April 24, 2023 • 32 mins
Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin was warned that her eyesight was in peril. It shocked her into realising she'd taken all of her five senses for granted - and so she resolved to wring every ounce of joy from the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures around her.
Concluding her conversation with Dr Laurie Santos, Gretchen explains how to be more alive to smell, taste and touch - building on the ideas in 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin the orange and the walk sign is terrible, like
the don't walk the orange is awful. Right. For the
last few months, I've been really trying to notice the
world around me, soaking up the sights and smells, the
good and the bad. It's amazing that garbage days smells
(00:37):
so bad, Like why does it smell so bad? I've
always had decent eyesight, pretty good hearing, and a nice
sense of smell. But most days I've not really appreciated
these senses. It's usually only something truly extraordinary that wakes
me up, an amazing sunset or vacation or a super
expensive fine dining experience. I usually failed to savor the
(00:57):
normal things, you know, the stuff that's around me each
and every day. That is until I was given an
advance copy of Life in Five Senses. How Exploring the
Senses got me out of my head and into the world.
It's a new book from happiness expert and podcaster Gretchen Ruben.
Following Gretchen's example, I've started to better notice and appreciate
the world around me.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I think the.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Best orange is like the color of Luke Skywalker's X
Wing Fighter uniform and the original Star Wars, it's like
that's like the perfect pristine orange. In our episode last time,
Gretchen shared her experience of bringing more joy and wonder
into her daily life by paying more attention to sights
and sounds. But that still leaves us with three remaining
senses to discuss, starting with the one that's right under
(01:41):
our noses.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I've always loved the sense of smell.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
And it's funny because for some people, I think, especially
in the West, this can be kind of an overlooked
sense and people don't think about it as much or
attend to it as much, Whereas I always had been
have been very, very interested in the sense of smell,
So this was.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
One that I couldn't wait for.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I just wanted an excuse to spend more time exploring
my sense of smell. So for me, this was particularly delightful.
Now it was interesting though too, because of COVID. Know,
this was a sense where I think for many people
they became much more aware, and I think this culturally,
we became much more aware of the value of the
sense of smell and how much it does add to
our existence. You know, so often we don't realize how
(02:21):
important something is until it's gone, and I know many
people personally who lost their sense of smell.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
For most of them it came back.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
But one of my friends said she's at twenty four
percent now, so she's up, but she still says there
are many things she can't smell. And hearing about her
experience and the experience of other people made me realize, like,
it adds so much to our sense of our vitality
and our sense of connection to other people into the world.
But it was one that I was very aware of myself.
It was one of my most appreciated senses going into this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And these stories about COVID and people who lose their
sense of smell, I think can get us to another
benefit that comes when we really start noticing and paying attention, right,
which is gratitude. Yeah right, you know, it's just something
that's in the background. But once we realize, oh my gosh,
I can lose it now, all of a sudden it
matters to us. We really want to engage with it
even more one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Okay, Now, you're a happiness expert, and you know one
of the big things people always tell you to do
is keep a gratitude journal. I was deeply annoyed by
a gratitude journal. I tried this couple times. I just
it did not work for me as a tool, even
though it is like a tool that people are often
point to as a useful tool. So I started keeping
a five cents journal where each day I would just
(03:28):
like write one kind of standout experience, you know, just
something remarkable or notable, maybe particularly good or very distinctive
or unexpected or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Just I just made a little notebook for myself.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
And what I found is that it really turned into
a gratitude journal for me, because it felt like my
way of testifying to the world, and by noticing it,
that was my way of paying tribute to everything that
the world was offering to me that I was otherwise
overlooking and neglecting. The benefits of gratitude for happiness are many.
(04:00):
But if it turns out that the gratitude journal doesn't
work for you, this might be something that you would
find to be a fun different approach that really does
help express gratitude, but in a different way.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, and I think you know, I started copying this
practice a little bit really informally, like after I read
your book, and it's funny the kind of things that
get in there, because for me, it was like it
wasn't necessarily the best smells or tastes source, you know, right,
it was kind of the ones that I noticed most,
But even that came with a certain sense of like awe,
Like you know, it's amazing that garbage days smells so bad.
(04:33):
Like it's such a weird sense of like all these
things together, like why does it smell so bad? And
so it took something that would normally be either in
the background or something that I walked down the street judging,
like a terrible smell again today, and it brought me
almost like a sense of awe, like the sort of
curiosity that I brought to it, like kind of just
felt good in this really interesting way.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
No, I think it does.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It helps us chap into that sense of transcendence, and
it also just helps us to notice, because I think
anytime you're sort of looking for things in the world,
it just helps your mind pay attention because in a way,
our brains are trying to help us out by moving
things into the background. It's like, you don't need to
know this, this isn't important, you don't have to be
distracted by that, And so we need to have some
kind of conscious practices to help us tune into everything
(05:14):
that's happening around us. And so I think doing something
like this also it's sort of like like I remember
I can't say the word, can you say the word about.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
The dog weimerammer, weymerammer, these.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Ones that have that that fur that looks frosted, you know,
And I remember thinking like, oh, I've seen these dogs
so many times. But it's like, because I'm keeping my
five centsus journal, I'm really noticing like, oh, I can't
say the word, but I love the way they're that
very unusual quality of their fur. And now every time
I see a dog like that, I think I really
(05:45):
take a moment, and like you said, I have this
almost a moment of transcendence, which is like lookate, you
know what nature can do, this kind of glaucous quality. Yeah,
So I think it helps us tap into this transcendent
quality of everyday life.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And then noticing of these transcendent qualities also comes with
yet another benefit that you've talked about in the book,
which is that we can use our senses, especially smell,
not just to be present in the here and now,
but we can use our senses to create these new,
kind of more vivid memories in the future. And this
is something that I found so powerful about what you
talked about would smell, which is that we can kind
of use smell to do this, and very smart people
(06:21):
have done this. You mentioned the example of Andy Warhol,
which I was hoping to share here because it's such
a lovely way to kind of create memories for the future.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, So Andy Warhol would would choose the scent and
would use it for a particular period and then he
would kind of retire it, and then he would use
that scent if he wanted to evoke memories from the past,
because we have such a strong tie between a sense
and a time. And what's interesting is like, Okay, this
is Andy Warhol. But many people after we talked about
(06:50):
it on the Happier podcast, many people said that they
had done something similar, like for their honeymoon, they had
a very particular scent that they wore for their honeymoon
and then for the rest of their lives. It was like, oh,
that was the scent that I wore my honeymoon. In
my life, there was a very particular perfume that I
wore my senior year in college t Rose. If you've
ever smelled rose perfume, it is really powerful. Like I
(07:11):
don't wear it now because I'm just like that is
just too much for the average person, Like I wear
it to bed when it's just you know, at home.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I wouldn't wear it out.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Really, but I smell that, and I mean, senior year
in college just comes back to me. And so again
it's interesting how this can happen accidentally, the way I
sort of accidentally formed the connection between college and my perfume.
