April 17, 2023 • 34 mins
Are you seeing what you look at? Or tuning in to the noises all around you? We take our senses for granted - particularly when it comes to the sights and sounds of our everyday lives. Exploring your senses can be a great way to experience more fun and happiness right now.
Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin was warned that her eyesight was in peril - which spurred her to rethink her relationship with her senses. In the first of two interviews, Gretchen joins Dr Laurie Santos to discuss her journey of discovery and her new book - Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I want you to take a moment to think
about a few of your favorite things. Whether it's raindrops
on roses and whiskers on kittens, or snowflakes that stay
on our nose and eyelashes. The things around us that
we love have something in common. We experience and enjoy
(00:36):
them thanks to our senses sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
They can, individually and in combination, make our hearts sing.
They can bring us some needed solace when the proverbial
dog bites or the beast stings. But our senses are
more fragile than we often recognize. Even if you're lucky
enough to be born with all five, it's probable that
(00:56):
age and illness will degrade them over time. We usually
ignore this fragility, and that means that all too often
we take our senses for granted. I mean, you may
say you love chocolate chip cookies, but do you wolf
them down in seconds, barely letting the flavor linger? What
about the music you say you adore is it actually
just some background hum as you chat, exercise, or clean
(01:17):
your apartment. Really paying attention to the world around us,
savoring the sites, sounds, and sensations of the things we
encounter is a great way to increase our happiness. Being
mindful of our surroundings can help us live more fully
in the moment and can help us take a break
from all the usual rumination about past events or worrying
about things to come. But our senses offer lots of
(01:38):
other opportunities to enhance our happiness and well being too,
opportunities that I wasn't even fully aware of until I
read an excellent new book from one of the world's
leading happiness thought leaders, author and podcaster, Gretchen Reuben. Gretchen's
new book, Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses
Got Me out of My Head and into the World,
begins with her story of being just as oblivious to
(01:59):
her surroundings as the rest of us. That is, until
a doctor warned her that a sense she'd taken totally
for granted was in real danger of disappearing, and so
Gretchen began a new quest. She started to explore her
world with fresh eyes and fresh ears, nostrils, taste, buds,
and fingers. After reading the book, I found Gretchen's new
mission to revel in her senses contagious. After seeing all
(02:20):
the benefits she discovered. I also wanted to reawaken myself
to all the colors, noises, textures, and sense that I've
been missing out on in my busy life. I thought
you'd be inspired too, Hey, Gretchen.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Hello, how are you good? Good?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So I invited Gretchen to come on the Happiness Lab
for a two part series to discuss her journey into
her own five senses. Thank you so much for taking
the time to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And already I'm seeing in your zoom background the infusion
of curated color, the flowers, and the chair. Yes, good
red start. We'll focus on smell, taste, and touch in
our next episode, but today we'll explore hearing and seeing.
For Gretchen, it was sight in many ways, the sense
at the top of our primate hierarchy that launched her
on request to be more present. Thinking about vision transported
(03:08):
Gretchen back to childhood and to her first pair of glasses.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I remembered that so distinctly because it was just the
most wonderful thing in the world. I was really nervous
about getting glasses. I was little. I was, like, you know,
in second or third grade. But then when I put
them on, I realized what I had not been seeing
that everybody else could see, you know, everything from the
words on the board to the leaves on the trees,
and it was just so exciting. So I've been very
(03:35):
very near sighted my whole life. And then I had
this experience much more recently where I had pink eye.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's another thing about me.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I get pink eye a lot and usually goes away,
but sometimes you have to go to the eye doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So I went to the eye doctor, and just as
I was.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Walking out the door, just very matter of factly, he's like, well,
you know, be sure to come in for your regular
checkups because, as you know, you're a greater risk for
losing your sight. And I thought, what, no, wait, what
are you talking about. And he said, oh, yeah, well
you're very severely nearsighted, and that means that you are
more at risk for having detached ret and that can
(04:09):
cost you vision. And in fact, I had a friend
who just had lost some vision because of a detached ratna.
So this was, you know, felt very real to me.
You know, intellectually I knew that, of course.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We all know, like at any moment. You know, life
can change.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And of course even if I lost my sight or
any of my senses, I could still have a rich,
meaningful life. It was just that, somehow that moment made
me realize, oh my gosh, I'm taking everything for granted.
I'm not seeing what I'm looking at, I'm not tuning
into the world. I'm just stuck in my head and
everything is just passing me by. And if I lost it,
(04:43):
I would feel so so much regret for everything that
I had missed.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And so it got me very re oriented.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And so this is a shocking story to me about
you in particular for two reasons.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
One is you're this incredibly well known happiness expert that's
into mindfulness, into paying attention. But I think beyond that,
you're known as somebody who cares a lot about your body.
You know, you've talked about your path to getting rid
of sugar in your life and trying to treat your
body better. But why do you I think in this
instant you were kind of unable to pay attention to
your body that you realize you were missing out on
so much of your visual experience.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Well, I mean this is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
You know, because on the one hand, you could say
if anything I was, you know, like doing you know,
do I'm like the street scientists that's constantly experimenting on myself.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
But I completely neglected this one area.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I was exactly as you say in some ways, like
I was very focused on things like sleep and exercise
and morning sunlight. But I wasn't thinking about seeing, hearing, tasting, touching,
smelling in a kind of systematic way, which is really
how I like to approach things. And so, yeah, it
really was this era. And I had had this feeling
that something was missing that in all my study of happiness,
(05:49):
I had a feeling, Okay, there's something that I'm skipping
over and I couldn't put my finger on.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
What that was.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And then it was like everything clicked into place when
I realized that it was the experience of my five senses.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And I think this is something that all of us
go through, right, you know. I mean I teach about
happiness and study it too, but I think in our
busy lives, we can just forget about the importance of noticing,
just like being present and noticing all the little things. Yes,
but your wake up call really changed things for you,
where you really kind of made a decision to pay attention,
and you started even with that first walk back from
the doctor's office, right, So tell me what that was like.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Well, and that wasn't that wasn't voluntary, That wasn't like
a mindfulness exercise that I did.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It was It was psychedelic. It was it was like
a knob in my.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Brain had been turned all the way up to maximum
and it was like I could see everything here, everything,
smell everything, I mean, the feel of the wind on
my cheeks, or just the sidewalk under my feet, or
you know, I just couldn't stop touching things like the
lamp post.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It was like twenty minutes. I live in New York City,
so I was walking home from the eye doctor and
it was just like I still remember the plants that
were in the tree wells and the smell of the
nuts for nuts cart that was walking around. It was
just it was as if all of a sudden, I
had access to this super intense, super rich and vivid
(07:11):
experience of my own life, which by the way, was
there all the time and I could have experienced at
any moment, and it was just that somehow, in this moment,
my brain just flipped open everything that had been screening
things out, and I had access to this much more
intense experience of just, you know, an ordinary walk through
(07:31):
my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
And seeing the power of this ordinary walk that could
get so intense when you paid attention. That kind of
started you on a new Gretchen project. I think my
listeners know. But you're known for kind of, as you said,
being a street scientist and turning you know, these things
into personal projects.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And so, yeah, I've met Getna pig for myself, yes.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And so what was the new experiment you decided to
run on yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, we you know, the more you know, the more
you notice. We all have experienced that.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So I thought, okay, I need to learn more about
my senses because I don't really know much about how
they work. I didn't think very much about well, surely
I more tapped into some of my senses but not
the others. Kind of what is my personal landscape of sense?
