Savoring: The Practice of Noticing Good Moments While They Happen

Good moments do not automatically leave good feelings behind. That idea started the research on savoring: psychologist Fred Bryant argued that coping with bad events and enjoying good ones are separate skills, so a life with few problems can still hold very little enjoyment.¹

Savoring is the second skill. Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff, in their 2007 book Savoring, define it as the capacity to attend to, appreciate and enhance the positive experiences in your life.¹ It can be practiced, and it seems to pay off modestly: pooling randomized trials from the US, Europe and East Asia, a 2026 savoring meta-analysismeta-analysis: A study that combines the results of earlier studies on the same question into one overall estimate. Pooling makes the estimate more precise, but it cannot repair the studies it pools: a meta-analysis of surveys is still survey evidence.Full entry in the glossary found short exercises improved people’s self-rated emotional well-being by a moderate amount, though most programs were brief.²

How to practice savoring, in six everyday habits that take a minute or two each:

1. Pause and name the good moment
2. Sharpen one sense
3. Tell someone about it
4. Take a mental photograph
5. Give yourself credit
6. Catch the killjoy thought

Savoring borrows its noticing from mindfulness as a practice of present-moment attention, then aims that attention at what is going well.

Savoring, defined: enjoyment you notice on purpose

In psychology, savoring means paying deliberate attention to a good experience and responding in ways that deepen or lengthen the good feeling. Fred Bryant of Loyola University Chicago began working on the idea in 1980 and chose the word because it captured enjoyment as something active rather than something that simply happens to you.¹

Bryant thought of savoring as the positive counterpart of coping. Coping is what you do with stress; savoring is what you do with pleasure. In an early survey of a large sample of young adults, the two abilities turned out to be largely separate, and people’s sense that they could savor good feelings was linked to happiness more closely than their sense that they could make good things happen.¹

One feature separates savoring from plain enjoyment: you notice that you are enjoying something. Bryant calls this a mindful awareness of the positive feeling itself, and without it, he writes, the experience is simply pleasure.¹ Picture two people eating the same lunch. One scrolls through messages and finishes without tasting much. The other stops after the first bite to notice the flavor and the fact that it is good. Both had a pleasant meal; only the second savored it.

Myth

Good things make you happy automatically.

Fact

Bryant's research links how people respond to good events with how much they enjoy them, and finds this skill largely separate from coping with bad ones.

If your days contain good moments that leave little trace, the missing piece may be attention rather than luck.

The three types of savoring: looking back, now and ahead

Savoring has three time frames, according to Fred Bryant’s Savoring Beliefs Inventory: reminiscence (looking back at good times), savoring the moment (enjoying what is happening now) and anticipation (looking forward to something good). People rate their skill at each separately, and the three tend to go together.¹

Whichever way you look, the feeling happens now. Bryant and colleagues point out that even when you savor a memory or a plan, the good feelings themselves happen in the present. The time frames can also combine: you can enjoy a holiday more by remembering how much you looked forward to it, or by looking forward to telling the story later.³

1. Looking back (reminiscence): recalling a good memory and letting yourself feel it again
2. Savoring the moment: giving a good experience your full attention while it is happening
3. Looking forward (anticipation): enjoying a good thing that has not happened yet

Are the three equally useful? A 2022 lab experiment at a US university offers a small clue. Researchers put 145 students through a stressful task (preparing a speech on why they were attractive, in front of a camera) and then randomly assigned them to 15 minutes of one of five activities. Students who slowly read and lingered over an upbeat passage, savoring the moment, reported more positive emotion afterward than students who sat quietly, imagined a trip to the grocery store or recalled a joyful memory. Planning a dream holiday beat sitting quietly but not the grocery-store exercise, and recalling a memory beat neither. The study used students, one short session and a single measurement straight afterward, and the authors call their findings preliminary.⁴

Treat that as one study, not a ranking: savoring the moment has the most direct support, so it anchors the habits below.

Examples of savoring: what deepens a good moment and what spoils it

Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff list ten savoring strategies in their Ways of Savoring Checklist: sharing with others, memory building, self-congratulation, sharpening the senses, comparing, absorption, behavioral expression, awareness of time passing, counting blessings and killjoy thinking. The last one shrinks enjoyment rather than growing it.¹

The most useful ones look like this in an ordinary week:

• Sharing with others: you tell a friend that your proposal was accepted. In Shelly Gable’s 2004 studies, telling others about good events was linked to more positive daily feelings beyond the event itself, and the benefit grew when people felt the listener responded with active, constructive interest.⁵
• Memory building: at a friend’s wedding, you stop to fix the scene in your mind so you can call it up later. People do this more for events they see as rare.³
• Absorption: on a walk, you let yourself be taken up by the view instead of planning tomorrow.
• Self-congratulation: after finishing a hard project, you tell yourself you earned it. People do this more when they credit the outcome to their own effort.³
• Killjoy thinking: you remind yourself the praise should have come sooner, or that the weekend is nearly over. Bryant and colleagues found men report more of it than women, and it is more common among East Asian adults than North American ones; there it can serve cultural norms of restraint.³

None of these is the right answer every time. A 2010 study by Jordi Quoidbach and colleagues, as summarized by Bryant’s team, found that people who used a wider range of savoring strategies reported being happier overall.³ A diary studydiary study: A study in which people record what they do or feel repeatedly, often daily or when prompted at random moments, close to when it happens; the prompted form is called experience sampling. It relies less on memory, but it is still self-report.Full entry in the glossary that tracked 101 people for 30 days points the same way: savoring both carried and strengthened the lift that good daily events gave to people’s mood.⁶ Diaries like this record how people feel close to the time, but they still depend on people’s own self-reportself-report: A measure in which people describe their own behavior, feelings or circumstances, usually by answering a questionnaire. When the same person supplies both of the things being compared, shared habits of answering can make the link between them look stronger than it is.Full entry in the glossary. Both studies are observational: they can show a connection, not a cause.

