Savoring is a set of skills that can be learned in order to increase the positive emotion we experience in our day-to-day existences.
Psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff published a book last year on this subject:
Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
According to them, [...]
I’ve been an active contributor to Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) ever since it started. PPND is an online publication about positive psychology with regular articles by people who have gone through an applied positive psychology training program — the one at Penn and the one at East London University. We also occasionally [...]
I’ve always been fond of L. M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. I think of her as a great contributor to the positive canon, not just in the Anne stories, which are full of humor and duty and compassion for the human condition. But also in the short stories that [...]
We’ve had more than 5 inches of rain this week. What a blessing!
We’ve enjoyed the sound of rain, the smell of rain, the sight of rain against the streetlamps at night, the feeling of rain on our skin. I wish I’d remembered to stand outside with my mouth open to enjoy the taste [...]
We’re having a serious drought here in North Carolina. We had no hurricanes bring heavy rains in September, and it has been a long time since our last good hard rain. The tops of the trees are turning brown instead of their usual fall colors. This isn’t the first time we’ve had [...]
A friend sent me the following poem by John Ciardi, a great contribution to my Gratitude Scrapbook. It’s actually the second time she has given it to me. The first time was in high school when she taught my senior English class. I still remembered the “two soft kissing kites” and [...]
The fig season has ended, at least down low in the area of the tree that we can reach. The tanagers and jays and robins and vireos and thrushes are still finding ripe figs up high, so the tree is still a huge bird feeder right outside my office window.
It makes me think [...]
When I was a girl, I read a book called Hitty, First 100 Years — the story of a doll as it passed through the lives of different generations. That came to mind this morning when I was making my bed and pulling up the quilt that I use as a bedspread.
This quilt was pieced [...]
Every day I get numerous bursts of small pleasures from the Google desktop photo gadget that cycles through pictures on my computer showing a new one every 10 seconds or so. In the corner of my eye, the pictures appear. Many I ignore, but many give me a small rush.
I particularly like pictures [...]
Last time I talked about the gratitude I feel when I use things that make me remember people. I commented that some objects that carry memory are almost too precious to use, lest they be soiled or destroyed. When we don’t use them, they can’t serve as gratitude cues for us.
That reminded me [...]