And then I thought, well, let me figure out ways
to explore it, investigate it, indulge it, deprivate, Like what
(08:20):
are all the things that I could try in order
to awaken myself to the senses? And sometimes that was
sort of intellectual, like I took a perfume class and
learned all about perfume, But then it was also experience,
Like in that same perfume class, we spent a lot
of times just sniffing and thinking, you know, what does
this smell like?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And it's what does it smell like?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And so I did it very systematically, and I think
for a lot of people that's sort of like, oh,
like Gretch and Rubin do all the research and like
lay out a framework, so I don't have to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You know, I'll just come in for the fun parts.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
But it was just absolutely fascinating to learn more about
our senses.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So as you embarked on this new experiment, what were
some of the goals that you had for yourself.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Well, one thing is I wanted to learn more because true,
I do think that the more you know, the more
you notice. So I wanted to understand how my body worked,
how the senses work more. I wanted to find ways
to deepen appreciation by exploring and investigating. I also though,
I wanted to connect with other people more deeply, and
I had this sense that I could do that through
(09:18):
my senses. I wanted to tap into memories. One of
the things that I don't like very much about myself
is I don't have good memory. I don't have a
good sense of memory for my past the way some
people do. And I thought the senses are famous for
their ability.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
To evote memory. I wanted to tap into that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I also wanted to tap into its ability to connect
me to the present.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Another thing that the senses are very well known for is.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Like being able to really appreciate this moment right here,
right now. I wanted just more delight. I suspected that
it would help me spark my creativity. I wasn't sure how,
but it just sort of felt like that might happen.
I wanted to know how that would happen. I had
a sense that it was another way to tap into
my body. As you say, I'm very focused on like
the physical experience, because our physical experience always colors our
(09:57):
emotional experience. So I thought, well, how can I dial
into my senses to kind of energize me and also
calm me down.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And it turns out that the senses just.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
They just add so much to life in all these
different areas.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It was sort of overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And so you started by attending to site. Why did
you pick site to start with as a sense to
pay attention to more.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Deeply, Well, for a couple of reasons. One is, you
know we're wired for site. Site takes up the biggest
part of the real estate and the brain of the senses.
And then it's also if you were going to say, like, well,
what are the kind of Kindergarten senses? Of the Aristotelian senses,
they usually are named in the same order seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
And that makes sense because seeing, as I said, sort
of is the most the most dominant one, and when
(10:40):
there's a disagreement among the senses, site usually triumphs, which
leads to a lot of interesting effects. Next is hearing,
and also seeing and hearing are things that we can
do at a distance. Then when things come a little
bit closer than we're going to smelling, and then even
closer tasting and smell has a huge influence on what
we taste, as unfortunately a lot of people experience when
they lost their sense of smell through COVID is you
(11:01):
lose your sense of smell, but then it also really
affects your sense of taste, So it makes sense that
smelling comes before tasting, and then touching is like kind
of the odd ball because everything else very neatly organized
on the head, but touching we do with our whole bodies.
You know, it's direct contact, and that's just kind of
the order in which they're usually listed to. So it
felt like the most sort of expected way that people
(11:24):
would see this progression unfolding.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
And so there are lots of things you could pay
attention to with the site. You could look at different sheeps,
you know, you could kind of like pay attention to
all kinds of different lines and things. But one of
the things you started with was color. So tell me
a little bit about the Scarlet project.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Oh well, I went through even before this, I went
through this strange period of being absolutely preoccupied by color.
I'm so interested in color and just the enormous richness
of color, and so I wanted to pick a color
to collect. I am not a natural collector, but this
is something that people find to be enormously fun and exciting,
(11:58):
and it kind of makes the world more fun because
a quest is more fun than a jaunt, So going
to look for something is more interesting than just sort
of browsing around.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So I decided scarlet. I love the word scarlet, I
love the color scarlet. I loved like that deep rich red.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
It's common enough that you find it, it's not so
common that like one out of every two things is like,
you know, royal blue. And at the same time, I
was also doing this thing with my daughter where we
would go on these sort of adventures once a week
after school, and she was in that teenage phase where
you get really into thrist stores. So I thought, well,
we'll go and I'll look for something for scarlet for
(12:32):
my collection, and that that will give me something to
look for while we're together.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So it was a way.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
It was something that brought us together and made this
like this weekly experience more fun. And it's really interesting
about color that if you have just any bunch of
you see a lot of art artworks that are created
with this in mind, where if you just take a
lot of things that are the same color, they just
are automatically interesting and kind of harmonious and fascinating. So
(12:58):
I thought, well, I'll do that with scarlet, and do
that myself, copy some of these artists that I've seen doing.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That, And so what were some of your favorite scarlet
things that you found.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I mean they're just they're just like these little objects.
Like one the first I got was like a plastic
fire truck.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I have a tomato.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I have a sort of a Ryanstone heart. It's it's
thrift store stuff. So a lot of times it's that's
kind of what's funny about it. It's a little bit random.
I love fake food. I've always loved fake food for
some reason. I have like a fake little dessert cake.
And the scarlet bird that's like the kind of thing
that you would wire I guess into sort of like
(13:33):
a Christmas wreath or something like that.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
But what I love most about this list is that, like,
you're finding things that we might think of is not
very interesting in the objective, right, you know, maybe garbage,
maybe garbage. But what you're doing is, yeah, you're turning
even these mundane, boring, garbagey objects into kind of like
their own museum, their own kind of art piece. And
that's the power of just noticing color that you found, right.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, absolutely, And it's so fun because it's the kind
of thing where you're like, why would anybody even bother
to like sell.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
This or even manufacture it, like what is the point
of this?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And then but to me, I'm like, you know, it's
like perfect, and I get very excited.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So it really does. It enlivened the world and lets
me see these.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Kind of creative possibilities in it in a way that
I never did before. So it is it's really exciting
in that way.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Another exciting part of paying attention to color was that
you started noticing your judgments of color. Right when you
walk through the world and you're not paying attention. You know,
they're oranges and blues and yellows, but all of a
sudden you start noticing that some are better than others.
So talk about collecting these examples of which colors were,
you know, pristinely good in their own sense.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, it's interesting about color, because are some colors better
than other colors? This is like a zen color, I think,
But yes, just looking out for color combinations or I
did this really fun thing where you know, Pantone has
its color of the Year, which I'm always you know,
on the edge of my seat to see. One of
the exercises that I do is go to the met
every day, and so i'd go to the metropolit museum,
(15:02):
and I would look for a specific color if it
was the color of the year, or sometimes I would
just pick a color at random and just go look
for it in paintings and other artworks. And that was
a super fun way to look for color because a
lot of times it's not where you would expect to
see it. Or I could sort of test my knowledge
of the met and being like, Okay, I think that
I'm going to see this kind of olive green in Impressionism,
(15:25):
But did they actually use this all of green?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I don't know. Maybe it's more of a medieval color.
I'll have to go see.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
I think the best orange is like a pumpkin orange,
like a good sugar pumpkin.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So the color of Luke Skywalker's X Wing Fighter uniform
and the original Star Wars, it's like he's got this
orange home, and that's that's like the perfect pristine orange.
And so this was like a ridiculous dinner party conversation
for me and my friends for like days, right, and
then later they text me like saha, great blue, like
you know, or like the orange and the walk sign
(15:54):
is terrible, like the don't walk orange is awful, right,
And so, but I think this is not this is
you know, often when we think of the benefits that
we might get from paying attention to senses like sight,
we assume it's internal, right, it's mindful, I'll be less bored,
I'll notice these magnificent things. But you were also seeing
that this could be really social too.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yes, No, and that I love this example of you
and your friends like trading back good good oranges and
bad oranges.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
No, it turns out this is a really really good
way to connect with other people.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
And in fact, a hack that I learned is that
if like, let's say you're in a situation where you
don't know anybody and you're sort of desperately trying to
think of something to say to somebody who you do
not know, a really good thing to do is to
comment on a sensation that both of you are experiencing
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So what do you think of this music? Or have
you tried the food?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Or I love the I love the art on the
walls of this apartment, or whatever it might be, Because
that is something that's just like you're both experiencing and
at the same time, it's it's and it is a
really good way to be.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Social, but I did.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Over and over, I found that I was able to
connect with other people more deeply through senses.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Now, sometimes this was as obvious as.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Like my daughters and I tested each other on smells,
and that was just sort of silly and fun we
made We made a non Newtonian fluid out of quicksand like,
that's also super fun. But then I also thought, well,
I'll use my sense of taste to connect with my
mother in law. And we went on a walk on
the Lori East side. Because she was raised eating traditional
Jewish foods, she cooks those herself still sometimes and Lourie's
(17:21):
side is famous for having many kind of world renowned
places that I sell traditional Jewish food, and let's go.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
On a tour with her and have her tell us.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
First it was just going to be me, but then
when my daughter's heard about it, they wanted to come
too and hear about her memories. And this was something
where you know, I've known my mother in law for decades.