But then this, this other person really consciously did it
as having like this is the sense of my honeymoon,
and I will tap into this as a way to
(07:42):
tap into memories. And so I think it can be
really fun to preserve a sensation in order that it
kind of had that crystallized ability to evoke memories.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And I think this is one of the unique things
just neuroscientifically about the way that smell works. Like you know,
the other senses we talked about in the last episodees
just site and hearing, they kind of go through old
school parts of our brain and the thalamus, and it
takes a while for those actual sensory inputs to get
organized into something. But smell just because of the where
your noses goes straight into your temporal lobe, like that's
(08:16):
a cortical tissue, like the smarter parts of our brain tissue,
and so it gets organized really quickly, and that means
it can kind of tap into memories even more quickly
than I think some of our other senses. Which is
funny because I think we don't assume that smell has
this property or that taste, which you know, oddly I
think people don't realize is really mostly made up of smell, right,
it has that property too. And so when you jumped
(08:36):
into the taste domain, this was also a spot where
you really tried to use that sensory experience to tie
into your memories. So talk about the taste catalog you
created to kind of get you back to some of
your older memories.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, and this was super fun. And so I divided
my life into sort of four epics. So there was sick, childhood, college,
and law school, my children's childhood, and now and thought, well,
what were some of the standout flavors of that time?
So flavor is taste plus smell, because taste you just
have the five basic taste, but with smell you get
(09:10):
the whole complex flavor.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And what was funny.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Was that I didn't even need to go out and
taste these things. Just thinking about their taste helped bring
back all these memories. It really took me back to
those times in a way that was really really remarkable.
And what I tried to find was things that were
either distinctive, like I ate them during that time and
no other time in my life, or they were like
my favorite standout tastes of that time.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Reading your account of this was funny for me because
you know, during your undergrad and grad school time, you
are based in New Haven at Yale, which is where
I am, and so there were lots of restaurants in
your lists that were really like, oh my gosh, I
love that, Yes York sides, Greek salad, the chunks of cheese,
like you know. Again, yet another way to kind of
use taste for social connection, which I think is, you know,
(09:58):
one of the big benefits of taste is that not
only can we taste things with people, but it actually
enhances the experience when we try to share it too.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Absolutely no, and with my sister after I did my childhood.
You know, of course we shared a childhood. So I
called her up and we just, you know, we talked
about what we ate on lung car trips and what
we ate when our grandparents that like let us get
junk food that our parents wouldn't let us get.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, it's just we were just laughing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, it's really It really does help you connect with
other people in those memories.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And so the final sense that you decided to dive
into was I think the one you were absolutely most
excited for, which is the sense of touch. And so
talk about why touch is a little bit weird in
some ways, it actually is like literally our biggest sense,
like just in terms of how it works with our bodies.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, well it's funny because you know, you think I
always thought of skin as like packaging, but you know,
that's where we get our sensations for touch. It's incredibly
complex systems of how we touch, how we perceive touch.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It's different all over the body.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Someplaces really only get vague sensations, some you know, very
very fine. And you know, you think of touching as
being kind of like the final reality, like if you
reach out and touch something that means like, that's how
you know it's there. And so I hadn't realized before
I started this, like how touch focused I was.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And that's one of the things.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That really surprised you with this, is you're like, how
do you not know your own preferences? Like how do
you not know what you like or don't like? It
seems like there's nothing that would be more obvious. But
I realized I just sort of bumbled around in this fog,
and I really didn't notice a lot about what I
did and didn't like. And I've gotten a much more
nuanced sense of my own preferences having done this. And
one of the things I didn't know is how much
(11:38):
I am attuned to the sense of touch and how
much I love certain touch experiences, even things like peeling
hard boiled eggs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Until a friend said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I can't wear like a cotton button down shirt unless
I have an undershirt on because I can't stand that
feeling of cotton. And I thought, oh, my gosh, I
can't stand that feeling of cotton, Like how did I
not know that? But now that you say that, there
is something about that feeling that I don't like either,
How did I not know that you know.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
But once you figure out what you know, then you
can try to avoid the things that feel bad. Yes,
but maybe more importantly, you can put more of the
things that feel good into your life. And this is
something that you did a lot with touch, which is
to realize that you can use touch for self care.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yes, right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
You can set up environments where just what you touch
makes you feel good.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So part of that is textures, like what you're wearing.
And I think a lot of people are more and more.
In fact, I have a brand of T shirt now
where they print the label right on the shirt, so
there's no label, and I think that's because a lot
of people just that scratchy sensation of a label is
something that's so common that people don't like. But yeah,
I found that, and I think more and more people
are aware of this. There's fidget toys, there's pop toys,
(12:46):
therap by dough, all these things are great as a
way to use your hands. I also think like if
you're on a zoom call or something, I think it
can be a great way to kind of channel your
restlessness to have something in your hands that you're manipulating.
I have a fidget spinner that I will just spin
and spin and spin and spin. But here's something that
I didn't expect. And this was as a way to
stay calm. And I had read celebrity memoir Andrew McCarthy
(13:10):
where he was talking about using bongos for a difficult
performance that he was giving and had just having something
in his hand sort of helped him organize his performance.
And I realized, and again, this is the kind of
thing where it's like, how do you not know this
about yourself? You just hang out with yourself all day long,
And yet I had not noticed this about myself, which
is that if I'm anxious about something, I will often
(13:31):
hold a pen in my left hand. I'm left handed,
there's no paper, there's no reason to write anything down.
But if I'm like backstage before I'm giving a big talk,
or I'm going to like a cocktail party where I
don't know anybody, I just feel better if I hold
a pen. There's just something about having my hand around it,
That touch of that object grounds me. And when I
(13:53):
started asking around people like teachers said they held mugs,
or an organizer said they held a clipboard, or a
photographer said for subjects who.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Felt uneasy getting their picture taken. He would give them like.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
A wineglass to hold, because there's something about holding something
in our hands. Hands are very important. Hands are special.
I found and I realized like I could tap into that.
