Put Happiness on your Traveling Checklist

Aloha from Maui! Okay, everybody, today we’ve got a real treat for you. I’m gonna show you how to maximize your value of your vacation, and all kinds of good things in your life, so you get two and three times the value of the amazing experiences that you pay for, love, and want. So, stay tuned in this video, and I’m gonna teach you all about something called savoring, a scientific principle for increasing happiness.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So, this episode is all about the scientific principle of something called savoring. It’s really kind of simple, but it’s underappreciated. To give you an illustration of what savoring is all about, I’m gonna tell you about my first Hawaii vacation. Not this gorgeous one I’m on today, but my first vacation.

I was taking my two sons to Hawaii. I kind of gave it to them as a Christmas present, but the vacation didn’t come up until mid-February. And I remember, as we got close to the date, a couple of weeks before, I asked the boys after dinner to get on their computers and do some research on what they wanted to do when they were in Hawaii. They were a little bit reluctant, like they felt it was kind of, “Oh dad, you’re always the one doing the planning, and why do we have to go to the computers and do this stuff?” But I said, “No, go and do it, only thirty minutes, get it done.”

Well, both of them spent way more than 30 minutes on their computers, and the cool thing was that they got so into it that they were just super enthusiastic. And when they finished working on their computers, I said, “Boys, what do you want to do when we’re in Hawaii?” And they were incredibly enthusiastic. They were like, “We got to go surfing, dad! I want to do boogie boarding, I want to go here, and there’s a live band playing there, and there’s dinner stuff going on there.”

And I said, “Tell me more about it.” And of course, I listened to all their plans and they were excited. Their eyes were filled with anticipation and happiness, and we, in fact, got to do quite a number of the things that they wanted to do. But here’s the catch: The whole time that they were doing the research and beginning to anticipate these fun things that they were gonna do in Hawaii, they were starting to enjoy the holiday in a profound and very real way, long before the holiday even started. And that’s the art of savoring.

Savoring is simply enriching the experience of something coming up in the future by imagining it right now. And it can be done in other directions too. You can savor your past and you can savor your present as well. But savoring the future is often one of the easy ways to get yourself in a very happy, genuine state of mind.

In fact, there’s some research that says people enjoy their vacations more in the planning phase than they actually enjoy their real vacation because on the real vacation, of course, things go wrong. There’s occasional rainy days in Maui, and there’s concern about pickpockets or the restaurant didn’t serve us on time, and all the little minor things that are the glitches, and sometimes major things, that are the glitches on holidays. But when we’re savoring, anticipating it, of course, we don’t think about any of that kind of stuff.

So, this is, in fact, a scientific happiness intervention that’s been used many, many times over and over again in experimental settings to see how we can induce people to have a greater state of happiness. So, savoring for the future is simply anticipating something that’s coming up in your life and then spending a fair bit of time imagining the details of this much-wanted future experience.

Now, the trick here is, it can’t be something that is not going to take place. Like, if you fantasize all the time about winning the lottery, and then you don’t, in fact, win the lottery, eventually it’ll make you be cynical and it won’t be a happy experience at all. But, if it’s something you’re really doing, you’ve got an upcoming visit with a friend, or a holiday like this one, or a much-anticipated concert or show you’re gonna go to, you can get a ton of rich, juicy happiness just by imagining these things ahead of the event. That’s savoring a future event.

Savoring a past event is very similar. So, after returning from Hawaii, we’ll have amazing pictures. Like, David, who’s the videographer here, will have a million in his camera and maybe some good video images. And we will then have these things come up, stay on the screensaver on my computer, and inadvertently, through the course of my day, I’ll be looking at these beautiful pictures of this wonderful vacation we had. The joyful time I had with family in Hawaii and be able to savor, or remember in a positive way, a positive experience from my past.

Any positive experience from your past, you can savor in this way. Sometimes it’s as simple as sitting on your couch and deliberately, consciously recalling that beautiful experience from your past and spending time reliving the good feelings that came with it. And then finally, there’s savoring our present moment. And this, maybe, is the trickiest one of them all. But this is being fully present with what’s actually happening. And very shortly, I’m going to get a surfboard, and I’m going to get out on that water. And I can tell you, I can promise you, there will be no other thoughts whatsoever in my mind except me, the water, and that surfboard. And that will be truly a deep savoring experience of that moment in the now.

And it can also be as simple as, after I’m finished surfing, I see an umbrella over there in the shade, and I’m gonna sit down and get underneath the umbrella, look at this gorgeous view, and just be chill, and try as best I can to be in that moment. So, I invite all of you to anticipate whatever wonderful things coming up in your future. Get all the juicy pleasure you can out of it before it even occurs, and take tremendous pleasure in savoring. If you like this video, click the little like button, share it with your friends and family, subscribe to my channel, and we get a new video every Sunday morning. Thanks for watching. I’m Paul Christopher, I’m your happiness expert from beautiful Maui. Bye for now.