today, I want to share with you the science of savoring, also known as ‘the 10 second, simplest, most obvious way to make yourself happier, that for some reason we humans often forget to do.”
It only takes 10 seconds.
“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
These are legendary lines for a reason - this quote from Hamlet captures so much of the human experience, and one of the most frustrating paradoxes of our nature: so much of the quality of our life lies in the way that we interpret it, and yet we are not naturally inclined to interpret events in a way that serves us.
We get so caught up in life’s passage that we often forget to pause and focus on the many small, beautiful moments that bless us with their existence, in favor of the big hardship, or the next demand, or the hope of perfection.
Savoring is about pausing and appreciating what is, right now, in this moment, even if it is imperfect.
(Right now, I find myself pulled away from savoring this moment by telling myself how foolish I was to put off writing this piece until yesterday, how silly it is to celebrate such a small milestone, how it’s not exactly as perfect as I thought it would be. In short, I’m wishing for the perfect moment rather than appreciating this moment, and the joy that it contains, abundant even in the imperfection.)
The academic definition of savoring is “the act of mindfully engaging in thoughts and behaviors that heighten the effect of positive events on positive feelings.” That makes it sound way more complicated than it actually is: savoring is what you do naturally when you inhale the steam off of a cup of tea, when you put your hands close to the fire, when you taste a delicious meal, when you enjoy a glass of water after a hot hike.
Sometimes, when we experience emotions, we lean into them and luxuriate in them, and sometimes, we suppress those emotions if we feel if it is inappropriate. You also might have, like me, another voice in your head that tells you to move on past the moment and get on to the next one, dammit, because life is about being productive!
Stop. Savor. Enjoy the moment.
Research has found that savoring:
Improves the quality of our relationships
Improves our mental health
Improves our physical health
Enhance your gratitude
Facilitate greater mindfulness
Enhance your ability to get into ‘flow’ states
Inspires greater creativity
It also helps to guard us against one of our deep-seated cognitive biases that keep us from happiness: the impact bias. This is our tendency to overestimate the impact that events in the future will have upon our happiness. We believe that it is the big life events - the wedding, the new job, the new house - that will make us happy, but it is actually the small moments that have the greatest impact on our well-being.
How to Savor
There are so many different ways to savor, but here’s the quick and dirty instructions: take ten seconds and lean into your positive emotions, as though you’re bringing the picture of your life into focus. Go deep, hang onto your thoughts, and bring a deliberate quality to your thinking, drawing the positive into view. You can savor anything: the present moment, but also the future and the past.
There are four types of savoring:
Basking: being receptive to praise and congratulations
Thanksgiving: expressing gratitude
Marveling: losing yourself in the wonder of the experience
Luxuriating: engaging your senses fully
The secret to increasing your happiness is to just pause and use one of these strategies, for about 5-10 seconds, as often as you can. That’s it! So simple. It’s something you already know how to do - it’s just about making the time for it.
Here are a few of my favorite strategies:
Savoring Strategy #1: Share with others
Seek out other people to share your experience, reminisce about a shared memory, or to collectively anticipate something in the future. One of my best friends does this naturally: every small win in her life is joyfully celebrated with all who might be interested, giving her many opportunities throughout her day to connect with other people.
Savoring Strategy #2: Memory building
Take a moment to actively store images in your brain so that they will be fresh in the future, an activity which was delightfully called 'taking mental pictures' by the television show The Office.
Savoring Strategy #3: Self-congratulation
If you achieve something meaningful or positive, take the time to bask in your accomplishments. Tell yourself how proud you are of yourself! Each week, you can also take a moment to write down your biggest accomplishments of the week.
Savoring Strategy #4: Sensory-perceptual sharpening
This one sounds way more complicated than it actually is: focus your senses on the specific stimuli that you want to savor, which will help you to narrow your focus. If you have ever been so immersed in a sunset so beautiful that all sound receded, all thoughts quieted, and sense of self faded away, you have experienced this type of savoring.
Savoring Strategy #5: Temporal awareness
Sometimes savoring can be bittersweet, of the bittersweetness of a beautiful moment that will inevitably pass away quickly. Reminding yourself of this truth can help you to remember to focus on where you are, right now. One study asked college seniors to bring awareness to the bittersweetness of their last few weeks at college by savoring twice a week; these students reported greater well-being than those who tried to repress the thought of the rapidly-approaching future.
Savoring Strategy #6: Count your blessings
Bring awareness to what you are grateful for in a specific moment. Acknowledge your great good fortune, especially if it is the result of the kindness of others. One way that I do this is keeping a document where I write down the small, wonderful moments of each day. I have found that this practice helps me in the moment by focusing my attention on seeking these moments, and I often return to the list when I am feeling down as a little pick-me-up.
What gets in the way?
Some research has found that whether or not we allow ourselves to savor our emotions is influenced by our self-esteem and if we believe that we deserve the good things that happen to us. Luckily, the ability to savor is a resource that can be built over time. The more that we practice, the more that we can move towards a state of being that automatically orients ourselves towards savoring, creating a habit of luxuriating in the positive.
You deserve good things. You do. I promise.
Another limiting belief is the prevalent fear of setting sky-high expectations, believing that if we think about it too much, it will never be as good as we have dreamed. Many of our most dearly-held dreams are ones that are rarely spoken out loud, held hostage by this belief.
It’s okay to ask for what you want.
The most common objection I hear to this intervention is that someone is too busy to savor. Many days, most of us feel as though we are just barely avoiding submersion in the avalanche of work, responsibilities, duties. Too busy fighting the busy battle, many of the best moments of our lives pass us by: a compliment from a coworker is brushed off, a delightful meal hurriedly eaten at one's desk, or a loved one's daily stories brushed aside in favor of the chores.
It just takes 10 seconds. You deserve to take those 10 seconds of joy.
Happy savoring, everyone! Have an amazing week.