I could consciously shape my environment in a way that
made it more comfortable for me. Because if I say, like,
don't forget your pen, Gretchen, because you'll feel better if
you're holding your pen, then that's something that I can
(14:26):
consciously use instead of just like unconsciously groping my way toward.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So far, we've seen that paying more attention to our
senses can help us find out more about our preferences,
and that we can use our knowledge of what site smells, tastes, textures,
and sounds we do and don't like to improve how
we feel in our everyday lives. But after the break,
Gretchen will take us further into how we can use
our senses to feel happier. She'll share the hacks that
she uses to make her days more vivid and more enjoyable,
(14:54):
hacks so powerful they can turn even the act of
steering at an ordinary traffic cone into a feast for
the senses.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It was definitely one of the most transcendent experiences of
my life, the beauty of nature, pure nature.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And I will be back in a moment. In most respects,
the way that we experience the world via our senses
is deeply personal. The smells we love and the tastes
that make us swoon might not be shared by any
of our friends. But as podcaster and happiness expert Gretchen
(15:32):
Rubin found as she explored her own senses, there are
great opportunities to combine seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting with
joyful social interaction.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
My mother grew up eating sort of traditional Jewish foods,
and I live in New York City, and you know,
the Lower East Side is known for having all of
these places that have amazing traditional Jewish foods, and so
I thought, well, I would love to connect with my
mother in law and her childhood. So like, let's go
on a taste tour of the Lower east Side and
we'll go to all these places and try these foods,
(16:03):
many of which I hadn't tasted before. And my daughters
were so interested that they decided to come too.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
This kind of bonding over food is familiar to many
of us, and Gretchen's Culinary Tour of New York was
a great success. But she also preaches a little bit
of caution because as we learn more about our own
sensory preferences, we also need to stop to appreciate what
other people do and don't like, and show their sensory
preferences a bit more respect.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
People live in different sensory world and again, this is
something that I think we all intellectually know, but it's
sort of hard to realize, like how true it is,
how concretely true it is. And I think when people say, like,
this is really bothering me, or you know, I don't
feel comfortable in an environment with this, instead of dismissing
it or saying, well, it's obviously it's fine. It's fine
for me, so obviously it's fine for you, or wow,
(16:52):
what's wrong with me? If something is really bothering me
that other people don't seem to be bothered by, it's
to say, like, well, people really live in different sensory worlds,
and so we can shape those to some extent to
make sure that we're in an environment that is as
comfortable to us as possible, but then also to have
empathy for other people who may or feel a discomfort.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Like I love perfume.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love it when people wear perfume because I'm always like,
maybe there's a new, great.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Perfume for me to discover. But I know that a
lot of people don't like.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
For people to wear perfume, So I don't wear it
out and about I wear it at home because I
know that people have different have different preferences, and I
try to be respectful of that, but realizing that there
are things that we can do, Like for some people visually,
like they want things to be very orderly, so it's
like clear clutter. And then there are people like me
who need a lot of silence, so I clear clatter,
(17:39):
whereas for other people they want music playing, they want
people talking. They like that that helps them to think
and focus. So really saying to yourself, well where do
I thrive? What does feel right to me? Instead of
trying to jam yourself into someone else's model or just
assuming that because other people like something, it might work
for you. Sometimes it takes a little experimenting.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And so that's the example of kind of changing your
environment to be a little bit more focused to kind
of perform better. Right, you clear the clatter, clear the clutter.
There's also transforming your environment to experience a little bit
more self care, and so talk about some specific sensor
examples that we could bring in, whether it's adding a
fragrance or adding a new texture, Like how can we
really kind of make ourselves feel good with our senses?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, I mean it's it really is true. It's thinking
like what would add to my environment? And so I
think for a lot of people, plants and flowers and
people tap into big different aspects of plants and flowers.
So for some people it's the smell. For some people
it's the kind of the feeling of life and energy
that comes from a plant.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Another it's the.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Beauty of seeing the leaves of the colors. There's the
touch of like watering them and pulling off the leaves
that are that need to be pulled out. Like, there's
all sorts of elements to it. But this is something
that for a lot of people in different ways. I've
talked to people who are like, oh wow, like just
putting a plant in my home office has made the
whole room feel just more full of life. And so
(19:01):
you can be thinking about things like that, and I
think there's both eliminating the negative, which is what are
the things that are bringing you down or draining you,
and then adding which is what are the things that
will make you make it feel richer. So you could say, like, okay,
I'm in my home office, like maybe there's something that
smells bad that I need to get rid of. Like
I found that we had these like garbage bags that
(19:23):
had this like fresh clean smell that I really really disliked,
and I just put up with it for years because
I don't know why. I'm like, okay, let me just
tackle that and switch to a different garbage bag. Or
you can add something good, whether that's making sure that
you open the windows so that you get fresh air
and the smell of the outdoors, or a plant or
a scented candle. Some people really love the smell of
(19:46):
like some products like sharpies. You know, I have a
friend who loves the smell of sharpiees, and so like
every time he sits down at his desk, you like,
he's like, I take away with the sharpie and that's
like my sign I'm buckling down. And I thought that
was so funny to have like a ritual smell that's
like you know, I'm on it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And I think this is the power of what you
talk about in your book, is that when you when
you remember that you have five senses, yes, you can
start harnessing all of them, you know. I think for me,
you know, I often think like, oh, if I'm settling
down to some tough task at work, like oh, I'll
put some music on that i'll work through. You know,
that gets me working. But I forget like, oh, I
can hack my sense, you know, I can smell a
sharpie or I can put a candle on. I can
(20:24):
hack my textures, right, like I can get either a
nice soft blanket, maybe I wear something you know, more
prickly at that point.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So I'm like kind of we're on and we're awake.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Like the key is that there's like so many different
roots that we can use to hack how we're feeling,
and we forget that, you know, we have at least
five that we're often not paying attention to.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Absolutely, and it's all right there, you know, it's all
part of our experience, and so it's it's so accessible
to us. And I don't know why, but there is
just this energy and this kind of almost excitement that
comes from tapping into the five senses.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And I'm not sure why that is.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Maybe it is because it just goes directly into you know,
our sense of ourselves. But yeah, you don't want to
get stuck in just like your old ordinary favorites. Like
for you it's like your favorite playlist or whatever, whereas
for me.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It wouldn't be that.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
But there are other things that I would do, just like,
as you know, as part of my ordinary routine to think, No,
there's more you can do. You can try new things,
and it's fun and it's exciting to try something new.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And part of that trying new things is really trying
to harness the noticing part of the senses. We talked
a little bit before about using this five Senses journal,
but give people a sense of like how that practice
really works in the trenches. Like do you have a notebook?
