As Denise and Sam meander through the tapestry of life's simple pleasures, we invite you to step into a space where each moment is a treasure waiting to be cherished. Our latest podcast conversation is a heart-to-heart on the art of savoring—the subtle, yet profound practice of being fully present. Through intimate stories, like my own tryst with tranquility by the sea, we delve into how these mindful moments can paint our lives with joy and fulfillment. Savoring isn't just a fleeting indulgence; it's about capturing the essence of now, reminiscing warmly on yesterdays, and fostering a sense of excitement for the tomorrows yet to unfold.
As the pages of the calendar turn, we also gear up for a stimulating discourse on the pursuit of goals. The year's enthusiasm can wane, but we're here to fan the flames of intention and dedication. Next week, we'll be unraveling the joys of holding steadfast to our aspirations, a conversation sure to reignite the spark in your New Year's resolutions. Join us as we celebrate the small victories, encourage each other through the stumbles, and share the collective excitement for the journey that lies ahead. Subscribe and rate us if our musings resonate with you, and let's continue to build a community where inspiration and personal growth are part of our shared narrative.
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
As Denise and Sam meander through the tapestry of life's simple pleasures, we invite you to step into a space where each moment is a treasure waiting to be cherished. Our latest podcast conversation is a heart-to-heart on the art of savoring—the subtle, yet profound practice of being fully present. Through intimate stories, like my own tryst with tranquility by the sea, we delve into how these mindful moments can paint our lives with joy and fulfillment. Savoring isn't just a fleeting indulgence; it's about capturing the essence of now, reminiscing warmly on yesterdays, and fostering a sense of excitement for the tomorrows yet to unfold.
As the pages of the calendar turn, we also gear up for a stimulating discourse on the pursuit of goals. The year's enthusiasm can wane, but we're here to fan the flames of intention and dedication. Next week, we'll be unraveling the joys of holding steadfast to our aspirations, a conversation sure to reignite the spark in your New Year's resolutions. Join us as we celebrate the small victories, encourage each other through the stumbles, and share the collective excitement for the journey that lies ahead. Subscribe and rate us if our musings resonate with you, and let's continue to build a community where inspiration and personal growth are part of our shared narrative.
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
Welcome to what's On your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:
Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's On your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we're living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here again once again with my friend and co-host, sam Powell. We are in the middle of a really great book for our series in 2024 on happiness, and the book that we're going through is the how of Happiness, and right now we are about midway through the book through something called Happiness Activities, and today we're going to be going through one of the activities. Sam, I'm really looking forward to talking about this one with you. It's another one on my list that was not in my top four, but the more and more I'm reading all of these, I'm kind of wishing that they were.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I hear you. I think about that as we go through these because I'm like, ooh, I want to pick this one up too. I want to do a couple of things here, but that's the point of the book, right? All 12 activities are things that can increase happiness, and so you should probably like a little bit all of them, because they all can move you in that direction of happy. But the key is to focus at first on what are the ones that really really appeal to you. So this one is Happiness.
Speaker 1:
Activity Number 9, which is Savoring Life's Joy, and this is in the chapter about living in the present. So chapter seven of this book. And so we just talked last week about number eight, which was increasing flow experiences, right. So getting into that state of flow, which is all about being really present and getting to where things are clicking and going you lose time in such a good way. So that was really fun to talk about. This one is really talking about savoring, being in that moment, thinking about as you're living life, as you're experiencing life, really taking in and appreciating and loving and getting to that savory juiciness that is just your life experiences and things like this.
Speaker 2:
So this one was really interesting.