How to practice savoring every day

The six habits below turn those strategies into small daily moves. They are low-risk ideas for healthy adults, not a tested program as a set.

1. Pause and name the good moment

When something pleasant happens, stop and say to yourself what it is: “This coffee is good,” “That was a kind message.” Naming the moment turns a passing reaction into a choice to pay attention, which is the step that separates savoring from plain enjoyment.

2. Sharpen one sense

Pick one channel, such as taste, sound or the warmth of the sun, and stay with it for a few breaths. The savoring exercise in the 2022 experiment asked students to read slowly, linger and notice the feelings the words stirred.⁴ The same slow attention works on a meal or a song.

3. Tell someone about it

Share good news with someone likely to respond warmly, and return the favor when they share theirs. The listener matters: in Gable’s studies the benefit was greater when the response felt active and constructive.⁵ So pick the friend who asks questions over the one who changes the subject.

4. Take a mental photograph

Before a good moment ends, pick one detail to remember: a face, a sound, the light. This is memory building, and it gives you something specific to come back to later.

5. Give yourself credit

When a good outcome follows your own effort, say so to yourself. Self-congratulation, from Bryant and Veroff’s list, comes most naturally when you know the result was yours.

6. Catch the killjoy thought

Notice thoughts such as “It won’t last” or “It could have been better,” and set them aside for now. Any real problem will still be there later.

One more lever is scarcity. In a small 2013 experiment in Canada, students asked to give up chocolate for a week savored a piece more afterward, and were in a better mood after eating it, than students who ate it freely or as usual; more of the abstainers dropped out, so it may not suit everyone. In a separate US study described in the same paper, students led to feel that their time at university was nearly over did more to make the most of it and grew happier over two weeks.⁷ Reminding yourself that a good thing will end can make it count, as long as the thought adds weight to the moment rather than dread.

A two-minute savoring routine

• Notice one good moment and name it
• Stay with one sense for a few breaths
• Tell one person about something good
• Pick one detail to remember
• Credit yourself for one thing that went well
• Set aside one killjoy thought

Does savoring work? What randomized trials found

The strongest evidence on savoring comes from a 2026 meta-analysis by nursing researchers in Taiwan, which pooled randomized trials of exercises explicitly designed to build savoring, in adults from the US, Spain, the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong and Japan. It found a moderate overall benefit on emotional outcomes, with the honest caveats below.²

The study

Limited evidence

Twenty trials, a median of two weeks each: what savoring exercises add (Chen et al., 2026)

Across 20 randomized trials with 4,805 adults, savoring exercises improved emotional outcomes by a moderate amount overall (Hedges’ g = 0.51), covering positive feelings, well-being and symptom scores for low mood and anxiety. Against people who got no exercise the gain looked larger (g = 0.77) than against people given a comparable activity (g = 0.30), though that difference was not statistically significant. The median program lasted 14 days, and the reviewers rated 6 of the 20 trials as carrying a high risk of bias.²

Savoring exercises seem to help people feel a bit better on the questionnaires researchers use, and the effect looks smaller, though not significantly so, when the comparison group also does a comparable activity. The authors flag their own limits: most trials asked people to score their own feelings, which invites people to report what they think researchers want; programs were too short to say anything about lasting effects; and every sample was adult. One check for missing studies shrank the effect almost to zero, though the authors trust two other checks that left it intact.²

Some evidence on savoring is weaker still. A 2019 pilot of a one-week savoring program for 111 adults aged 60 or over reported gains in happiness and resilience among people who followed it closely.⁸ The 2026 review classed it as non-randomized and left it out.²

So expect a modest lift in how your days feel.

The table rates how much weight each habit and claim in this guide can bear:

Is savoring the same as mindfulness or gratitude?

Savoring overlaps with both but is not the same as either. It shares with mindfulness the habit of noticing what you are feeling right now. It differs in direction: savoring points attention at what is good and tries to make that feeling deeper or longer.¹ The 2026 review also notes that structured mindfulness courses often run for 8 weeks with a trained teacher, while savoring exercises are simpler to learn on your own.²

Gratitude is closer still. Counting blessings is one of Bryant’s ten savoring strategies, but the 2026 review treated gratitude exercises as a separate family, focused on thankfulness to others rather than on staying with a good experience, and excluded them.² If you already keep a gratitude journal, the two fit together: you might add one line on what a good moment felt like while it happened. That pairing is our suggestion, not something the trials tested.

When a low mood needs more than savoring

A savoring habit is a well-being practice, not a treatment for depression. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes a depressive episode as a low mood or loss of interest lasting most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks, and advises seeking help from a healthcare provider; anyone in immediate danger of harming themselves should contact emergency services or a crisis line.⁹

• Now: call your local emergency number. In the US, the National Institute of Mental Health lists 911 for life-threatening situations and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text) for anyone suicidal or in emotional distress.¹⁰ In the UK, the NHS lists 999 or A&E when a life is at risk, and Samaritans on 116 123.¹¹
• Soon: if a low mood or lost interest has lasted two weeks or more, see a doctor rather than adding more exercises.
• Routine: already in treatment for depression or anxiety? Mention a new savoring routine to your clinician at your next visit.

The bottom line

Randomized trials suggest short savoring exercises give a modest lift to how people feel, and savoring the moment is a sensible place to begin. Try it with one good moment a day: name it, notice one detail, and tell someone.