Choosing to savor transforms your time. You slow down and enter the moment fully, and that makes all the difference.
Yet, choosing is a complex and often unconscious process.
Sometimes you’re trying to choose what’s ‘best.’ Other times, you’re choosing what you want. Or maybe you’re making choices based on other considerations.
The bottom line is, we are all constantly making choices. You make choices hundreds of times each day. One moment it’s an active choice and maybe the next moment you decide by not deciding.
Sometimes it’s an impulsive choice. Other times you feel stuck and choosing becomes a real challenge. Competing priorities, clashing values, your mood, your energy level, and the needs of others can make choices difficult. The variables that factor in are numerous and sometimes confounding.
So, how do you work things out when you are choosing amongst competing priorities and values?
Choosing when the choice isn’t clear.
I started to explore this challenge some time ago in my post titled Your Present Moment-Stillness, Choice and Transformation. Take a peek – it outlines a helpful process, I think.
And today I want to explore this more deeply. Why? Well, because these choices we are making every day have such a big impact on our time and, by extension, on our lives.
I am intrigued by an idea called Savor Discipline that Leo Babauta offers in his post titled Savor Discipline: Merge the Interests of Your Future & Present Selves.
Here he explores a situation where one part of you (your present self) wants to eat some junk food and another part (your future self) knows that’s not in your best interest and thinks a carrot is a much better idea.
Rather than choosing to say yes or no to the options presented, he proposes Savor Discipline as a third option. It is, to my mind, a compelling solution. Instead of eating the junk food your present self wants, or the healthy alternative your future self offers, you choose to eat and savor something different. You go with a third option.
It’s the savoring that is the key here.
Leo Babauta writes:
… savor the activity as if it were the most amazing thing in the world.
Because it can be. If you eat a berry with the fresh eyes of a two-year-old, you stop taking it for granted and start seeing how much of a miracle it is. You can savor its deliciousness, just as much as you could enjoy the junk food.
When you are choosing to savor, you are choosing to engage fully with the present moment. You go deeper, opening to what is. And like a flower in the warm sun, the moment, in turn, opens to you.
It’s Transformative
This is precisely the place in time where transformation takes place.
It reminds me of the profound effect that gratitude has on the quality of your moments, too. For a powerful glimpse of how gratitude got one woman through a dangerous time, take a look at my post titled Gratitude’s Power to Transform Time.
Whether exploring Savor Discipline or the Power of Gratitude, the foundational, heart-based lesson here is the fact that time’s most profound meanings and mysteries lie in each and every moment. They are always available to you.
They are just a deep breath and an open heart away.
So, how are you choosing to savor your moments today?
Here’s something to help…
Time is pure potential. You decide how to use it; and once you do, it’s gone. That’s why it’s so important to build on your best time choices. If you feel like your time slips through your fingers, then you’ll want to claim your copy of my complimentary “Daily Choices Template: Proven Strategies for Tracking Your Best Time Choices Today, Tomorrow & All Year!” There’s no time like the present – to start moving toward the future you envision for yourself.
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