Like do you kind of notice things as you go
through your day?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, yes, I have a notebook that I just you know,
kind of concocted. And I don't write much, so it's
not like I'm writing a paragraph. I just write down
what it was, so it could be something like the
texture of tinfoil.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I always have loved the texture of tinfoil ever since
I was little, Like it's one of my earliest memories
was I had one of those snack, like a not
a twinkie, but the chocolate roll up one that came
with this very very thin tinfoil, and I remember I'd like,
ever since then, I've loved tinfoil. So I might just
write down smoothing tinfoil, because again, it's like, how did
I not notice how much I love tinfoil? But it
(22:13):
wasn't until I started this project that I was like,
back to my earliest youth, I have loved this feeling
of tinfoil. I just had never sort of tuned into that,
and so I think that this is the kind of
thing that helps. Or even like you mentioned, oh, how
remarkably bad this garbage truck smells, I find that I
like negative sensations more now because I'm just more interested
(22:35):
in them and intrigued.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You're just like, Wow, that color.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Combination is just making my eyes pop out, it's so bad.
Or you know, there's that terrible smell, Holy cow, I
want to keep smelling it so bad? Or ooh, what
is this texture is sort of uncanny and it's like
giving me giving me shivers, But I want to keep
touching it because I want to understand it.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
So I'm just as I do it. I do it
very casually. I don't.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I want to keep it easy and fun, so I'm
not like not trying to rank anything on like a
one to ten scale or write a long memory of it,
though I can imagine that other people might do it
in that way. You know, a lot of the exercises
that I do, I do it in a particular way,
but it's just meant to give people ideas for things
that they might try. There's no right way to do it.
(23:21):
People put all sorts of twists on it.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Talk about how you did this with your husband Jimmie.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yes, one of the things I did is I did
a five cents portrait of Jamie. So for each of
the five senses, I wrote down five impressions that I
had for him for that sense. And this was wonderful,
like I really really love doing it. Then my editor said,
I think that you should write a five cents is
portrait of yourself for the book as part of your
about the author, And I was like that truly had
never occurred to me to do it, even though I
(23:47):
just wrote a whole book Life in five cents is
I did nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
To do that. So I did that. I was like
that I got all this insight into myself.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But then we talked about it on the Happier podcast
and somebody said that she did it as a way
to hold onto memories of a grandparent who had died,
to hang on to those like very concrete memories, and
to convey them to her own children who were too
young to remember this person who was gone.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And then somebody else said they.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Did it as a gift to somebody, because she said, like,
what makes you really feel more seen and heard and
smelled and taste and touched than somebody doing a census
portrait of you? And so she gave it as like
a birthday gift. So again it's like there's no one
right way to do these kinds of exercises. It's more like,
how would you put your own twist on it to
(24:30):
achieve your own aims for what you want to do
to connect with your senses.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And those last twists that you talk about, you know,
I'm noticing that many of them are really social, right,
you know, kind of sharing sensory observations with other people.
And that's kind of the last hack I wanted you
to talk about, which is, you know, so many of
the benefits that we get from paying attention to our senses,
like maybe ironically because you assume they'd be much more
internal benefits like you're feeling mindful and present and so on,
(24:53):
but so many of the benefits we talked about over
these episodes are that these these benefits are social, right
kind of connecting with other people, And so talk about
how we can really engage these senses socially, maybe as
like adventures with other people are going to have hacks
we can do to make sure we're getting the social
benefit fits from our senses.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, and I think we do this automatically because of
course we like go sight seeing with people, or we
go to contact with other people, or we have share
meals with other people, and so these are obviously ways
to share share sensory experiences, but I think we often
don't think of those those examples as like this is
an example of sharing a sensory experience with somebody as
a way to draw closer to them. And so when
you think about, okay, well, how could I put a
(25:32):
different new kind of twist on it. So like I
did that with taste because I'm like, I'm not a
big taste person, and you know, it's like having a
dinner part of me is very hospitable, but then part
of me is kind of like, oh my gosh, it
seems like like really hard and demanding to like have.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
A dinner party.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So I had a taste party where I just had
some friends over and we all did taste comparisons, and
so it was a way to connect with people socially.
And what I found is like we we connected on
this really deep level, Like we were talking about our memories
and like like people in our lives and you know,
our childhoods, and we had a whole thing about candy,
(26:09):
you know, like wait, what kind of candy you ate
as a kid and why, And it just became very intimate,
and yet it was super fun and everybody was laughing
and sort of like talking, and it kind of much
more engaged way than I think, you know, sort of
like a dinner party. And so but the only reason
that it occurred to me is I was thinking, like, well,
is there another way that I can connect with people
(26:30):
with taste that's different, that might feel more interesting to me,
more engaging to me, And so I was able to
find a new way because of course there's very they're
very like classic ways to do it, but then there
are new ways to do it too. And so when
we kind of broaden our view of what of what
it might be to share a sensory experience with someone,
(26:52):
like again, like you might go to a concert with somebody,
or maybe you're like, let's go have a let's go
to a sound bath together. That's sort of different and interesting,
and it's another way to share a sensory experience with someone.
Maybe you don't you wouldn't want to go to the
same concert because you don't like the same kinds of music,
or you're like me and you just want the one song,
like let's go, let's go try a sound bath that's different.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I think this is sort of maybe a final
tip as we think about how to use sensory experiences socially,
it's important that if we're trying to kind of be ourselves.
I know you have this mantra b Gretchen, we might
need to think about what the other person likes too
and find spots where there's kind of common ground. And
I think we can only do that through experimenting and
getting really much more creative and remembering that we can
(27:32):
use sound in this way to connect with other people.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Right, and realizing there's probably a lot more possibilities. Then
you might kind of think at first glance, because again
there are these sort of traditional things that you think of,
but then when you open it up, you might see
that there are different things and things, as you say,
that could bring you together with someone even though you're
what you prefer might be very different in some ways.