I feel like I know her quite well, but we'd
never really talked through it, and I got a much
deeper sense of like what her life was like on
it just sort of like a very day to day level,
and even of her family members, just talking about her
(17:51):
grandmother's cooking, what her father.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Would do on Friday nights, things like that.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It was a super fun adventure and it was kind
of more active than just me quizzing her about her childhood,
which I don't know that I ever would have done otherwise,
But this gave us a reason to reflect on those memories.
And it was also very very memorable as like a
thing that we did. There was the day that we
went we all went to the Lower East Side together,
(18:15):
and you know, I'll remember that forever.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Another way that you use site to connect socially was
just to start paying close attention to the visual input
you're getting from the people you loved. You know, talk
about how you did this with your husband Jamie.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Oh, I mean I realized that I was looking, you know,
I looked at Jamie without seeing him, and there were
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That I started to notice.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And one of the things you see is when you
see the outer person, you also get insight into the
inner person. Because there were clues to what was going
on inside Jamie from things that were happening right in
front of my eyes. I mean, like a good thing
was I realized, like Jamie sort of bought himself some
new shirts that kind of had a little bit of
a boulder pattern.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And we're a little more fitted.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I was like, oh, you know, Jamie is like he's
kicking it up and not you know, he's busting out
a little bit. But then there was other things where
Jamie I realized that I had been. When I came
down in the morning, I would see a peanut butter
encrusted spoon on the counter. Why people in my family
just do not rinse their peanut butter spoon, I do
not know. This is like a whole family thing, long story,
(19:12):
but I would just see this on the counter, and
I knew that a spoonful of peanut butter was his
favorite midnight snack, but I didn't think anything of it.
I just kind of dealt with the spoon day after day.
And then finally I thought like, let me really look
at the spoon, and what this spoon is telling me
is that Jamie is not sleeping because he's having this
midnight snack night after night after night. And so then
I said to him, you know, is something on your mind?
(19:34):
And it turned out like he was dealing them with
this sort of tricky situation at work.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
But it was like there.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Was this visual clue that I had been overlooking. But
then once I really sort of registered what I saw,
then I could be more attentive, you know, and tune
into his inner landscape by viewing the outer landscape.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Over our apartment.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And this kind of registering allowed you to make some
changes to your own inner landscape. I think one of
the things we forget we can do with our senses
is that we can curate them, y you know, And
so I know you did this. You kind of had
this inspiration from a vase of flowers that you saw,
you know, So talk about the kind of insight that
you got about we can change our own inner landscape
by just changing what's in our visual meal you well,
(20:16):
And this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Is true of all of our senses. It's really interesting,
I think to a very great degree. And Marie, maybe
you see this with happiness too.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I think for some people they feel like almost like
happiness is something that either does or does not wash
over them, and they're not that focused on like, well,
what could I do that might raise or lower my
happiness level? Like what is within my conscious control. Not
everything's within my conscious control, but some things are. And
this is absolutely true with sensation. I realized I was
very passive. I was just like, well, it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Is what it is. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You know, and instead of realizing like, there's a lot
you can do to affect and again, not everything, not
everything's within our control, and people certainly have different responses,
but there are things that we can do and even
to realize, like, other people are fine with this, but
this is really bothering me, and I need to take
steps to it. I mean, a really good example of
this is some people are very very captured by their smartphone,
(21:06):
Like they feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend
on it, and they're always sort of trying to put
it down, but they find that to be very very difficult.
And one of the things that you can do this
and I experimented with this, is you turn your phone
to gray scale, and so instead of appearing in color,
it appears in black.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
White and gray.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And I will tell you it is much less fun
and it's much more just difficult to use a phone
that's in black, white and gray. It's just it's not
designed to be used that way, and so it's just
it's arduous, and it's just it's just like a lot
less compelling because it's like watching your grandparents old black
and white TV set. And so for some people this
is a really powerful tool because if they want to
(21:43):
make their phone less compelling, but they still need to
use their phone throughout the day, they can't just like
put it in a drawer.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't have phone notification sounds because I don't like
that constant interruption. I'm very jumpy, so it really it
really jumps me and I don't like having a train
of thought interrupted, and when I'm talking to somebody, I
get very distracted by it.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So I don't have notifications.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
And some people are like, well, how can you not
have notifications? And I'm like, very easily just start them off.
And again it's not what everybody would choose. But realizing
you know that it is something that you can't choose
to address another thing, I realized I really don't like
noisy restaurants, and I'm not alone. This is like the
one of the number one complaints about restaurants are too noisy.
(22:23):
And now I just I really will say, like I
don't want to go to that restaurant ever again. I
like the food was good, but it's too loud. I
don't want to go there. And so instead of just
being like, oh, well, if you like this place, we'll go,
I can say that's not a place that I like
and shape my decisions.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Of course, Gretchen's new relationship with sound didn't end with
her avoiding harsh and unpleasant noises. She set out to
hear things in a totally new way. She committed to
listening purposefully to our surroundings, to music, and most importantly,
to the people she loved. Well hear how all that
went when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Music is this universal human custom, It's in all human cultures.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's ancient technology has revolutionized our relationship with music. Were
the first generation of humans to be able to access
virtually any song ever composed and listen to it anywhere
we want, in our cars, on the bus, or even
while we jog.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
There's a lot of debate about why we all do
appreciate music. There's a lot of theories about it because
it's not evolutionarily necessary.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But until she started on her new quest, Podcaster and
Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin felt her listening habits were embarrassingly
out of step with the rest of humankind.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I always felt bad about my relationship with music because
I felt like I didn't really appreciate it the way
other people did. I saw people around me who like
listen to music all the time. They went to concerts,
they liked finding new kinds of music, new artists, they
like to talk about it, and I was like, Eh,
not really likes so into music, And it always felt
like a flaw or a limitation and being who I am.
(24:05):
I always thought, Wow, if I just learned more about it,
and if I took a class I learned to play
the uku lelely, or I really applied myself, I could
learn to love music.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But I never felt like.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Doing that right because I wanted to spend time doing
the things I already liked. But then, when I was
thinking about this, I sort of set off handedly to
my producer of my podcast, who's a really really huge
music person. I said to him, well, you know, I'm
just not that into music, and he said, oh, I
think you are into music, but just in your own way.
(24:35):
And this was a huge epiphany for me and in
all my work, all I say is there's no magic,
one size fits all solution.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
What works for me may not work for you. So
I deeply knew that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
But even here again I had this spot that I
was overlooking where I thought, well, there's just something wrong
with my approach, instead of saying, well, how am I
different from other people? Or maybe I'm not as different
from everyone. Maybe there are other people like me, but
we just sort of haven't seen ourselves as kind of
a different way, an alternative way.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And I realized, like I really like a song.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Some people like music like they want to listen to
music all day, they want to listen to new music,
they want to listen to country music. And I like
the one song and I will love that song and
I will have a deep emotional response to that song.