Speaker 1:
It was light on the explanation, I think I don't know. This one's probably like yeah, of course, like savoring life's joys makes sense to me, but it was really heavy on a lot of different ways you could do this and different thought processes, and some of those were like, oh yeah, I hadn't really thought about that, but they were interesting. So this was an interesting one for me from like learning or thinking about what could I actually do and what could I put into practice in a way that I hadn't thought of in a couple before.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, what I liked about this chapter was it really helped me to think about the fact that we often can reminisce about the past or dream about the future, or even worry about the future. You know, there's a quote that says don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will worry for itself. And this chapter is talking about savoring present moments. And it got me thinking about two different stories of just something that happened to me just last week. I was dropping Vincent off at college for his semester to begin, and I love to be by the water I think I've talked about this on different episodes before. I just have peace when I'm by the water. And so we had this opportunity where we were going to be sleeping overnight in the college town where Vincent goes to school, and I chose to kind of upgrade the experience so that I could stay at a hotel that was near the ocean, because my son goes to school on the coast. And the night the day that we arrived, it was cold. For Florida, you know, here we are, it's it's, you know, wintertime, technically, I guess, wherever you are listening to this episode. And for Florida it was. It was kind of cold. Last week it was about 55 degrees outside, no-transcript, the hotel was right at the beach and so I recall Vincent was in a hurry. He wanted to go to the store, he just wanted to kind of get on with the day to get ready for school. But I wanted to savor the moment because that was my peaceful place. So he went off to do something and I said listen, I just need a few minutes to just be by myself. And so I walked over to where the ocean and the shoreline was and it was probably Sam, not even on that first day, not even 20 minutes, but it felt like an entire day, like eight hours of good savoring, because I sat there, there were no people around, because it was too cold to really be on the beach there. The waves were sort of calm, but the sound of kind of coming in and going out was just peaceful. It wasn't really windy but it was chilly, so it wasn't like feeling relaxing, like going to the beach for sunshine.
Speaker 2:
It was a reflective time for me and being in that present moment, I remember looking down at the sand and noticing intricate details about these shells. I actually posted about some of it on my Facebook page I think you probably even saw it where I had this profound moment of thinking about the life of the animals that were once part of those shells and why things happen the way they do in life. It became like this really weird deep experience. But it was so healing for me that I remember telling you yesterday, when we were chatting, that I'm on a winning streak for 2024.
Speaker 2:
Like I've seen so many posts lately where people are like I wish we could already have a do-over and I'm thinking, man, this is already 7 billion percent better than last year. Was so yeah. So savoring in that present moment, that was an experience for me and I guess I'll end the ramble by saying that if there's something that you enjoy doing or that fills you up, savoring is about really going deep into that experience and being present with the experience and find that thing. For me, that thing is being at the beach or being at Disney World.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that and I love that you taking that purposeful time to go sit and be with yourself and really enjoy the moment, and you're somebody that I really think is good at savoring those little things. You're the person that's always like look around the room and look at this experience. You're never gonna get this exact moment right. The trees aren't gonna look the exact same, the position of the things in your room aren't gonna be the exact same ever again, and I think that you're really good at that and that's one of the things I've definitely learned from you and I love there's a quote in here that she's got as she kind of kicks off this chapter, where she says we rarely seem to live in and savor the present moment, believing that what counts most will happen in the future. We postpone our happiness, convincing ourselves that tomorrow will be better than today, and this is the opposite of that right. This is forget tomorrow, forget yesterday, forget everything.
Speaker 1:
Like let's talk about living right now and really appreciating and I love the word savoring Like if I could just savor something every day, like that sounds good, ooh, it doesn't matter, but like that thought process of bringing that into right now and appreciating and really loving the moment that you're in is something that there's something magical to that.
Speaker 1:
I always call these like the goose bump moments, right. It's like when you're having a really deep conversation with somebody, or sometimes for me it's even touch, like somebody just like rubbed your shoulder and there's just this like Profound, like I feel like it touches your soul type of thing and you kind of break out in goose bumps of you know, like that's to me, like I feel like that's my ultimate litmus test on I. Really there's something about this moment that I'm completely fully savoring and present. And then you know and really enjoying and those can be ordinary experiences, which is, you know, one of the things she talks about. It can be, you know, just sitting, sitting in your room, sitting outside, sitting on the beach right, you live in Florida, crazy good beach for me is on vacation, going to be for you is, you know, a little little excursion in the day. But being able to really sit there and appreciate that you know is is just a little everyday moment which I think is magical.
Speaker 2:
Maybe it's so much so to say that to elevate your happiness, it's to not take your moments for granted. I remember earlier this morning I saw quote that was talking about how Time is the most expensive coin that you have, so make sure that you spend it wisely. And you know I often talk about On these episodes and just in our private time together that you can waste, spend or invest your time, but you can never get more of it back. And so the thing in this chapter that that really struck me was it says Savoring is about requiring you to step outside of an experience that you're having and then reflect on it and act in the action I guess I'm not saying that right, but the action of savoring. So, in other words, whatever that thing was that you experience, that you actually go deep into it by thinking about what that thing was. Did Austin ever watch Madagascar like the dream works movies?