Maybe you could find a different way, a more unexpected
(27:56):
way to show it. I mean like I had a
friend we were going to go to cryotherapy together, and
it's like, there's really I don't we don't have that
much in comment. I don't know that we would want
to do lots of things together. Our interests are very different.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
But was like, we're both interested in cryo therapy, let's
do that.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
And you know, I would not have thought of that
if I hadn't been thinking about, well how do I
tap into my senses as a way to connect with
other people? And I was like, well, she's interested in cryotherapy,
maybe we should do that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And so I wanted you to end just with my
favorite story from the book, because it just shows how
transcendent your experience of life can be even in boring
times when you start paying attention to the senses. And so,
can you share this story of the traffic cone that
you ended the book with.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yes, this was a very uncanny and transcendent moment of
my life. One of the exercises that I did for
the book list to visit the Metropolitan Museum every day,
so you know, I was looking at things all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You know, these are like classic masterpieces.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But then one day I was out walking my dog Barnaby,
and was very unusual sky conditions, the light was very unusual.
It was just getting ready to storm, and it was
just an orange traffic cone that was against the asphalt,
and it was like, in a moment, this traffic cone
became like the only true object in the world. It
(29:20):
was like the platonic ideal of an object. It seemed
like it just glowed in the light. I felt like everything.
You know how in a movie they'll show everything like
moving back from some central object is kind of like
to show how central it was.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
I felt like, literally like I.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Could see everything in the street, sort of moving back,
like in reverence of this traffic cone.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
The traffic cone, it seemed like a natural thing.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You know, there's certain things that seemed both natural and
man made, like sea glass or a scholar's rock or
a park bench. It looked like that, and I just
was transfixed and everything just again, like everything seemed to
heighten in my mind, just seemed to experience everything in
this moment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
This is this sort of timeless moment. And then you.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Know, just the light cloud was deeper over the sun,
or the wind picked up, and then it just turned
back into an ordinary traffic cone. But it was definitely
one of the most transcendent experiences of my life. And
it was transcendent in a very impersonal way. It was
like the beauty of nature, pure nature, just like pure form.
(30:30):
And it was an extraordinary moment. And maybe the only
reason that I was able to experience it was that
I had been doing so much to try to tune
into my surroundings that it didn't pass unnoticed.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
The ability to find such joy, such awe and the
sight of sun bouncing off a traffic cone is something
I now aspire to. It reminds me that we often
get true moments of pleasure wrong. We assume we can
only experience joy from perfectly crafted sensory moments taking a
mouthful of ridiculously expensive wine or the feel of a
cooling breeze on a tropical island, or gazing at the
(31:05):
perfect sunset from high on a mountain top. We assume
joy only comes from Instagram or at the moments like these.
But reading Gretchen's book Life in Five Senses reinforce what
I know. The science says that we can find little
spots of happiness each and every day if we just
take time to hunt for them in the ordinary things
around us. So what new things will you notice this week?
(31:26):
What colors are interesting, sounds or odd smells will you
focus on during your commute or in your kitchen or
with the people you love. I hope that by honing
the sensory gifts you take for granted every day, that you,
like Gretchen, can find new wonder and joy around you.
In the next episode of the Happiness Lab, I continue
(31:48):
my conversation with some of my happiness idols. I get
to grab some quality chat time with one of the
founders of happiness science and get to hear what he's
learned over his lifetime of research into what gives us
meaning and makes us feel good. Hear more from the
amazing Marty Selegman next time on the Happiness Lab with me,
Doctor Laurie Santo's
Pushkin the orange and the walk sign is terrible, like
the don't walk the orange is awful. Right. For the
last few months, I've been really trying to notice the
world around me, soaking up the sights and smells, the
good and the bad. It's amazing that garbage days smells
(00:37):
so bad, Like why does it smell so bad? I've
always had decent eyesight, pretty good hearing, and a nice
sense of smell. But most days I've not really appreciated
these senses. It's usually only something truly extraordinary that wakes
me up, an amazing sunset or vacation or a super
expensive fine dining experience. I usually failed to savor the
(00:57):
normal things, you know, the stuff that's around me each
and every day. That is until I was given an
advance copy of Life in Five Senses. How Exploring the
Senses got me out of my head and into the world.
It's a new book from happiness expert and podcaster Gretchen Ruben.
Following Gretchen's example, I've started to better notice and appreciate
the world around me.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I think the.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Best orange is like the color of Luke Skywalker's X
Wing Fighter uniform and the original Star Wars, it's like
that's like the perfect pristine orange. In our episode last time,
Gretchen shared her experience of bringing more joy and wonder
into her daily life by paying more attention to sights
and sounds. But that still leaves us with three remaining
senses to discuss, starting with the one that's right under
(01:41):
our noses.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I've always loved the sense of smell.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
And it's funny because for some people, I think, especially
in the West, this can be kind of an overlooked
sense and people don't think about it as much or
attend to it as much, Whereas I always had been
have been very, very interested in the sense of smell,
So this was.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
One that I couldn't wait for.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I just wanted an excuse to spend more time exploring
my sense of smell. So for me, this was particularly delightful.
Now it was interesting though too, because of COVID. Know,
this was a sense where I think for many people
they became much more aware, and I think this culturally,
we became much more aware of the value of the
sense of smell and how much it does add to
our existence. You know, so often we don't realize how
(02:21):
important something is until it's gone, and I know many
people personally who lost their sense of smell.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
For most of them it came back.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
But one of my friends said she's at twenty four
percent now, so she's up, but she still says there
are many things she can't smell. And hearing about her
experience and the experience of other people made me realize, like,
it adds so much to our sense of our vitality
and our sense of connection to other people into the world.
But it was one that I was very aware of myself.
It was one of my most appreciated senses going into this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And these stories about COVID and people who lose their
sense of smell, I think can get us to another
benefit that comes when we really start noticing and paying attention, right,
which is gratitude. Yeah right, you know, it's just something
that's in the background. But once we realize, oh my gosh,
I can lose it now, all of a sudden it
matters to us. We really want to engage with it
even more one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Okay, Now, you're a happiness expert, and you know one
of the big things people always tell you to do
is keep a gratitude journal. I was deeply annoyed by
a gratitude journal. I tried this couple times. I just
it did not work for me as a tool, even
though it is like a tool that people are often
point to as a useful tool. So I started keeping
a five cents journal where each day I would just
(03:28):
like write one kind of standout experience, you know, just
something remarkable or notable, maybe particularly good or very distinctive
or unexpected or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Just I just made a little notebook for myself.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
And what I found is that it really turned into
a gratitude journal for me, because it felt like my
way of testifying to the world, and by noticing it,
that was my way of paying tribute to everything that
the world was offering to me that I was otherwise
overlooking and neglecting. The benefits of gratitude for happiness are many.
