“I want to tell everybody to celebrate every day, to savor the day and be good to yourself, love yourself, and then you can be good to others and be of service to others.” ~ Charlotte Rae
Be Grateful ~ Savor Life…
When we think of being grateful or thankful for what we have, we see this as an action.
Something to do occasionally when we get around to it.
But…
Imagine how much happier and contented you would be if you made this part of your personality… part of the authentic you we keep talking about… WHO you are.
When we experience the natural emotions of mourning, bereavement, and grief, it seems impossible to savor life. Our life has been shaken, with nothing left to savor.
I don’t want to seem like I am preaching here, but there is always something to appreciate—even in dark and desperate times. Of course, this is why we wrote the Grieve With Grace™ program.
To teach you that there is life after grief… you will love and be loved again.
To save you a bit of time so you can savor the movement even more, I grabbed a number of hits off Google to provide direction.
These are all techniques I use each day. You might think of it as making Grace a habit, or simply being Grateful for the wonders of life!
1. Make pleasurable experiences last as long as possible. Reflect on one or two positive experiences for two or three minutes per day. Be conscious of deliberately remembering as many details of the positive experience.
2. Share positive moments with others. Call, text, post on social media, or send an email.
3. Develop memory building. Take mental photographs and/or a physical souvenir and write about the experience in a journal.
4. Appreciate time. Good moments will pass quickly. Work on deliberately relishing each one.
5. Do one task at a time. Catch yourself when hurrying through things. Doing things slower helps with deepening our ability for appreciation.
6. Recognize flow. This occurs when you’re absorbed in a moment that makes you lose a sense of time and place. Make a conscious effort to carve out time to do things that put you in the flow.
Creating Savoring Rituals (from PsychologyToday)…
When we contemplate the things that would make us happy, we tend to think of extraordinary and memorable events – going on a trip of a lifetime or a lottery win, for instance. Yet consistently noticing and savoring small, everyday positive moments can have a significant effect on happiness, resilience, well-being, and overall life satisfaction.
Subjective well-being is not likely to be significantly improved by savoring only truly extraordinary positive events, which are often, by nature, rare and sporadic. Indeed, the frequency of positive experiences is a much better predictor of happiness than the intensity of those experiences.
Savoring is the capacity to notice, appreciate, enhance, and prolong the positive experiences in life, with deliberate attention to and awareness of positive emotions.
Increased awareness of pleasurable sensations lies at the very heart of savoring; when time is taken to notice and savor pleasant experiences, not only can we recognize positive emotions, but we can also fully appreciate them. Sensory-perceptual sharpening is a specific savoring strategy whereby one exerts efforts to be fully present at certain moments by deliberately directing attention to the pleasant experience. How people direct their attention during positive events has been found to influence their experience of positive emotions. For instance, research findings in the field of mindfulness, defined as the ability to fully present in the moment, have shown that increasing mindfulness can enhance the experience of positive emotions.
So…
Savoring life is important to our mental, spiritual, and physical health.
Imagine how you would feel if you could do what the girl in our picture is doing…
Petting her elephant each morning as she hops on and heads to school!
Hugs,
Eric Richard Haas
Grace Note: What usually keeps you busy doing what you are already doing… holding you back from fully savoring the moment? This might be something you want to address, sooner rather than later.
Your bridge of Grace over your river of tears
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