According to psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff, “Positive events alone are not enough to bring about happiness. People need to be able to attend to and appreciate the positive feelings that emerge from positive events.” (Bryant, Fred B. and Veroff, Joseph. “Savoring: A new model of positive Experience”. Psychology Press, London 2006)
So here is an activity to get you to savour some positive experiences.
Create a wonder-wall. Find some pictures or images that mean something to you and that relate to a positive memory or experience, put them in a nice frame and display them on a dedicated wall at home. Don’t think you need to do a bunch of this at once – we are looking for just 5 minutes, after all. So you can build this up over a few days.
This can be a great activity to do with the family, encouraging them to add things to the wall and to talk about the things that are up there. And if you are doing it by yourself, it might inspire you to give a call to someone who was there with you when the photo was taken.
Not only can you see these beautiful things every day, but it will encourage conversations about them, allowing you to savour the experience of those things over and over again as you tell someone about it.