(04:00):
But if it turns out that the gratitude journal doesn't
work for you, this might be something that you would
find to be a fun different approach that really does
help express gratitude, but in a different way.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, and I think you know, I started copying this
practice a little bit really informally, like after I read
your book, and it's funny the kind of things that
get in there, because for me, it was like it
wasn't necessarily the best smells or tastes source, you know, right,
it was kind of the ones that I noticed most,
But even that came with a certain sense of like awe,
Like you know, it's amazing that garbage days smells so bad.
(04:33):
Like it's such a weird sense of like all these
things together, like why does it smell so bad? And
so it took something that would normally be either in
the background or something that I walked down the street judging,
like a terrible smell again today, and it brought me
almost like a sense of awe, like the sort of
curiosity that I brought to it, like kind of just
felt good in this really interesting way.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
No, I think it does.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It helps us chap into that sense of transcendence, and
it also just helps us to notice, because I think
anytime you're sort of looking for things in the world,
it just helps your mind pay attention because in a way,
our brains are trying to help us out by moving
things into the background. It's like, you don't need to
know this, this isn't important, you don't have to be
distracted by that, And so we need to have some
kind of conscious practices to help us tune into everything
(05:14):
that's happening around us. And so I think doing something
like this also it's sort of like like I remember
I can't say the word, can you say the word about.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
The dog weimerammer, weymerammer, these.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Ones that have that that fur that looks frosted, you know,
And I remember thinking like, oh, I've seen these dogs
so many times. But it's like, because I'm keeping my
five centsus journal, I'm really noticing like, oh, I can't
say the word, but I love the way they're that
very unusual quality of their fur. And now every time
I see a dog like that, I think I really
(05:45):
take a moment, and like you said, I have this
almost a moment of transcendence, which is like lookate, you
know what nature can do, this kind of glaucous quality. Yeah,
So I think it helps us tap into this transcendent
quality of everyday life.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And then noticing of these transcendent qualities also comes with
yet another benefit that you've talked about in the book,
which is that we can use our senses, especially smell,
not just to be present in the here and now,
but we can use our senses to create these new,
kind of more vivid memories in the future. And this
is something that I found so powerful about what you
talked about would smell, which is that we can kind
of use smell to do this, and very smart people
(06:21):
have done this. You mentioned the example of Andy Warhol,
which I was hoping to share here because it's such
a lovely way to kind of create memories for the future.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, So Andy Warhol would would choose the scent and
would use it for a particular period and then he
would kind of retire it, and then he would use
that scent if he wanted to evoke memories from the past,
because we have such a strong tie between a sense
and a time. And what's interesting is like, Okay, this
is Andy Warhol. But many people after we talked about
(06:50):
it on the Happier podcast, many people said that they
had done something similar, like for their honeymoon, they had
a very particular scent that they wore for their honeymoon
and then for the rest of their lives. It was like, oh,
that was the scent that I wore my honeymoon. In
my life, there was a very particular perfume that I
wore my senior year in college t Rose. If you've
ever smelled rose perfume, it is really powerful. Like I
(07:11):
don't wear it now because I'm just like that is
just too much for the average person, Like I wear
it to bed when it's just you know, at home.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I wouldn't wear it out.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Really, but I smell that, and I mean, senior year
in college just comes back to me. And so again
it's interesting how this can happen accidentally, the way I
sort of accidentally formed the connection between college and my perfume.
But then this, this other person really consciously did it
as having like this is the sense of my honeymoon,
and I will tap into this as a way to
(07:42):
tap into memories. And so I think it can be
really fun to preserve a sensation in order that it
kind of had that crystallized ability to evoke memories.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And I think this is one of the unique things
just neuroscientifically about the way that smell works. Like you know,
the other senses we talked about in the last episodees
just site and hearing, they kind of go through old
school parts of our brain and the thalamus, and it
takes a while for those actual sensory inputs to get
organized into something. But smell just because of the where
your noses goes straight into your temporal lobe, like that's
(08:16):
a cortical tissue, like the smarter parts of our brain tissue,
and so it gets organized really quickly, and that means
it can kind of tap into memories even more quickly
than I think some of our other senses. Which is
funny because I think we don't assume that smell has
this property or that taste, which you know, oddly I
think people don't realize is really mostly made up of smell, right,
it has that property too. And so when you jumped
(08:36):
into the taste domain, this was also a spot where
you really tried to use that sensory experience to tie
into your memories. So talk about the taste catalog you
created to kind of get you back to some of
your older memories.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, and this was super fun. And so I divided
my life into sort of four epics. So there was sick, childhood, college,
and law school, my children's childhood, and now and thought, well,
what were some of the standout flavors of that time?
So flavor is taste plus smell, because taste you just
have the five basic taste, but with smell you get
(09:10):
the whole complex flavor.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And what was funny.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Was that I didn't even need to go out and
taste these things. Just thinking about their taste helped bring
back all these memories. It really took me back to
those times in a way that was really really remarkable.
And what I tried to find was things that were
either distinctive, like I ate them during that time and
no other time in my life, or they were like
my favorite standout tastes of that time.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Reading your account of this was funny for me because
you know, during your undergrad and grad school time, you
are based in New Haven at Yale, which is where
I am, and so there were lots of restaurants in
your lists that were really like, oh my gosh, I
love that, Yes York sides, Greek salad, the chunks of cheese,
like you know. Again, yet another way to kind of
use taste for social connection, which I think is, you know,
(09:58):
one of the big benefits of taste is that not
only can we taste things with people, but it actually
enhances the experience when we try to share it too.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Absolutely no, and with my sister after I did my childhood.
