Positive interventions are one of the building blocks for the application of positive psychology in our day-to-day lives. In this course taught by Dr. James Pawelski, we explore positive interventions through theory, research and practice. We provide learners the basic tools for using and measuring positive psychology in professional or personal contexts. Suggested prerequisite: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science.
2.6 Savoring, Part 3
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Do curso por University of Pennsylvania
Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions
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University of Pennsylvania
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Curso 2 de 5 em Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology
Na lição
Understanding and Cultivating a Healthy Emotional Life
Conheça os instrutores
James Pawelski, Ph.D.Director of Education and Senior Scholar
Positive Psychology Center
For the last couple of sections, we've been talking about savoring.
As we've seen, researchers Fred Bryant and
Joe Veroff define savoring as the processes of attending to,
appreciating, and enhancing positive experiences.
Today we'll wrap up our discussion by exploring four specific kinds of
savoring described by Bryant and Veroff, then I'd like to tell you about some
research that I'm doing on the well being effects of the arts and the humanities,
connecting that with our discussion of savoring.
Bryant and Veroff distinguished between world-focused savoring and
self-focused savoring. Let's explore what they mean by this distinction and
go over two examples of each.
So, first of all, world-focused savoring, this type of savoring has to do
with experiences that connect us with something beyond our individual selves.
This could be, for example, a work of art, it could be some kind of experience in
nature, it could be interaction with another person, or a group of people, or
it could be some kind of experience with a supernatural force, or being.
So now let's look at two specific examples of world-focused savoring
that are described by Bryant and Veroff.
First of all is Thanksgiving, and
Thanksgiving they define as a process of savoring feelings of gratitude.
Now, as we talked about when we were discussing the positive emotion, gratitude
itself, we noted that there are green-cape experiences that elicit gratitude.
So this we can think about when we're going about our lives and
something happens that we didn't expect,
that we didn't deserve necessarily, but something great happened to us,
and it can make us very grateful, and we can then engage in Thanksgiving.
There can also be red-cape experiences, where we're going along in life, and
there's some kind of threat that happens to us, some kind of danger that arises,
and we're concerned that something really bad is going to happen to us, and
it doesn't, and then we're relieved, and then we oftentimes also have feelings of
gratitude, perhaps for whoever it was who stepped in and saved us from that danger.
In addition to these green-cape and red-cape experiences, though,
we can just kind of have regular, ordinary, every day life experiences, and
we can cultivate gratitude for them.
For the ability to eat, and breathe, and live, and work, and
do the things that we do on a day to day basis,
regardless of whether something wonderful comes in our life, or
we're protected from some kind of danger on that occasion.
The second example of savoring that Bryant and Veroff talk about,
in terms of world-focused savoring, is marveling. Marveling,
they say, has to do with savoring feelings of awe, and
we can experience awe when we are looking at works of art, for
example, or listening to grand musical compositions.
Sometimes when we have spiritual or divine experiences we can have a deep
sense of awe, oftentimes being out in nature,
the ocean, or mountains, can elicit these feelings of awe.
One of my colleagues at the Positive Psychology Center, David Yaden,
studies the experiences that astronauts have when they go out into outer space,
and they're able to look back on the earth and
see the entire earth at once, and these astronauts report experiencing
deep feelings of awe at seeing the entire planet before them.
So now let's turn from world-focused savoring to self-focused savoring.
This type of savoring has to do with experiences that connect us with something
within ourselves, like our talents, our hard work, perhaps our personality,
or our behavior, or something about our physical body.
And the first example Bryant and Veroff mention is basking, and basking,
they say, is savoring feelings of pride, and this could be some kind
of personal victory, or achievement that we've accomplished.
Now, we might want to be careful to avoid too much extended public
displays in celebrating these kinds of victories.
If somebody in the sports field goes on and on after they've scored a touchdown,
or hit a home run, we say, okay, we've got it, lets continue to play the game.
But I think for most of us the danger is just the opposite, we work really hard
to achieve something, and then we achieve it, and then it's on to the next thing,
and it can actually be very valuable to go back and think about
the victories that we have achieved, even at other times in our lives.
At times, I've had conversations with friends of mine,
where we've specifically thought about things going back to elementary school,
or high school, or when we were just starting out in our careers,
what victories did we experience then that we've totally forgotten about?
And when we go back and think about those things, it can really bring up tremendous
feelings, and well-deserved feelings, that are not inappropriate levels of pride,
but that remind us that our hard work has paid off in the past.
And the final example of self focused savoring that Bryant and
Veroff talk about is luxuriating, and for them, luxuriating is savoring pleasure.
So, for example sensory experiences, think about times when you've
seen beautiful things, like sunsets, or other things in nature, or works of art,
think about times when you've listened or heard sounds that were just beautiful,
and so forth, and so if we can focus on that, attend to that, and
really let that in, then we can intensify those feelings of pleasure.
Obviously here, too, we want to think about not overindulging,
we don't want to just get lost in experiencing pleasure, but
savoring the right kinds of pleasure can add to the positivity of our lives.
So we've mentioned art several times in our discussion of savoring, and I would
like to end this session by telling you a little bit about my research and
how it connects to art and savoring.
Okay, so you know at this point that my PhD is in philosophy and
that I've been working in positive psychology for more than 15 years, so
it probably won't surprise you that I'm interested in bringing
together the science of well being with the culture of human flourishing.
If you think about culture, and in particular I had in mind things like
philosophy, history, literature, religion, music, art, theater, and movies,
so much of it was created to enhance human flourishing, in one way or another.
Indeed, when we want to lift our mood, we often turn to movies,
music, art, novels, and poems, so
much of it has to do with just the kinds of things studied by positive psychology.
In fact, some of my colleagues and I have published On Human Flourishing,
a poetry anthology, to bring together poems that address many of these themes.
I'd like to read one of these poems for you now.
This poem is titled Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon.
Everyone suddenly burst out singing, and
I was filled with such delight as prisoned birds must find in freedom,
winging wildly across the white orchards and
dark green fields, on, on, and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, and
beauty came like the setting sun, my heart was shaken with tears,
and horror drifted away, but everyone was a bird,
and the song was wordless, and the singing will never be done.
So this is clearly an example of someone who's savoring a moment, and
sharing it with us by means of a beautiful poem.
Culture is very important for human flourishing, and yet
very little has been done to study scientifically the effects of the arts and
humanities on various aspects of well being.
So I'm creating networks of scholars in the arts and humanities, and
the social sciences, along with leaders of cultural organizations,
like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center,
the Kennedy Center and Opera America to carry out this work.
I'm also working with UNESCO to bring humanity scholars and
artists from around the world together with scientists to explore ways we can
unlock more of the power of the arts and humanities to help individuals and
communities thrive, it's really exciting work.
So this brings us to the end of week two, join us next week when we will turn to
the topic of character strengths and virtues, an area of positive psychology
that relies heavily on the arts and humanities, see you soon.
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