Want to miss (or forget) life’s sweetest moments? Easy: don’t savor anything. My late mother, an artist, knew this was a terrible strategy for happiness. Through her art, she was an expert at savoring—and the first to teach me its benefits.
In this episode of Office Hours, I connect her lesson to what we now know from behavioral science: because of our built-in negativity bias, we tend to overlook positive experiences unless we make an effort to notice them. I’ll share three simple ways to do that—so you can experience your life more deeply, remember it more clearly, and find meaning even in the hard moments.
Want to go deeper on this—and other ideas from the podcast—and actually put them into practice? If you’re ready to do that work in person, I’ve partnered with MEA, a transformational science-backed retreat center, to bring these principles to life through a series of retreats in Santa Fe. You can find the details at retreats.arthurbrooks.com.
Brought to you by: David Protein—The most effective portable protein on the planet.
Referenced:
• The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness
• The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks
• Savoring the past: Positive memories evoke value representations in the striatum
• The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
• Does savoring increase happiness? A daily diary study
• Savouring the Present to Better Recall the Past
• Fame ruined me, but faith saved me: Office Hours meets The Office, with special guest Rainn Wilson
• Not all emotions are created equal: the negativity bias in social-emotional development
• The Brain Is Adaptive Not Triune: How the Brain Responds to Threat, Challenge, and Change
• Savoring Beliefs Inventory (SBI): A scale for measuring beliefs about savouring
• The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive: Saint Irenaeus and Mother Seton
• We Aren’t Meant to Live in the Moment
• Savoring Interventions Increase Positive Emotions After a Social-Evaluative Hassle
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