And I love it when I find a new song
that I love, but I just want the one song,
which that explains like why I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Go to concerts.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Why would I go to a concert when I just
want to hear the one song? And it was just
it was it opened up this whole new way for
me to think about how I could engage with my
sense of hearing in a way that I love because
instead of trying to jam myself into this model of
what I thought was the right way, I accepted myself
to say, well, this is my way. How can I
lean into that? It's happened in my way of loving music?
(25:52):
And so that was a huge boon for me. It
was like a whole new joy that I had that
I could have access to, which in a way and
before I always felt sort of discouraged about.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And that epiphany also led you to really be Gretchen
through another practice that you came up with, which is
this idea of the audio apothecary. You know what what
is that? And what was in your audio apothecary?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, as you know, there's so much research about how
quick upbeat song is one of the quickest ways that
we can intervene in our mood. You know, it helps
us deal with pain, it helps us.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Get energy, it makes workouts seem easier.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
This is why you know you go to the gym
and always playing music. And so I knew this, but
I realized when I thought about the songs that I love,
because now that I knew I was a song lover,
I thought, well, what are what kind of mood do
most of the songs that I love put me in,
and most of them are kind of like melancholy, reflective
songs that put me in sort of kind of a
meditative state and maybe a little bit not sad, but
(26:52):
you know, bittersweet. And then I thought, but sometimes you
just want to give yourself a lift. You just want
to give your you know, give yourself a boost of
energy and cheer. And so I thought, Okay, I'm going
to make a list of those songs so that when
I can really intervene in my mood and when I
feel like I do need a quick lift or a
quick bo of energy, I can use my audio apothecary
for that. Not that I don't love those other songs,
(27:13):
but this is when I want to evoke a very
specific mood.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So I made my own playlist.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And this gets to, I think another benefit that you
realize by paying attention to your senses, right, which is
that we can really use sensory experiences for emotion regulation. Yes, right,
when I think in my own personal life, i'm dragging,
like you know, I'm feeling a look like a low
energy day. My instinct, you know, unlike you and your
kind of you know, sugar care, fitness. Like, my instinct
is to like turn to something that's often really unhealthy
(27:41):
to get my energy in, right, Like I'm going to
grab a cupcake or some like really caffeinated latte or
something like that. But you realize that sometimes these quick
sensory hits can play that emotion regulation role in a
way that's sometimes even healthier too.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Absolutely, And this is one of the kind of hacks
that I stumbled upon which I hadn't been expecting, which
is I think a lot of times when we want
to get a boost, like we do, we want to
kind of jolt ourselves to our senses. And as you say,
eating something or is often kind of the most obvious
thing to do, most familiar thing to do. But what
I found is that any kind of intense sensory experience
(28:14):
tended to give me that lift and that energy and
kind of that feeling of like shaking yourself awake. That
is often what you want sort of at three o'clock
in the afternoon when you're dragging, like taking a big
whiff of something like greatefruit or fresh towels just kind
of like overwhelming a sense or like really rubbing my
fingers over like a velvety pillow and really feeling that,
(28:36):
or you know, even something rough like wicker, you know
where you feel all those bumps and it's sort of
smooth and it's it's just it's there's something really engaging
about that that kind of served the same purpose. So
I think that for people who are trying to maybe
redirect there what they're doing to give them some themselves
that little boost, because I think you do need a boost.
There's time where like cell phones that need to get
(28:57):
plugged back into the wall, Like you need to give
yourself a boost, And so I think you want to have,
you know, these sort of healthy treats that you can
give yourself. And I think some people think of treats
as being something that they would eat, but you could
actually tap into all your senses. Or I know, I
know somebody who loves music, loves loves loves music, loves
new music, and so that's his treat is he'll like
let himself listen to a new song, and that does
(29:20):
the same thing for him.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Wouldn't work for me.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Because, like I say, I don't want to listen to
a new song. I like the songs I already like
but for him that was sort of an exciting adventure
and overwhelmed his senses in a very pleasant way.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And so we can use hearing in our other senses
to kind of do this emotion regulation, whether it's kind
of like you know, moving our energy up a little bit,
or putting ourselves in a good move, even maybe being
contemplative like the kinds of songs. Yeah, you tend to
gravitate towards but you also had this realization, particularly for hearing,
that you know, yeah, we can do all this stuff,
but like many happiness practices, it actually takes a little
(29:54):
bit of work. And I think this can be something
that's particularly surprising with listening, where it's just like, you know,
we just hear sounds in the background. It happens. But
you started to realize that listening well, actually takes a
little bit of work. You talk about this realization and
kind of how you tried to put more of this
work into practice.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Absolutely listening is arduous, and I noticed and I thought,
oh my gosh, maybe I'm the first person to realize
that the word listen is just the word silent with
the letters rearranged. Turns out I'm not the first one
to notice that, unfortunately, but no, and I realized that
I wanted to do a better job of listening, and
so I wrote, and but I need to crystallize my ideas.
(30:31):
I often will write a manifesto or something like that,
and so I wrote a manifesto for listening. That was
all the things that I wanted to remember about how
to listen. And that was everything from like my posture,
like turn to face the person, you know, so my
shoulders are square with their shoulders, put down my book
or my phone, you know, very obviously, be in an
attentive posture, and then listen.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
And you know, there were things that for me were
really hard.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
One was I realized that, like unconsciously, almost before I
know that I'm doing it, I will often redirect a
conversation away from something where it feels very vulnerable. And
I've really tried to do a better job of that.
I mean to the point where some of I have
to go back to somebody and say, I feel like
you were trying to talk about something and I interrupted
(31:15):
and read.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Directed the conversation. Let's go back.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I'm trying to, you know, get there faster, and just
being aware of that as I'm listening, you know, don't
try to steer it away from something that feels vulnerable.
And another thing is I realized that another kind of
coping mechanism I have is because I love to read,
and I have so many books that I think are like,
so so so helpful that anytime anybody brings something up,
(31:38):
I'm often like, that reminds me of this book, and
you should get this book and let me email you
the link, and you know, and you know, I can't
be My sister calls me a happiness bully, because I
can get pretty insistent if I think I have something
to suggest that I think would make you happier. And
I realize, like, yes, I think that this is really
helpful and valuable, but that is not what the person
is asking for at this moment. Like hold that back
(32:01):
and maybe offer that later if they want it. But
in the moment, rather than getting distracted by like this
reading list that I'm suggesting, I need to like listen
and respond to what the person's saying. You know, I
think these are mechanisms for kind of handling emotion. So
I'm trying to listen better so that I can really
be present in hearing what a person is trying to tell.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Me, and that active listening better also led to I think,
really important new social connections for you, even within your family. Right,
I know, just as a parent, this active listening sort
of transformed for you as you engage with this practice more.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, I mean with my daughters and my husband too.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
You just realize that instead of constantly trying to figure out,
well what am I going to say and how am
I going to respond and what's my advice?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I can just listen.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I realized, especially with my younger daughter, she will
talk herself out of a bad mood. She will talk
herself into a solution if I just stay with her
and let her keep talking and let silence fall and
let her keep talking. And in fact, research shows that
we do generate better solutions and answers when we have,
you know, a listener who's.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Attending to us.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
And so rather than thinking well what am I going
to say, it's more about well how am I going
to listen? And that proved to be much more effective.
But it's not, as you said earlier, it's not effortless.
It's not like you're just sitting there. What's that whole
thing don't just do something.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Sit there.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
It's kind of that, so I think it's it's sometimes
it's hard. It's hard to just say like wow, that
sound that sounds really hard, or like wow, it's not
you must have been it sounds like you must have
been really frustrated, and just not rush in with solutions
or questions and just listen.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, I'm glad you're not the only family member who's
a happiness bully. I feel like I have to have
to work on this myself. Yes, so that's how you
can get more intentional about the audio and visual domain.
But there's still so much more to embracing all five senses.