You know, of course we shared a childhood. So I
called her up and we just, you know, we talked
about what we ate on lung car trips and what
we ate when our grandparents that like let us get
junk food that our parents wouldn't let us get.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, it's just we were just laughing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, it's really It really does help you connect with
other people in those memories.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And so the final sense that you decided to dive
into was I think the one you were absolutely most
excited for, which is the sense of touch. And so
talk about why touch is a little bit weird in
some ways, it actually is like literally our biggest sense,
like just in terms of how it works with our bodies.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, well it's funny because you know, you think I
always thought of skin as like packaging, but you know,
that's where we get our sensations for touch. It's incredibly
complex systems of how we touch, how we perceive touch.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It's different all over the body.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Someplaces really only get vague sensations, some you know, very
very fine. And you know, you think of touching as
being kind of like the final reality, like if you
reach out and touch something that means like, that's how
you know it's there. And so I hadn't realized before
I started this, like how touch focused I was.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And that's one of the things.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That really surprised you with this, is you're like, how
do you not know your own preferences? Like how do
you not know what you like or don't like? It
seems like there's nothing that would be more obvious. But
I realized I just sort of bumbled around in this fog,
and I really didn't notice a lot about what I
did and didn't like. And I've gotten a much more
nuanced sense of my own preferences having done this. And
one of the things I didn't know is how much
(11:38):
I am attuned to the sense of touch and how
much I love certain touch experiences, even things like peeling
hard boiled eggs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Until a friend said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I can't wear like a cotton button down shirt unless
I have an undershirt on because I can't stand that
feeling of cotton. And I thought, oh, my gosh, I
can't stand that feeling of cotton, Like how did I
not know that? But now that you say that, there
is something about that feeling that I don't like either,
How did I not know that you know.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
But once you figure out what you know, then you
can try to avoid the things that feel bad. Yes,
but maybe more importantly, you can put more of the
things that feel good into your life. And this is
something that you did a lot with touch, which is
to realize that you can use touch for self care.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yes, right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
You can set up environments where just what you touch
makes you feel good.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So part of that is textures, like what you're wearing.
And I think a lot of people are more and more.
In fact, I have a brand of T shirt now
where they print the label right on the shirt, so
there's no label, and I think that's because a lot
of people just that scratchy sensation of a label is
something that's so common that people don't like. But yeah,
I found that, and I think more and more people
are aware of this. There's fidget toys, there's pop toys,
(12:46):
therap by dough, all these things are great as a
way to use your hands. I also think like if
you're on a zoom call or something, I think it
can be a great way to kind of channel your
restlessness to have something in your hands that you're manipulating.
I have a fidget spinner that I will just spin
and spin and spin and spin. But here's something that
I didn't expect. And this was as a way to
stay calm. And I had read celebrity memoir Andrew McCarthy
(13:10):
where he was talking about using bongos for a difficult
performance that he was giving and had just having something
in his hand sort of helped him organize his performance.
And I realized, and again, this is the kind of
thing where it's like, how do you not know this
about yourself? You just hang out with yourself all day long,
And yet I had not noticed this about myself, which
is that if I'm anxious about something, I will often
(13:31):
hold a pen in my left hand. I'm left handed,
there's no paper, there's no reason to write anything down.
But if I'm like backstage before I'm giving a big talk,
or I'm going to like a cocktail party where I
don't know anybody, I just feel better if I hold
a pen. There's just something about having my hand around it,
That touch of that object grounds me. And when I
(13:53):
started asking around people like teachers said they held mugs,
or an organizer said they held a clipboard, or a
photographer said for subjects who.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Felt uneasy getting their picture taken. He would give them like.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
A wineglass to hold, because there's something about holding something
in our hands. Hands are very important. Hands are special.
I found and I realized like I could tap into that.
I could consciously shape my environment in a way that
made it more comfortable for me. Because if I say, like,
don't forget your pen, Gretchen, because you'll feel better if
you're holding your pen, then that's something that I can
(14:26):
consciously use instead of just like unconsciously groping my way toward.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So far, we've seen that paying more attention to our
senses can help us find out more about our preferences,
and that we can use our knowledge of what site smells, tastes, textures,
and sounds we do and don't like to improve how
we feel in our everyday lives. But after the break,
Gretchen will take us further into how we can use
our senses to feel happier. She'll share the hacks that
she uses to make her days more vivid and more enjoyable,
(14:54):
hacks so powerful they can turn even the act of
steering at an ordinary traffic cone into a feast for
the senses.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It was definitely one of the most transcendent experiences of
my life, the beauty of nature, pure nature.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And I will be back in a moment. In most respects,
the way that we experience the world via our senses
is deeply personal. The smells we love and the tastes
that make us swoon might not be shared by any
of our friends. But as podcaster and happiness expert Gretchen
(15:32):
Rubin found as she explored her own senses, there are
great opportunities to combine seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting with
joyful social interaction.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
My mother grew up eating sort of traditional Jewish foods,
and I live in New York City, and you know,
the Lower East Side is known for having all of
these places that have amazing traditional Jewish foods, and so
I thought, well, I would love to connect with my
mother in law and her childhood. So like, let's go
on a taste tour of the Lower east Side and
we'll go to all these places and try these foods,
(16:03):
many of which I hadn't tasted before. And my daughters
were so interested that they decided to come too.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
This kind of bonding over food is familiar to many
of us, and Gretchen's Culinary Tour of New York was
a great success. But she also preaches a little bit
of caution because as we learn more about our own
sensory preferences, we also need to stop to appreciate what
other people do and don't like, and show their sensory
preferences a bit more respect.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
People live in different sensory world and again, this is
something that I think we all intellectually know, but it's
sort of hard to realize, like how true it is,
how concretely true it is. And I think when people say, like,
this is really bothering me, or you know, I don't
feel comfortable in an environment with this, instead of dismissing
it or saying, well, it's obviously it's fine. It's fine
for me, so obviously it's fine for you, or wow,
(16:52):
what's wrong with me? If something is really bothering me
that other people don't seem to be bothered by, it's
to say, like, well, people really live in different sensory worlds,
and so we can shape those to some extent to
make sure that we're in an environment that is as
comfortable to us as possible, but then also to have
empathy for other people who may or feel a discomfort.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Like I love perfume.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love it when people wear perfume because I'm always like,
maybe there's a new, great.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Perfume for me to discover. But I know that a
lot of people don't like.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
For people to wear perfume, So I don't wear it
out and about I wear it at home because I
know that people have different have different preferences, and I
try to be respectful of that, but realizing that there
are things that we can do, Like for some people visually,
like they want things to be very orderly, so it's
like clear clutter. And then there are people like me
who need a lot of silence, so I clear clatter,
(17:39):
whereas for other people they want music playing, they want
people talking. They like that that helps them to think
and focus. So really saying to yourself, well where do
I thrive? What does feel right to me? Instead of
trying to jam yourself into someone else's model or just
assuming that because other people like something, it might work
for you. Sometimes it takes a little experimenting.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And so that's the example of kind of changing your
environment to be a little bit more focused to kind
of perform better. Right, you clear the clatter, clear the clutter.
There's also transforming your environment to experience a little bit
more self care, and so talk about some specific sensor
examples that we could bring in, whether it's adding a
fragrance or adding a new texture, Like how can we
really kind of make ourselves feel good with our senses?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, I mean it's it really is true. It's thinking
like what would add to my environment? And so I
think for a lot of people, plants and flowers and
people tap into big different aspects of plants and flowers.
