The Art of Savoring
Golden yellow flowers in Luzern, Switzerland
In the You 2.0 series, the host of the Hidden Brain podcast, Shankar Vedantam, interviewed psychologist Fred Bryant for two episodes called Slow Down! and Make the Good Times Last.
In the first episode, Slow Down! Fred Bryant shares advice to the effect of, “We are not camels. We can’t store joy. Joy must be replenished.” As I listened to the podcast while preparing dinner, I laughed out loud at this statement because it is so true.
If we are to feel more enjoyment in life, he says, we should spend more time lingering, savoring, and “extracting wonder from the ordinary.” Finding delight in the way the morning light rays peek through the slats in a backyard fence and create walls of water droplets when we water our gardens or noticing a hummingbird visit a new flower in the garden can be a source of wonder in the day that could otherwise be considered a daily chore.
“But two things will serve you better than any others. Infinite curiosity and a keen sense of observation.”
Finding time amid family life to observe, linger, savor, and appreciate can feel like an uphill battle. Most of us expect savoring to happen in large swaths of time and only if we enjoy an elaborate dinner, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, or some epic adventure. However, savoring can happen in small moments in otherwise ordinary days.
Personal growth can happen in small moments as well. When we enjoy small bites and linger for a day with the knowledge or the experience to absorb or process what we’ve taken in before beginning the process again the following day can also have its benefits.
After following Brooke McAlary’s monthly updates on her 1% Project, I started paying attention to my daily 1% progress in a few aspects of my life. The process feels like planting seeds. I plant the tiny seed of something I want to keep in my life or grow in some way, and I commit to consistently caring for my growth.
The hardest part about scaling back and tempering my expectations to only give 1% a day to these tasks is to not fall to the pressure of feeling like I need to rush to keep up with society’s pace, which seems to shout “Do everything all at once and finish it all immediately!”
My energy level and time constraints keep these pockets to 15-30 minutes daily. For the past month, I’ve planted seeds to work on my Spanish language learning, create a refuge for birds and pollinators in our garden, take time to read books that I find intriguing, write down my observations and thoughts (that eventually seed the ideas for what I post on 52 Seasons), chip away at house projects, keep the house tidy, and improve my nature photography (which also includes organizing the overwhelming amount of digital clutter I’ve accumulated.)
Consistency becomes a habit if I water these seeds by repeating them daily. James Clear calls this concept mental toughness.
“Mental toughness is built through small wins. It’s the individual choices that we make on a daily basis that build our “mental toughness muscle.” We all want mental strength, but you can’t think your way to it. It’s your physical actions that prove your mental fortitude."
Mental toughness is about your habits, not your motivation.
Motivation is fickle. Willpower comes and goes.
Mental toughness isn’t about getting an incredible dose of inspiration or courage. It’s about building the daily habits that allow you to stick to a schedule and overcome challenges and distractions over and over and over again.
Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent.”
-from James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday Newsletter
James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits
I’m tucking these projects into family life in small ways to seed personal growth. Sometimes, my small progress needs to pause for a week, and my focus must temporarily go elsewhere. Life’s seasons are cycles and not linear paths.
Time for silence and wonder can be a way to enhance the soil where the seeds grow, like a good quality compost or fertilizer that strengthens the roots and encourages the blooms of a newly seeded plant. This might look like slowing down, lingering, listening, doing nothing, walking in the garden, noticing cloud shapes, or enjoying a public art installation.
“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”
As much as we like to add to our lives, we must also learn to take some things away, to trim a few branches to allow for growth in other areas. We can let go of perfection, notice places in our lives that feel stagnant, and find places where doing less is the answer.
I once had a yoga teacher who asked his students to neatly put away all the yoga props at the end of class except for the blankets. He told us that the blankets didn’t need to be folded because life needs the contrast of some things being left undone and imperfect.
When we embrace a little bit of wildness, we’re able to see its beauty. I think that may be why I love cottage gardens. They are intentionally wild and free, and there is a story to be told in their beauty and organic arrangement.
Appreciating the messiness of life reminds me of a writing piece I read recently where the author wrote about fridge doors as a metaphor for life. I followed the link to the site from Brooke McAlary’s newsletter Motto for the Mess.
After reading her writing, I could relate. Most fridge doors aren’t magnetic anymore, which means that there are fewer haphazard collections of life on fridges. My husband and I were happily surprised to find out that one unexpected feature of our inexpensive fridge was that our fridge doors are magnetic. Life feels a little like our fridge door these days. Mostly our fridge is filled with school and golf schedules, grocery lists, and home project to-do lists, but there is also a graphic of dogs in headbands and leg warmers and a Napoleon Dynamite magnet.
When I read All the Books I’ll Never Read on Substack, it caught my attention. There was a part where the author, Stacey Langford, writes, “We cannot approach even a twinkle of that brightness as creatives if we are spread too thin.”
Gulp. This one hit home. I know this truth about myself. My desire to try out ideas, research, and learn can cause me to wind up in a flurry of activity only to feel drained and then sapped of just the creative inspiration I need to create. What I related to most in her writing piece was that I feel the pain she describes of wanting to do so much and also needing to come to grips with how much time I actually have. Inserting more into my calendar usually just means I’m exhausted. I am able to notice more, to fully immerse myself, and to absorb the information or experience to a higher degree when I’m taking my time and approaching growth in small steps.
When we push the envelope on what’s possible (even at a snail’s pace!), engage our imaginations, revel in the messy part of life, and search for wonder in our daily lives, we are creating new versions of ourselves as we outgrow who we were just the day before. Seeds take time and nourishment to grow, but their transformation is something to behold.
“My mother would say, 'Yes, yes, I understand. You can do everything, but do it quietly. No need to make a fuss.'
"And I would say, 'Mother, how can you have a revolution without a fuss?'"
— Isabel Allende, author of Violeta, in conversation about feminism with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the Wiser Than Me podcast
(quotation from School of Joy newsletter)
Violeta by Isabel Allende in English, Spanish, and audiobook formats
What seeds are you planting in this season of your life? When you have a goal in mind, do you work on personal growth slowly or dive in head first to devote hours at a time to learn a new skill? Please share your experiences with us in the comments below this post.