Gretchen and I still have to talk smell, it's amazing
that garbage days smells so bad, like why does it
(34:00):
smell so bad? And taste your e sides, creak, salad,
the chunks of cheese like, and of course touch.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I always thought of skin as like packed and jing,
but you know that's where we get our sensations.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So be sure to come back for part two of
our journey into better savoring through your senses next time
on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin. I want you to take a moment to think
about a few of your favorite things. Whether it's raindrops
on roses and whiskers on kittens, or snowflakes that stay
on our nose and eyelashes. The things around us that
we love have something in common. We experience and enjoy
(00:36):
them thanks to our senses sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
They can, individually and in combination, make our hearts sing.
They can bring us some needed solace when the proverbial
dog bites or the beast stings. But our senses are
more fragile than we often recognize. Even if you're lucky
enough to be born with all five, it's probable that
(00:56):
age and illness will degrade them over time. We usually
ignore this fragility, and that means that all too often
we take our senses for granted. I mean, you may
say you love chocolate chip cookies, but do you wolf
them down in seconds, barely letting the flavor linger? What
about the music you say you adore is it actually
just some background hum as you chat, exercise, or clean
(01:17):
your apartment. Really paying attention to the world around us,
savoring the sites, sounds, and sensations of the things we
encounter is a great way to increase our happiness. Being
mindful of our surroundings can help us live more fully
in the moment and can help us take a break
from all the usual rumination about past events or worrying
about things to come. But our senses offer lots of
(01:38):
other opportunities to enhance our happiness and well being too,
opportunities that I wasn't even fully aware of until I
read an excellent new book from one of the world's
leading happiness thought leaders, author and podcaster, Gretchen Reuben. Gretchen's
new book, Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses
Got Me out of My Head and into the World,
begins with her story of being just as oblivious to
(01:59):
her surroundings as the rest of us. That is, until
a doctor warned her that a sense she'd taken totally
for granted was in real danger of disappearing, and so
Gretchen began a new quest. She started to explore her
world with fresh eyes and fresh ears, nostrils, taste, buds,
and fingers. After reading the book, I found Gretchen's new
mission to revel in her senses contagious. After seeing all
(02:20):
the benefits she discovered. I also wanted to reawaken myself
to all the colors, noises, textures, and sense that I've
been missing out on in my busy life. I thought
you'd be inspired too, Hey, Gretchen.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Hello, how are you good? Good?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So I invited Gretchen to come on the Happiness Lab
for a two part series to discuss her journey into
her own five senses. Thank you so much for taking
the time to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And already I'm seeing in your zoom background the infusion
of curated color, the flowers, and the chair. Yes, good
red start. We'll focus on smell, taste, and touch in
our next episode, but today we'll explore hearing and seeing.
For Gretchen, it was sight in many ways, the sense
at the top of our primate hierarchy that launched her
on request to be more present. Thinking about vision transported
(03:08):
Gretchen back to childhood and to her first pair of glasses.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I remembered that so distinctly because it was just the
most wonderful thing in the world. I was really nervous
about getting glasses. I was little. I was, like, you know,
in second or third grade. But then when I put
them on, I realized what I had not been seeing
that everybody else could see, you know, everything from the
words on the board to the leaves on the trees,
and it was just so exciting. So I've been very
(03:35):
very near sighted my whole life. And then I had
this experience much more recently where I had pink eye.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's another thing about me.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I get pink eye a lot and usually goes away,
but sometimes you have to go to the eye doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So I went to the eye doctor, and just as
I was.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Walking out the door, just very matter of factly, he's like, well,
you know, be sure to come in for your regular
checkups because, as you know, you're a greater risk for
losing your sight. And I thought, what, no, wait, what
are you talking about. And he said, oh, yeah, well
you're very severely nearsighted, and that means that you are
more at risk for having detached ret and that can
(04:09):
cost you vision. And in fact, I had a friend
who just had lost some vision because of a detached ratna.
So this was, you know, felt very real to me.
You know, intellectually I knew that, of course.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We all know, like at any moment. You know, life
can change.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And of course even if I lost my sight or
any of my senses, I could still have a rich,
meaningful life. It was just that, somehow that moment made
me realize, oh my gosh, I'm taking everything for granted.
I'm not seeing what I'm looking at, I'm not tuning
into the world. I'm just stuck in my head and
everything is just passing me by. And if I lost it,
(04:43):
I would feel so so much regret for everything that
I had missed.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And so it got me very re oriented.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And so this is a shocking story to me about
you in particular for two reasons.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
One is you're this incredibly well known happiness expert that's
into mindfulness, into paying attention. But I think beyond that,
you're known as somebody who cares a lot about your body.
You know, you've talked about your path to getting rid
of sugar in your life and trying to treat your
body better. But why do you I think in this
instant you were kind of unable to pay attention to
your body that you realize you were missing out on
so much of your visual experience.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Well, I mean this is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
You know, because on the one hand, you could say
if anything I was, you know, like doing you know,
do I'm like the street scientists that's constantly experimenting on myself.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
But I completely neglected this one area.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I was exactly as you say in some ways, like
I was very focused on things like sleep and exercise
and morning sunlight. But I wasn't thinking about seeing, hearing, tasting, touching,
smelling in a kind of systematic way, which is really
how I like to approach things. And so, yeah, it
really was this era. And I had had this feeling
that something was missing that in all my study of happiness,
(05:49):
I had a feeling, Okay, there's something that I'm skipping
over and I couldn't put my finger on.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
What that was.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And then it was like everything clicked into place when
I realized that it was the experience of my five senses.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And I think this is something that all of us
go through, right, you know. I mean I teach about
happiness and study it too, but I think in our
busy lives, we can just forget about the importance of noticing,
just like being present and noticing all the little things. Yes,
but your wake up call really changed things for you,
where you really kind of made a decision to pay attention,
and you started even with that first walk back from
the doctor's office, right, So tell me what that was like.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Well, and that wasn't that wasn't voluntary, That wasn't like
a mindfulness exercise that I did.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It was It was psychedelic. It was it was like
a knob in my.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Brain had been turned all the way up to maximum
and it was like I could see everything here, everything,
smell everything, I mean, the feel of the wind on
my cheeks, or just the sidewalk under my feet, or
you know, I just couldn't stop touching things like the
lamp post.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It was like twenty minutes. I live in New York City,
so I was walking home from the eye doctor and
it was just like I still remember the plants that
were in the tree wells and the smell of the
nuts for nuts cart that was walking around. It was
just it was as if all of a sudden, I
had access to this super intense, super rich and vivid
(07:11):
experience of my own life, which by the way, was
there all the time and I could have experienced at
any moment, and it was just that somehow, in this moment,
my brain just flipped open everything that had been screening
things out, and I had access to this much more
intense experience of just, you know, an ordinary walk through
(07:31):
my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
And seeing the power of this ordinary walk that could
get so intense when you paid attention. That kind of
started you on a new Gretchen project. I think my
listeners know. But you're known for kind of, as you said,
being a street scientist and turning you know, these things
into personal projects.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And so, yeah, I've met Getna pig for myself, yes.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And so what was the new experiment you decided to
run on yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, we you know, the more you know, the more
you notice. We all have experienced that.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So I thought, okay, I need to learn more about
my senses because I don't really know much about how
they work. I didn't think very much about well, surely
I more tapped into some of my senses but not
the others. Kind of what is my personal landscape of sense?
