Mindfulness and savoring 81 University in Chicago has become an authority on savoring which he defines as‘ thoughts and behaviors aimed at influencing the frequency, intensity, and duration of positive experience.’ 9 Translation: in essence he is an expert on feeling and retaining pleasure. He apparently became interested in this when he looked at a national survey on how people felt about their lives and realized that we had no real understanding of how people work out how good their lives are. Rather surprisingly, Dr Bryant has found that school children, teenagers, college students and the elderly who were good at savoring life’ s experiences were generally less distressed and enjoyed life more. What this means is that being good at savoring has flow-on effects to feeling better about your life generally( or it might mean that people who enjoy life are better at savoring experiences). Either possibility makes sense as I find that people who cannot tell me about things they enjoy in life( excluding people suffering from clinical depression) are generally discontented, sad people. Equally people who can tell me about the wonderful experiences they have in life are people who are more likely to be living fulfilled and contented lives. I think what savoring is really measuring here is a person’ s capacity to be mindful of beauty and pleasure and to take this in and be emotionally lifted by it. These people can retain the pleasure and thereby increase the balance of their emotional bank account whenever they come across a positive interaction or experience. People who do not feel content or happy with their lives are just not taking deposits. Their bank is on a perpetual bank holiday. While they might have positive experiences – good food, a beautiful sunset or a laugh with a friend – they are not savoring and then reminiscing over the 9 From the website www. mentorcoach. com / AHC / guest _ fredbryant. htm