Speaker 2:
So you know there's a part in there where the penguins are like savor it, savory and it's like some regular thing is going on, but the penguins wanted the rest of the gang to be savoring this experience, and that line is like one of those iconic lines from the movie. But having this habit of savoring makes your happiness become more intense, and Sonya says in the book that it actually can also result in you having more frequent happiness experiences when you act in the act of savoring, savoring mm, hmm, and I think I think this is where kids help you with this.
Speaker 1:
If you're around kids, if you have kids, we have nibblings. If you've got you know just children, because they change so much right and they're so active and so busy that if you can take those moments to really appreciate, to really say like, yeah, this was hard but there was also a lot of good here, and thinking about that and living in that, you can bring more happiness into your present, into your joy. I remember one of my good friends when she talked about kids. She had kids that probably her oldest was probably about 10 years older than mine, so she was a good decade ahead of me in this journey and she would always say that the days are long but the weeks are short. And she told me that at like my baby shower and I remember thinking, all right, that's a little strange, but as I lived the experience of having a newborn and then a toddler or a kid and all that sort of stuff, like I totally understand what she means about the years are short, the weeks are short, the things that go by are, when you look back, are really really short, but the days sometimes feel really long. And if, in those long days, you can bring some appreciation and some savoring into that, then you can expand your days, I think.
Speaker 1:
I think you can make those days richer, fuller, full of happiness. Like, yes, I have a newborn and I'm running on two hours of sleep right now and there's that. But like feeling the weight of your baby in your arms is something magical, right. And if you can find those little moments, they don't have to be big, they don't have to be long, they don't have to be hard, but those little moments it infuses that joy into. Well, sometimes they're hard, sometimes they're mundane. Days in life, hard days in life. But when I think about that, I think about I don't know just that experience of especially the early years of kids' lives and things like that.
Speaker 2:
Well, I really love how you're describing kind of looking at your past so that you can remember the savored moments, because she says that if you bask in the feeling of accomplishment when you've finished a task at home or work, you may not really remember that into the future. But this chapter is about remember it in this moment. And I know that last week, when you and I were talking, I was telling you about how I have really struggled to just wanna focus on getting certain parts of my house kind of decluttered or picked up. But there was a day I think it was last week there was a day where I just felt like man. I feel like I got so much of comfort. You know what's funny? I think it was just saying I thought it was last week, it was yesterday, wasn't it? Cause I think I told you yesterday I woke up at like four o'clock in the morning and I couldn't go back to sleep.
Speaker 2:
So I just started doing stuff and by seven o'clock in the morning I felt like it was already afternoon and I'd gotten everything done that I wanted to do. It was mundane, it was like the boring stuff. I got the laundry done, I got the dishwasher done, but by seven am. I was so ready to go for the day that yesterday, by the time I talked to you, which I think was around 10 am, I felt like, man, I'm not only just ready to go to start my day, but my day is actually already well into the swing of things, and so this really is about enjoying those little things.
Speaker 2:
For one day. You may look back and realize that they were really the big things, and I think for me what's funny is I was talking about being on this kind of winning streak right now. What's any different about these last days than last year? Like there's nothing really different. It's about our mind shift. It's about our perspective. It's about the fact that, man, you and I are into happiness, activity number nine, which means that somehow our subconscious mind is starting to pick up on these things that all along were probably already there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think that I love what you're saying about mindset too, because that's what she talks about, that as a couple of the activities you can do in how to save her life's joys. It's things like being open to the beauty and excellence, and I think that that's a big. I loved that that was called out separately as like a very specific thing, because in order to save her, in order to sit in appreciation, you have to be open to the fact that there is beauty, there is excellence around you, and sometimes it's in those mundane moments, sometimes it's in between all the things on your schedule, all the things on your to-do list, but you have to be open to it and then she flips right into mindfulness.
Speaker 1:
Not only do you have to be just able to accept, but then you have to be able to really experience, live in that moment and feel it and take pleasure in all of your senses. This is something you taught me really well about just what do you smell, what do you see, what do you hear? You have a good exercise that you do with people. It's like looking out, look out the window and gaze and then like let's touch all five senses and let's really think about that. So it's being open and then being present and using all of your available tools to really experience and get to that savory level.
Speaker 2:
I love that. I am probably a much more creative minded person than a practical minded person in some ways, and so there's savoring experiences that I just think are interesting. So, for example, have you ever had pour over coffee? Do you know what that is? I?