And then I thought, well, let me figure out ways
to explore it, investigate it, indulge it, deprivate, Like what
(08:20):
are all the things that I could try in order
to awaken myself to the senses? And sometimes that was
sort of intellectual, like I took a perfume class and
learned all about perfume, But then it was also experience,
Like in that same perfume class, we spent a lot
of times just sniffing and thinking, you know, what does
this smell like?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And it's what does it smell like?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And so I did it very systematically, and I think
for a lot of people that's sort of like, oh,
like Gretch and Rubin do all the research and like
lay out a framework, so I don't have to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You know, I'll just come in for the fun parts.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
But it was just absolutely fascinating to learn more about
our senses.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So as you embarked on this new experiment, what were
some of the goals that you had for yourself.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Well, one thing is I wanted to learn more because true,
I do think that the more you know, the more
you notice. So I wanted to understand how my body worked,
how the senses work more. I wanted to find ways
to deepen appreciation by exploring and investigating. I also though,
I wanted to connect with other people more deeply, and
I had this sense that I could do that through
(09:18):
my senses. I wanted to tap into memories. One of
the things that I don't like very much about myself
is I don't have good memory. I don't have a
good sense of memory for my past the way some
people do. And I thought the senses are famous for
their ability.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
To evote memory. I wanted to tap into that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I also wanted to tap into its ability to connect
me to the present.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Another thing that the senses are very well known for is.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Like being able to really appreciate this moment right here,
right now. I wanted just more delight. I suspected that
it would help me spark my creativity. I wasn't sure how,
but it just sort of felt like that might happen.
I wanted to know how that would happen. I had
a sense that it was another way to tap into
my body. As you say, I'm very focused on like
the physical experience, because our physical experience always colors our
(09:57):
emotional experience. So I thought, well, how can I dial
into my senses to kind of energize me and also
calm me down.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And it turns out that the senses just.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
They just add so much to life in all these
different areas.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It was sort of overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And so you started by attending to site. Why did
you pick site to start with as a sense to
pay attention to more.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Deeply, Well, for a couple of reasons. One is, you
know we're wired for site. Site takes up the biggest
part of the real estate and the brain of the senses.
And then it's also if you were going to say, like, well,
what are the kind of Kindergarten senses? Of the Aristotelian senses,
they usually are named in the same order seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
And that makes sense because seeing, as I said, sort
of is the most the most dominant one, and when
(10:40):
there's a disagreement among the senses, site usually triumphs, which
leads to a lot of interesting effects. Next is hearing,
and also seeing and hearing are things that we can
do at a distance. Then when things come a little
bit closer than we're going to smelling, and then even
closer tasting and smell has a huge influence on what
we taste, as unfortunately a lot of people experience when
they lost their sense of smell through COVID is you
(11:01):
lose your sense of smell, but then it also really
affects your sense of taste, So it makes sense that
smelling comes before tasting, and then touching is like kind
of the odd ball because everything else very neatly organized
on the head, but touching we do with our whole bodies.
You know, it's direct contact, and that's just kind of
the order in which they're usually listed to. So it
felt like the most sort of expected way that people
(11:24):
would see this progression unfolding.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
And so there are lots of things you could pay
attention to with the site. You could look at different sheeps,
you know, you could kind of like pay attention to
all kinds of different lines and things. But one of
the things you started with was color. So tell me
a little bit about the Scarlet project.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Oh well, I went through even before this, I went
through this strange period of being absolutely preoccupied by color.
I'm so interested in color and just the enormous richness
of color, and so I wanted to pick a color
to collect. I am not a natural collector, but this
is something that people find to be enormously fun and exciting,
(11:58):
and it kind of makes the world more fun because
a quest is more fun than a jaunt, So going
to look for something is more interesting than just sort
of browsing around.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So I decided scarlet. I love the word scarlet, I
love the color scarlet. I loved like that deep rich red.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
It's common enough that you find it, it's not so
common that like one out of every two things is like,
you know, royal blue. And at the same time, I
was also doing this thing with my daughter where we
would go on these sort of adventures once a week
after school, and she was in that teenage phase where
you get really into thrist stores. So I thought, well,
we'll go and I'll look for something for scarlet for
(12:32):
my collection, and that that will give me something to
look for while we're together.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So it was a way.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
It was something that brought us together and made this
like this weekly experience more fun. And it's really interesting
about color that if you have just any bunch of
you see a lot of art artworks that are created
with this in mind, where if you just take a
lot of things that are the same color, they just
are automatically interesting and kind of harmonious and fascinating. So
(12:58):
I thought, well, I'll do that with scarlet, and do
that myself, copy some of these artists that I've seen doing.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That, And so what were some of your favorite scarlet
things that you found.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I mean they're just they're just like these little objects.
Like one the first I got was like a plastic
fire truck.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I have a tomato.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I have a sort of a Ryanstone heart. It's it's
thrift store stuff. So a lot of times it's that's
kind of what's funny about it. It's a little bit random.
I love fake food. I've always loved fake food for
some reason. I have like a fake little dessert cake.
And the scarlet bird that's like the kind of thing
that you would wire I guess into sort of like
(13:33):
a Christmas wreath or something like that.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
But what I love most about this list is that, like,
you're finding things that we might think of is not
very interesting in the objective, right, you know, maybe garbage,
maybe garbage. But what you're doing is, yeah, you're turning
even these mundane, boring, garbagey objects into kind of like
their own museum, their own kind of art piece. And
that's the power of just noticing color that you found, right.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, absolutely, And it's so fun because it's the kind
of thing where you're like, why would anybody even bother
to like sell.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
This or even manufacture it, like what is the point
of this?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And then but to me, I'm like, you know, it's
like perfect, and I get very excited.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So it really does. It enlivened the world and lets
me see these.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Kind of creative possibilities in it in a way that
I never did before. So it is it's really exciting
in that way.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Another exciting part of paying attention to color was that
you started noticing your judgments of color. Right when you
walk through the world and you're not paying attention. You know,
they're oranges and blues and yellows, but all of a
sudden you start noticing that some are better than others.
So talk about collecting these examples of which colors were,
you know, pristinely good in their own sense.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, it's interesting about color, because are some colors better
than other colors? This is like a zen color, I think,
But yes, just looking out for color combinations or I
did this really fun thing where you know, Pantone has
its color of the Year, which I'm always you know,
on the edge of my seat to see. One of
the exercises that I do is go to the met
every day, and so i'd go to the metropolit museum,
(15:02):
and I would look for a specific color if it
was the color of the year, or sometimes I would
just pick a color at random and just go look
for it in paintings and other artworks. And that was
a super fun way to look for color because a
lot of times it's not where you would expect to
see it. Or I could sort of test my knowledge
of the met and being like, Okay, I think that
I'm going to see this kind of olive green in Impressionism,
(15:25):
But did they actually use this all of green?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I don't know. Maybe it's more of a medieval color.
I'll have to go see.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
I think the best orange is like a pumpkin orange,
like a good sugar pumpkin.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So the color of Luke Skywalker's X Wing Fighter uniform
and the original Star Wars, it's like he's got this
orange home, and that's that's like the perfect pristine orange.
And so this was like a ridiculous dinner party conversation
for me and my friends for like days, right, and
then later they text me like saha, great blue, like
you know, or like the orange and the walk sign
(15:54):
is terrible, like the don't walk orange is awful, right,
And so, but I think this is not this is
you know, often when we think of the benefits that
we might get from paying attention to senses like sight,
we assume it's internal, right, it's mindful, I'll be less bored,
I'll notice these magnificent things. But you were also seeing
that this could be really social too.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yes, No, and that I love this example of you
and your friends like trading back good good oranges and
bad oranges.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
No, it turns out this is a really really good
way to connect with other people.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
And in fact, a hack that I learned is that
if like, let's say you're in a situation where you
don't know anybody and you're sort of desperately trying to
think of something to say to somebody who you do
not know, a really good thing to do is to
comment on a sensation that both of you are experiencing
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So what do you think of this music? Or have
you tried the food?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Or I love the I love the art on the
walls of this apartment, or whatever it might be, Because
that is something that's just like you're both experiencing and
at the same time, it's it's and it is a
really good way to be.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Social, but I did.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Over and over, I found that I was able to
connect with other people more deeply through senses.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Now, sometimes this was as obvious as.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Like my daughters and I tested each other on smells,
and that was just sort of silly and fun we
made We made a non Newtonian fluid out of quicksand like,
that's also super fun. But then I also thought, well,
I'll use my sense of taste to connect with my
mother in law. And we went on a walk on
the Lori East side. Because she was raised eating traditional
Jewish foods, she cooks those herself still sometimes and Lourie's
(17:21):
side is famous for having many kind of world renowned
places that I sell traditional Jewish food, and let's go.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
On a tour with her and have her tell us.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
First it was just going to be me, but then
when my daughter's heard about it, they wanted to come
too and hear about her memories. And this was something
where you know, I've known my mother in law for decades.
