Good Life Tips: Savor Good Times

Tips, advice, and pointers for living a happy life gleaned from the latest research of positive psychology.

The new and growing field of positive psychology offers much good advice with loads of tips to help your pursuit of happiness and the good life.

Positive psychology researcher Christopher Peterson, reports in his book, A Primer in Positive Psychology, that people who savor the good times are happier, more satisfied in general with life, more optimistic, and less depressed than those who don't savor.

Peterson describes savoring as "...our awareness of pleasure and our deliberate attempt to make it last."

Good Life Tip:

The next time something good or pleasurable happens to you, try these savoring strategies to increase and lengthen the joy of the event:

• Share the experience with others.
• Build memories of the experience with mental photographs or physical souvenirs.
• Congratulate yourself, reinforcing how pleased and impressed you are with the experience.
• Sharpen your perception of the experience by focusing on specific elements or highlights.
• Absorb it; get totally immersed in the pleasure of the experience, shutting out other thoughts.

For more Positive Psychology material see Positive Psychology Tips and Tools in the index.