Speaker 1:
know what it is, but I don't know that I've actually ever had it.
Speaker 2:
It's really like probably taste the same as regular coffee, but it's about an experience. It's not about the coffee, it's about the experience. And so, in pour over coffee, basically, what you do is you have this really kind of cool looking teapot that's got this really long, skinny, curved neck, and the idea is, when you put the beans into the filter, you hold this coffee pot up like a foot above your cup and then you slowly pour it into the cup and you're supposed to listen to, like, the sounds of the water hitting the cup and smelling the aroma of the beans as the water is hitting them. And I don't know, for me is it subliminal that the coffee tastes better? Maybe a little bit, but it's about the experience. And so I guess I'll close on this activity with a quick story and then we'd love to hear what your wrap up is as well.
Speaker 2:
This last week, like I said, I was with Vincent and he decided he wanted to go see the movie Wonka, and at first we thought, well, you know, it's kind of doesn't. I don't know. I, like Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp, did a good job. How could possibly Timothy Schell may do a good job on this, and you know, how could you ever beat the original? And so we thought, well, no, you know, let's just go, let's go check it out. It ended up being an amazing, really awesome, totally different movie, and I won't give the spoilers because you totally should go watch it. It's a great movie and especially if you're listening and you're a mom, please go watch this movie. And if you're somebody who grew up with Willy Wonka, please go watch this movie.
Speaker 2:
And so at the end there is a scene when Willy Wonka's mom because it's a flashback of his younger days there's a scene at the very end when the mom writes him a letter. And I cried in the movie like I'm such sad. I cry, you know, I cry at public grocery store commercials and stuff. But there was a scene where, in this letter that she wrote to her son, she said, willie, it was never about the chocolate, it's about who you experience it with. And so I'll leave by saying that this chapter is so important that it says save her life's joys, but that your experience is even that much deeper when you get to do it with others. And so I'm so thankful and grateful that here we are in another new year together, sam, and that I get to save her life's joys, even in mundane or small or easy or 20 minute moments together when we're doing these episodes. So my thanks are for you today.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I love that. I love that. Now I want to go watch the movie. I didn't really have any interest in it until I've heard you talk about it now twice, so I think I'll put it on my list. But yeah, I love that. And I think the other thing that I maybe I'll leave people with on my thoughts is yes, this is about living in the present. Yes, this is about savoring while you're in it. But you can savor past experiences too, and those are two of the strategies that she gives as well. And she talks about savoring and reminiscing with family and friends. Nostalgia is a positive emotion and really thinking about oh my gosh, do you remember that time that we did that thing and how wonderful was that?
Speaker 1:
So you really can reflect back which is what you just did Right with this movie story about. You can bring that happiness and that joy into the present by thinking about the things that have happened or by transporting yourself to experiences that you really love, like, oh, I love when I do this, so let me visualize myself in that space, in that time, and that helps get into that space of bringing those joys, bringing the appreciation and the love of those things into the present moment. So, yes, experience it and live it as you're doing it. That's a huge, huge part of it. But also enjoy reflecting back and enjoy visualizing yourself in those spaces, because that also is a good way to savor. And yeah, I hope people I don't know, once they're done listening to this episode, like take a minute and reminisce about something, or take a minute to do your activity to nice, where it's just like engage in those senses and appreciate the things right around you and whatever space that you're in and find something beautiful in this moment.
Speaker 2:
And do something with someone you really love, or at least tell them about something that you savor about them, because that's so important to share your love and to give it away. So this has been an awesome episode. I'm so happy that we kicked off our day this way. Next week, we're going to be talking about something a little bit more sterile. It's about committing to goals. Here we are still at the front end of the year and you know we're probably in the month that most people are getting rid of their resolutions, and so next week we're going to be talking about how do you commit to those goals. So at least for today, sam, it's been wonderful to be here with you and friends.
Speaker 2:
If you're enjoying these episodes, do us a favor. Will you please share with others? Will you subscribe to our podcast? And if you are watching on Apple or listening on Apple podcasts, we'd really value if you could rate the podcast, because it'll help get us some attention from people who maybe haven't heard the show yet, that don't know it's available. And if this is changing your life the way I know it is changing mine, and I believe it's also changing Sam's then we'd love for you to help us get this to more people. So, on behalf of my friend Sam Powell, my name is Denise Russo, so thanks for joining us today on another episode of what's On your Bookshelf.