I feel like I know her quite well, but we'd
never really talked through it, and I got a much
deeper sense of like what her life was like on
it just sort of like a very day to day level,
and even of her family members, just talking about her
(17:51):
grandmother's cooking, what her father.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Would do on Friday nights, things like that.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It was a super fun adventure and it was kind
of more active than just me quizzing her about her childhood,
which I don't know that I ever would have done otherwise,
But this gave us a reason to reflect on those memories.
And it was also very very memorable as like a
thing that we did. There was the day that we
went we all went to the Lower East Side together,
(18:15):
and you know, I'll remember that forever.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Another way that you use site to connect socially was
just to start paying close attention to the visual input
you're getting from the people you loved. You know, talk
about how you did this with your husband Jamie.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Oh, I mean I realized that I was looking, you know,
I looked at Jamie without seeing him, and there were
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That I started to notice.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And one of the things you see is when you
see the outer person, you also get insight into the
inner person. Because there were clues to what was going
on inside Jamie from things that were happening right in
front of my eyes. I mean, like a good thing
was I realized, like Jamie sort of bought himself some
new shirts that kind of had a little bit of
a boulder pattern.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And we're a little more fitted.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I was like, oh, you know, Jamie is like he's
kicking it up and not you know, he's busting out
a little bit. But then there was other things where
Jamie I realized that I had been. When I came
down in the morning, I would see a peanut butter
encrusted spoon on the counter. Why people in my family
just do not rinse their peanut butter spoon, I do
not know. This is like a whole family thing, long story,
(19:12):
but I would just see this on the counter, and
I knew that a spoonful of peanut butter was his
favorite midnight snack, but I didn't think anything of it.
I just kind of dealt with the spoon day after day.
And then finally I thought like, let me really look
at the spoon, and what this spoon is telling me
is that Jamie is not sleeping because he's having this
midnight snack night after night after night. And so then
I said to him, you know, is something on your mind?
(19:34):
And it turned out like he was dealing them with
this sort of tricky situation at work.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
But it was like there.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Was this visual clue that I had been overlooking. But
then once I really sort of registered what I saw,
then I could be more attentive, you know, and tune
into his inner landscape by viewing the outer landscape.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Over our apartment.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And this kind of registering allowed you to make some
changes to your own inner landscape. I think one of
the things we forget we can do with our senses
is that we can curate them, y you know, And
so I know you did this. You kind of had
this inspiration from a vase of flowers that you saw,
you know, So talk about the kind of insight that
you got about we can change our own inner landscape
by just changing what's in our visual meal you well,
(20:16):
And this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Is true of all of our senses. It's really interesting,
I think to a very great degree. And Marie, maybe
you see this with happiness too.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I think for some people they feel like almost like
happiness is something that either does or does not wash
over them, and they're not that focused on like, well,
what could I do that might raise or lower my
happiness level? Like what is within my conscious control. Not
everything's within my conscious control, but some things are. And
this is absolutely true with sensation. I realized I was
very passive. I was just like, well, it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Is what it is. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You know, and instead of realizing like, there's a lot
you can do to affect and again, not everything, not
everything's within our control, and people certainly have different responses,
but there are things that we can do and even
to realize, like, other people are fine with this, but
this is really bothering me, and I need to take
steps to it. I mean, a really good example of
this is some people are very very captured by their smartphone,
(21:06):
Like they feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend
on it, and they're always sort of trying to put
it down, but they find that to be very very difficult.
And one of the things that you can do this
and I experimented with this, is you turn your phone
to gray scale, and so instead of appearing in color,
it appears in black.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
White and gray.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And I will tell you it is much less fun
and it's much more just difficult to use a phone
that's in black, white and gray. It's just it's not
designed to be used that way, and so it's just
it's arduous, and it's just it's just like a lot
less compelling because it's like watching your grandparents old black
and white TV set. And so for some people this
is a really powerful tool because if they want to
(21:43):
make their phone less compelling, but they still need to
use their phone throughout the day, they can't just like
put it in a drawer.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't have phone notification sounds because I don't like
that constant interruption. I'm very jumpy, so it really it
really jumps me and I don't like having a train
of thought interrupted, and when I'm talking to somebody, I
get very distracted by it.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So I don't have notifications.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
And some people are like, well, how can you not
have notifications? And I'm like, very easily just start them off.
And again it's not what everybody would choose. But realizing
you know that it is something that you can't choose
to address another thing, I realized I really don't like
noisy restaurants, and I'm not alone. This is like the
one of the number one complaints about restaurants are too noisy.
(22:23):
And now I just I really will say, like I
don't want to go to that restaurant ever again. I
like the food was good, but it's too loud. I
don't want to go there. And so instead of just
being like, oh, well, if you like this place, we'll go,
I can say that's not a place that I like
and shape my decisions.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Of course, Gretchen's new relationship with sound didn't end with
her avoiding harsh and unpleasant noises. She set out to
hear things in a totally new way. She committed to
listening purposefully to our surroundings, to music, and most importantly,
to the people she loved. Well hear how all that
went when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Music is this universal human custom, It's in all human cultures.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's ancient technology has revolutionized our relationship with music. Were
the first generation of humans to be able to access
virtually any song ever composed and listen to it anywhere
we want, in our cars, on the bus, or even
while we jog.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
There's a lot of debate about why we all do
appreciate music. There's a lot of theories about it because
it's not evolutionarily necessary.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But until she started on her new quest, Podcaster and
Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin felt her listening habits were embarrassingly
out of step with the rest of humankind.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I always felt bad about my relationship with music because
I felt like I didn't really appreciate it the way
other people did. I saw people around me who like
listen to music all the time. They went to concerts,
they liked finding new kinds of music, new artists, they
like to talk about it, and I was like, Eh,
not really likes so into music, And it always felt
like a flaw or a limitation and being who I am.
(24:05):
I always thought, Wow, if I just learned more about it,
and if I took a class I learned to play
the uku lelely, or I really applied myself, I could
learn to love music.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But I never felt like.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Doing that right because I wanted to spend time doing
the things I already liked. But then, when I was
thinking about this, I sort of set off handedly to
my producer of my podcast, who's a really really huge
music person. I said to him, well, you know, I'm
just not that into music, and he said, oh, I
think you are into music, but just in your own way.
(24:35):
And this was a huge epiphany for me and in
all my work, all I say is there's no magic,
one size fits all solution.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
What works for me may not work for you. So
I deeply knew that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
But even here again I had this spot that I
was overlooking where I thought, well, there's just something wrong
with my approach, instead of saying, well, how am I
different from other people? Or maybe I'm not as different
from everyone. Maybe there are other people like me, but
we just sort of haven't seen ourselves as kind of
a different way, an alternative way.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And I realized, like I really like a song.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Some people like music like they want to listen to
music all day, they want to listen to new music,
they want to listen to country music. And I like
the one song and I will love that song and
I will have a deep emotional response to that song.
And I love it when I find a new song
that I love, but I just want the one song,
which that explains like why I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Go to concerts.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Why would I go to a concert when I just
want to hear the one song? And it was just
it was it opened up this whole new way for
me to think about how I could engage with my
sense of hearing in a way that I love because
instead of trying to jam myself into this model of
what I thought was the right way, I accepted myself
to say, well, this is my way. How can I
lean into that? It's happened in my way of loving music?
