Stand in Awe of Your Accomplishments

"Don't just brush over your accomplishments. Stand in awe of them. Not everybody can do these things."
(from my tweets, 2015)

I had mixed feelings about celebrating back then. Some of my tweets warned against it: "This is how you start going downhill. You start celebrating and relaxing and stop improving." Others pushed the other way. I wrote that you should be proud of almost succeeding, and that if you easily could have failed but succeeded, you should "just appreciate that."

The tweet above is the clearest version of the second idea. And on this question, the research is firmly on its side. Taking time to really enjoy good things, including your own achievements, is one of the most reliable ways to get more happiness out of them.

Psychologists have a name for it: savoring.

What savoring is

Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff, psychologists at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Michigan, spent years studying how people respond to good experiences. In their 2007 book Savoring, they defined it as the ability to notice, appreciate and intensify the positive experiences in our lives.

Their key insight was that good events don't automatically produce good feelings. Two people can get the same promotion, finish the same marathon or hear the same compliment and come away feeling very different. Part of the difference is what they do with the moment. Some people linger on it, share it and replay it. Others brush past it and move on to the next thing.

Some responses boost happiness, others drain it

In 2010, Jordi Quoidbach and colleagues in Belgium studied eight common ways people respond to good events. Some ways amplified positive feelings. Others, which they called dampening, quietly shrank them.

Strategies linked to more happiness included:

• Being present: deliberately paying attention to the good moment as it happens.
• Capitalizing: sharing the good news and celebrating with others.
• Positive mental time travel: remembering the good event later, or looking forward to it beforehand.
• Behavioral display: showing your positive feelings openly, for example with a smile or laughter.

Dampening strategies included hiding your feelings, getting distracted, finding fault ("it could have been better") and worrying that the good thing won't last. People who habitually dampened their good experiences reported less happiness.

"Brushing over your accomplishments" is a classic dampening move.

Savoring makes good days count

Paul Jose, Bee Lim and Fred Bryant tested savoring in daily life in a 2012 diary study. For about a month, people recorded the good events in their days, how much they savored them and how they felt.

Unsurprisingly, people were happier on days with more positive events. But savoring made a big difference. People who savored more got a much larger boost from the good things that happened to them. Without savoring, positive events had less effect on mood.

In other words, it's not only what happens to you that matters. It's how much you take it in.

What about my warning?

So was my other tweet wrong, the one saying that celebrating is how you start going downhill?

Partly. There's a real point in it: resting on your success can become a reason to stop growing. And I also tweeted about how drinking to celebrate turned into drinking all the time. Celebrating in unhealthy ways can backfire.

But savoring isn't the same as slacking off or overindulging. It can take a few quiet minutes. It's noticing, appreciating and remembering. You can savor a win and still show up to work the next day. In fact, savoring may help you keep going, because the work starts to feel worth it.

What the philosophers said

Epicurus, whom we met earlier on this blog, practiced savoring even at the end of his life. In a letter written on the last day of his life, preserved by the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius, he wrote that his body was in great pain. But he set against it "the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you."

For Epicurus, remembering good things was not idle nostalgia. It was a skill, one that could carry you through even the hardest moments.

Some honest caveats

Most savoring research relies on self-reports and correlational designs, so it's hard to be sure how much savoring causes happiness rather than reflects it. Savoring may also come more naturally to some people and cultures than others. And savoring doesn't mean pretending everything is perfect. Painful events deserve attention too.

Still, the overall lesson is consistent: good moments do more for us when we let them in.

How to savor your accomplishments

• Pause before moving on. When you finish something, take a minute just to notice it before starting the next task.
• Tell someone. Share your win with a person who will be glad for you.
• Write it down. Keep a short list of things you've done that you're proud of.
• Revisit it later. Look back at your list on a hard day.
• Celebrate in healthy ways. A walk, a good meal or, as I once tweeted, a massage can mark a victory without a hangover.
• Watch for dampening. Notice when you say "it was nothing" or "it could have been better," and let yourself enjoy it instead.

Today's reflection

What is something you've accomplished, big or small, that you brushed past too quickly? Can you take a minute today to stand in awe of it?

Sources

• Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X, 22.
• Jose, P. E., Lim, B. T., & Bryant, F. B. (2012). Does savoring increase happiness? A daily diary study. Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(3), 176–187.
• Quoidbach, J., Berry, E. V., Hansenne, M., & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Positive emotion regulation and well-being: Comparing the impact of eight savoring and dampening strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(5), 368–373.