From Striving to Savoring: Shifting Our Mindset with Chronic Illness

Savoring our life helps intensify and expand our connection to positive emotions. People who frequently experience positive emotions are more resilient, resourceful, and are more likely to form close ties with other people. This is especially beneficial for chronically ill individuals.

Therefore, for the chronically ill, it can be challenging to create a shift in perspective from striving to savoring. We tend to be hard on ourselves because we don’t feel like we measure up. We overdo it a lot of the time. Most of us can take concrete steps every day to turn our attention to more positive things.

Finding even small, everyday things that make us smile can take our striving mindset and change it to a savoring one. A savoring mindset is positive and uplifting. This is what chronically ill individuals need more than anything else. I hope this book helps us find beauty in every moment of our life.

In what follows, I will outline and discuss 10 ways to mindfully savor our life every moment of every day. Even our breath can serve as a cleansing anchor, as a way of savoring this moment, and an anecdote to striving and perhaps even overthinking.