(25:52):
And so that was a huge boon for me. It
was like a whole new joy that I had that
I could have access to, which in a way and
before I always felt sort of discouraged about.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And that epiphany also led you to really be Gretchen
through another practice that you came up with, which is
this idea of the audio apothecary. You know what what
is that? And what was in your audio apothecary?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, as you know, there's so much research about how
quick upbeat song is one of the quickest ways that
we can intervene in our mood. You know, it helps
us deal with pain, it helps us.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Get energy, it makes workouts seem easier.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
This is why you know you go to the gym
and always playing music. And so I knew this, but
I realized when I thought about the songs that I love,
because now that I knew I was a song lover,
I thought, well, what are what kind of mood do
most of the songs that I love put me in,
and most of them are kind of like melancholy, reflective
songs that put me in sort of kind of a
meditative state and maybe a little bit not sad, but
(26:52):
you know, bittersweet. And then I thought, but sometimes you
just want to give yourself a lift. You just want
to give your you know, give yourself a boost of
energy and cheer. And so I thought, Okay, I'm going
to make a list of those songs so that when
I can really intervene in my mood and when I
feel like I do need a quick lift or a
quick bo of energy, I can use my audio apothecary
for that. Not that I don't love those other songs,
(27:13):
but this is when I want to evoke a very
specific mood.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So I made my own playlist.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And this gets to, I think another benefit that you
realize by paying attention to your senses, right, which is
that we can really use sensory experiences for emotion regulation. Yes, right,
when I think in my own personal life, i'm dragging,
like you know, I'm feeling a look like a low
energy day. My instinct, you know, unlike you and your
kind of you know, sugar care, fitness. Like, my instinct
is to like turn to something that's often really unhealthy
(27:41):
to get my energy in, right, Like I'm going to
grab a cupcake or some like really caffeinated latte or
something like that. But you realize that sometimes these quick
sensory hits can play that emotion regulation role in a
way that's sometimes even healthier too.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Absolutely, And this is one of the kind of hacks
that I stumbled upon which I hadn't been expecting, which
is I think a lot of times when we want
to get a boost, like we do, we want to
kind of jolt ourselves to our senses. And as you say,
eating something or is often kind of the most obvious
thing to do, most familiar thing to do. But what
I found is that any kind of intense sensory experience
(28:14):
tended to give me that lift and that energy and
kind of that feeling of like shaking yourself awake. That
is often what you want sort of at three o'clock
in the afternoon when you're dragging, like taking a big
whiff of something like greatefruit or fresh towels just kind
of like overwhelming a sense or like really rubbing my
fingers over like a velvety pillow and really feeling that,
(28:36):
or you know, even something rough like wicker, you know
where you feel all those bumps and it's sort of
smooth and it's it's just it's there's something really engaging
about that that kind of served the same purpose. So
I think that for people who are trying to maybe
redirect there what they're doing to give them some themselves
that little boost, because I think you do need a boost.
There's time where like cell phones that need to get
(28:57):
plugged back into the wall, Like you need to give
yourself a boost, And so I think you want to have,
you know, these sort of healthy treats that you can
give yourself. And I think some people think of treats
as being something that they would eat, but you could
actually tap into all your senses. Or I know, I
know somebody who loves music, loves loves loves music, loves
new music, and so that's his treat is he'll like
let himself listen to a new song, and that does
(29:20):
the same thing for him.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Wouldn't work for me.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Because, like I say, I don't want to listen to
a new song. I like the songs I already like
but for him that was sort of an exciting adventure
and overwhelmed his senses in a very pleasant way.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And so we can use hearing in our other senses
to kind of do this emotion regulation, whether it's kind
of like you know, moving our energy up a little bit,
or putting ourselves in a good move, even maybe being
contemplative like the kinds of songs. Yeah, you tend to
gravitate towards but you also had this realization, particularly for hearing,
that you know, yeah, we can do all this stuff,
but like many happiness practices, it actually takes a little
(29:54):
bit of work. And I think this can be something
that's particularly surprising with listening, where it's just like, you know,
we just hear sounds in the background. It happens. But
you started to realize that listening well, actually takes a
little bit of work. You talk about this realization and
kind of how you tried to put more of this
work into practice.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Absolutely listening is arduous, and I noticed and I thought,
oh my gosh, maybe I'm the first person to realize
that the word listen is just the word silent with
the letters rearranged. Turns out I'm not the first one
to notice that, unfortunately, but no, and I realized that
I wanted to do a better job of listening, and
so I wrote, and but I need to crystallize my ideas.
(30:31):
I often will write a manifesto or something like that,
and so I wrote a manifesto for listening. That was
all the things that I wanted to remember about how
to listen. And that was everything from like my posture,
like turn to face the person, you know, so my
shoulders are square with their shoulders, put down my book
or my phone, you know, very obviously, be in an
attentive posture, and then listen.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
And you know, there were things that for me were
really hard.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
One was I realized that, like unconsciously, almost before I
know that I'm doing it, I will often redirect a
conversation away from something where it feels very vulnerable. And
I've really tried to do a better job of that.
I mean to the point where some of I have
to go back to somebody and say, I feel like
you were trying to talk about something and I interrupted
(31:15):
and read.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Directed the conversation. Let's go back.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I'm trying to, you know, get there faster, and just
being aware of that as I'm listening, you know, don't
try to steer it away from something that feels vulnerable.
And another thing is I realized that another kind of
coping mechanism I have is because I love to read,
and I have so many books that I think are like,
so so so helpful that anytime anybody brings something up,
(31:38):
I'm often like, that reminds me of this book, and
you should get this book and let me email you
the link, and you know, and you know, I can't
be My sister calls me a happiness bully, because I
can get pretty insistent if I think I have something
to suggest that I think would make you happier. And
I realize, like, yes, I think that this is really
helpful and valuable, but that is not what the person
is asking for at this moment. Like hold that back
(32:01):
and maybe offer that later if they want it. But
in the moment, rather than getting distracted by like this
reading list that I'm suggesting, I need to like listen
and respond to what the person's saying. You know, I
think these are mechanisms for kind of handling emotion. So
I'm trying to listen better so that I can really
be present in hearing what a person is trying to tell.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Me, and that active listening better also led to I think,
really important new social connections for you, even within your family. Right,
I know, just as a parent, this active listening sort
of transformed for you as you engage with this practice more.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, I mean with my daughters and my husband too.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
You just realize that instead of constantly trying to figure out,
well what am I going to say and how am
I going to respond and what's my advice?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I can just listen.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I realized, especially with my younger daughter, she will
talk herself out of a bad mood. She will talk
herself into a solution if I just stay with her
and let her keep talking and let silence fall and
let her keep talking. And in fact, research shows that
we do generate better solutions and answers when we have,
you know, a listener who's.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Attending to us.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
And so rather than thinking well what am I going
to say, it's more about well how am I going
to listen? And that proved to be much more effective.
But it's not, as you said earlier, it's not effortless.
It's not like you're just sitting there. What's that whole
thing don't just do something.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Sit there.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
It's kind of that, so I think it's it's sometimes
it's hard. It's hard to just say like wow, that
sound that sounds really hard, or like wow, it's not
you must have been it sounds like you must have
been really frustrated, and just not rush in with solutions
or questions and just listen.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, I'm glad you're not the only family member who's
a happiness bully. I feel like I have to have
to work on this myself. Yes, so that's how you
can get more intentional about the audio and visual domain.
But there's still so much more to embracing all five senses.
Gretchen and I still have to talk smell, it's amazing
that garbage days smells so bad, like why does it
(34:00):
smell so bad? And taste your e sides, creak, salad,
the chunks of cheese like, and of course touch.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I always thought of skin as like packed and jing,
but you know that's where we get our sensations.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So be sure to come back for part two of
our journey into better savoring through your senses next time
on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos
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