Arthur Brooks

Being present means actually saying the thing to yourself because you want to bring it from your subconscious into your prefrontal cortex, into your consciousness.

where you're really thinking about something.

And the way to do that is by saying it.

And it's really unbelievably effective.

There's a famous piece of avant-garde music from the 1970s by a French composer named Alvin Lucier called I Am Sitting in a Room.

And the whole thing is just I am sitting in a room.

And he talks about sitting in the room.

It's just like studying and savoring and over and over and over and over again.

I thought, how silly.

And now I'm thinking, I kind of like it.

So say what you're doing to yourself.

That's number two.

Number three is capitalizing, which means talking about and celebrating positive experiences with others.

So don't just say it to yourself, say it to other people.

Talk about the experience that you're actually having.

Notice things to other people, which makes this even more conscious, even more concrete, even more permanent.

And last but not least is what they call positive mental time travel, which is once again, vivid reminiscence or anticipation of positive events.

Just what I talked about in the last one.

So those are your four techniques, your repertoire for savoring.

Number three, I want to talk about how all this works for me, right?