Gratitude Practice: Savoring
What if I told you that your toddler’s crusty nose could be a great source of happiness and well-being? You would probably say gross, Stef.
And yes, it's true - after a lifetime of wiping other people’s children’s noses as a nanny (and then another lifetime of wiping my kids’ noses), I get it - it's gross. Nothing can prepare you for going in with a tissue to wipe and realizing that that crunchy exterior was actually a dam holding back a landslide of yellow and green snot – that’s a serious wiping commitment no one prepares you for.
A crusty nose can be a source of happiness and well-being because of one thing — the contrast it offers. It’s a tiny hardship, something our minds are immediately attracted to. Just like so many of the annoying parts of parenting that don’t seem to quit - like the butt wiping and the ever-constant reminders that snacks aren’t gonna happen 5 minutes before dinner. And, of course, gratitude can fall flat without the contrast of more annoying times. But why do I remember that crusty sh%t so clearly – and forget the times when we fell into each other’s arms or ran around the playground?
Why does it stay stuck when the good is so much better?
You may remember our favorite OG gratitude researcher Professor Robert Emmons, has this to say about hardship and gratitude,
“When times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable.”
So we slide right into complacency, don’t we? The painful truth is our brains are efficient animals; they like known, simple, and easy. As James Clear says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Goals are not something you do every day or are baked into your genes. They are ephemeral thoughts. Systems or habits well those build and build over time. They can be helpful or hurtful. Our brains don't care. These habits are a carved rut in the road, which our brains can easily slide into.
So what does this have to do with a runny nose? Well, a whole lot, actually. Imagine showing up at daycare, walking into the classroom, and as you look at your child, the first and only thing you see for a second is their old, dirty, crusted nose - gross. Well, you have a scapegoat for your repulsion, and it’s what cognitive scientists call the Negativity Bias.
The Negativity Bias is an automatic habit of the brain that makes looking for and evaluating threats and anything that could harm us a priority over anything other type of thinking. It causes us to remember criticism more than compliments and mistakes over wins. And the secret’s out. It’s also the operator behind the curtain of Mom Guilt.
Getting Brainy with It.
The Negativity Bias’ main goal is to keep us safe. Snots - no. Germs - no. Our thinking brain is not allowed a first opinion because our survival instincts kick in. I’ll let the psychiatrist and co-author of “What Happened to You?” Dr. Bruce Berry explains the brain process a bit more to you:
“The brain organizes from bottom to top, with the lower parts of the brain (brain stem/diencephalon aka “survival brain”) developing earliest, the cortical areas (thinking brain) much later,” Perry says. “The majority of brain organization takes place in the first four years.Our brain functions from the bottom up - the instincts first and then the sorting and reasoning after.“
And so when we see our child, we only see the germs first. We see our child only after that initial reaction, and our thinking and reasoning brain kicks in. Of course, no one is saying we haven’t evolved or that we can’t respond instead of react. That you aren’t a GoodAF Mom if you go gross inside your head. I know a big fat smile will most likely happen next as you dash across the room and scoop your son up – hugging him and spreading that sh%t all over your freshly dry-cleaned coat.
The Negativity Bias lives in the more instinctual part of the brain, but we really don’t need it. We don’t need to scan everywhere we go for danger anymore instantly. Our world is relatively safe - no venomous snakes or wild cats hiding behind the neighbors four by four. Plus, this scanning makes us really stressed - probably more than we used to be. Since our brains are programmed to be constantly scanning, and we are surrounded by SO many stimuli these days, our nervous systems are stressed the f out.
What now, then?
Using gratitude as a prompt, you can take a few very specific steps if you would like to work on your “reaction” time and bigger hardships. Where maybe the Negativity Bias does not ease up after a millisecond but takes control of your whole day instead. Well, that’s why we are happy we have neuroplasticity on our side. Center for Brain Health, University of Texas at Dallas, explains that neuroplasticity is “the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life." So, yay, you can teach an old dog new tricks.
The first step is to use gratitude to notice things we overlook.
This will help to shift our perspective and then do that enough. You will give it a new system to depend on in tough times. And begin to replace the old system (the negativity bias) that maybe has run its course. Like our almost instant ability to overlook the snot and crack that loving smile, we can also learn to shorten our reactive time in other cases.
So we use the power of gratitude to notice the good, shift our perspective and then use our natural neuroplasticity to rewire with repetition over time cognitively. And then we can add one more practice to the mix…
The practice of Savoring
Savoring is taking an external view of an experience to review and appreciate it. So you eat a strawberry and notice, yum, this is juicy, and then pop another in your mouth, OR if you are savoring, you take the time to step outside the experience and really notice the nuances of it for like 15 to 30 seconds. Wow, this strawberry is so delicious! You intentionally slow down your chewing. You let the juices move around your mouth, you think about the last strawberry you had and how this one is so much sweeter, and even after you swallow, you think, wow, that was a delicious moment.
This is savoring. Science shows that although savoring “things” can be beneficial, we can get the most out of savoring experiences because not only do we get more happiness out of experiences over material things, but we get bigger does of well-being from experiences because we savor them BEFORE they happen AND after they happen as well.
Think of a trip you recently went on - I find it so easy to go directly to the good memories of a trip over the bad, do you? I always forget to pack things for a trip, but when I reflect on the experience, my brain immediately goes to all the fun things we did. It’s one place in my life where my mistakes do not cloud the wins. And this is because of the repetition of savoring a trip provides. You don’t do this with other things in your life, like going to the playground or putting your toddler in a cute outfit. An experience is a training gym for the mind, from the pre-savoring of a trip to the actual FUN a trip provides, and then to running through memories of the trip and sharing them with friends.
We can follow this recipe for savoring and apply it to other areas of our lives.
We could do it with the strawberry - it would feel really cringy, but it could look like Pre-savoring: I get the strawberries out and put them in a pretty bowl. I look at them throughout the day and think about how beautifully red they are. I feel gratitude for the farmers who planted and tended the seeds and the workers who harvested and boxes them. I take a photo and post it on Instagram sharing the beauty with friends. Savoring in Real Time: Then I eat a few, mindfully savoring and intentionally taking it slow to really indulge in the flavor. Post Savoring: Then, a few hours later, I text a friend to tell them about the strawberries and where I got them. Maybe I even pick up a pint and drop them off at their doorstep as a surprise. A few days later, I looked at the photo I had taken on Instagram, and I remember the juiciness of the berries and sharing them with a friend. I feel the gratitude and the specialness of the moment all over again. And on and on it can go.
Savoring is a way to take gratitude to the next level.
And it can help to amplify situations that already feel pretty good. And when we do this, we push back against our instinct to look for what went wrong, to find the strawberry with the mold or the one that didn’t taste so sweet. Opportunities like these are all around us. What can you find to savor this week? Could it be something you do every day? How about an experience or a trip you took recently? Could you take the photos out and savor those? How about the way the light trickles through your baby’s dark brown hair or the way he tucks his feet under his bottom while he plays? Can you apply the steps of noticing, shifting to a grateful perspective, and then savoring in three ways (before, during, and after) to these everyday parenting moments too?
The crusty nose will still be there, and all the other annoying inescapable parts of parenting too. But the good is waiting to be seen, felt, and held - are you ready to train your brain so you can feel more of it? I know you are. I hope you enjoy your week of savoring experiences and things – and don’t forget you are a GoodAF Mom. - Stef