So for some people it's the smell. For some people
it's the kind of the feeling of life and energy
that comes from a plant.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Another it's the.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Beauty of seeing the leaves of the colors. There's the
touch of like watering them and pulling off the leaves
that are that need to be pulled out. Like, there's
all sorts of elements to it. But this is something
that for a lot of people in different ways. I've
talked to people who are like, oh wow, like just
putting a plant in my home office has made the
whole room feel just more full of life. And so
(19:01):
you can be thinking about things like that, and I
think there's both eliminating the negative, which is what are
the things that are bringing you down or draining you,
and then adding which is what are the things that
will make you make it feel richer. So you could say, like, okay,
I'm in my home office, like maybe there's something that
smells bad that I need to get rid of. Like
I found that we had these like garbage bags that
(19:23):
had this like fresh clean smell that I really really disliked,
and I just put up with it for years because
I don't know why. I'm like, okay, let me just
tackle that and switch to a different garbage bag. Or
you can add something good, whether that's making sure that
you open the windows so that you get fresh air
and the smell of the outdoors, or a plant or
a scented candle. Some people really love the smell of
(19:46):
like some products like sharpies. You know, I have a
friend who loves the smell of sharpiees, and so like
every time he sits down at his desk, you like,
he's like, I take away with the sharpie and that's
like my sign I'm buckling down. And I thought that
was so funny to have like a ritual smell that's
like you know, I'm on it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And I think this is the power of what you
talk about in your book, is that when you when
you remember that you have five senses, yes, you can
start harnessing all of them, you know. I think for me,
you know, I often think like, oh, if I'm settling
down to some tough task at work, like oh, I'll
put some music on that i'll work through. You know,
that gets me working. But I forget like, oh, I
can hack my sense, you know, I can smell a
sharpie or I can put a candle on. I can
(20:24):
hack my textures, right, like I can get either a
nice soft blanket, maybe I wear something you know, more
prickly at that point.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So I'm like kind of we're on and we're awake.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Like the key is that there's like so many different
roots that we can use to hack how we're feeling,
and we forget that, you know, we have at least
five that we're often not paying attention to.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Absolutely, and it's all right there, you know, it's all
part of our experience, and so it's it's so accessible
to us. And I don't know why, but there is
just this energy and this kind of almost excitement that
comes from tapping into the five senses.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And I'm not sure why that is.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Maybe it is because it just goes directly into you know,
our sense of ourselves. But yeah, you don't want to
get stuck in just like your old ordinary favorites. Like
for you it's like your favorite playlist or whatever, whereas
for me.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It wouldn't be that.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
But there are other things that I would do, just like,
as you know, as part of my ordinary routine to think, No,
there's more you can do. You can try new things,
and it's fun and it's exciting to try something new.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And part of that trying new things is really trying
to harness the noticing part of the senses. We talked
a little bit before about using this five Senses journal,
but give people a sense of like how that practice
really works in the trenches. Like do you have a notebook?
Like do you kind of notice things as you go
through your day?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, yes, I have a notebook that I just you know,
kind of concocted. And I don't write much, so it's
not like I'm writing a paragraph. I just write down
what it was, so it could be something like the
texture of tinfoil.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I always have loved the texture of tinfoil ever since
I was little, Like it's one of my earliest memories
was I had one of those snack, like a not
a twinkie, but the chocolate roll up one that came
with this very very thin tinfoil, and I remember I'd like,
ever since then, I've loved tinfoil. So I might just
write down smoothing tinfoil, because again, it's like, how did
I not notice how much I love tinfoil? But it
(22:13):
wasn't until I started this project that I was like,
back to my earliest youth, I have loved this feeling
of tinfoil. I just had never sort of tuned into that,
and so I think that this is the kind of
thing that helps. Or even like you mentioned, oh, how
remarkably bad this garbage truck smells, I find that I
like negative sensations more now because I'm just more interested
(22:35):
in them and intrigued.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You're just like, Wow, that color.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Combination is just making my eyes pop out, it's so bad.
Or you know, there's that terrible smell, Holy cow, I
want to keep smelling it so bad? Or ooh, what
is this texture is sort of uncanny and it's like
giving me giving me shivers, But I want to keep
touching it because I want to understand it.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
So I'm just as I do it. I do it
very casually. I don't.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I want to keep it easy and fun, so I'm
not like not trying to rank anything on like a
one to ten scale or write a long memory of it,
though I can imagine that other people might do it
in that way. You know, a lot of the exercises
that I do, I do it in a particular way,
but it's just meant to give people ideas for things
that they might try. There's no right way to do it.
(23:21):
People put all sorts of twists on it.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Talk about how you did this with your husband Jimmie.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yes, one of the things I did is I did
a five cents portrait of Jamie. So for each of
the five senses, I wrote down five impressions that I
had for him for that sense. And this was wonderful,
like I really really love doing it. Then my editor said,
I think that you should write a five cents is
portrait of yourself for the book as part of your
about the author, And I was like that truly had
never occurred to me to do it, even though I
(23:47):
just wrote a whole book Life in five cents is
I did nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
To do that. So I did that. I was like
that I got all this insight into myself.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But then we talked about it on the Happier podcast
and somebody said that she did it as a way
to hold onto memories of a grandparent who had died,
to hang on to those like very concrete memories, and
to convey them to her own children who were too
young to remember this person who was gone.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And then somebody else said they.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Did it as a gift to somebody, because she said, like,
what makes you really feel more seen and heard and
smelled and taste and touched than somebody doing a census
portrait of you? And so she gave it as like
a birthday gift. So again it's like there's no one
right way to do these kinds of exercises. It's more like,
how would you put your own twist on it to
(24:30):
achieve your own aims for what you want to do
to connect with your senses.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And those last twists that you talk about, you know,
I'm noticing that many of them are really social, right,
you know, kind of sharing sensory observations with other people.
And that's kind of the last hack I wanted you
to talk about, which is, you know, so many of
the benefits that we get from paying attention to our senses,
like maybe ironically because you assume they'd be much more
internal benefits like you're feeling mindful and present and so on,
(24:53):
but so many of the benefits we talked about over
these episodes are that these these benefits are social, right
kind of connecting with other people, And so talk about
how we can really engage these senses socially, maybe as
like adventures with other people are going to have hacks
we can do to make sure we're getting the social
benefit fits from our senses.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, and I think we do this automatically because of
course we like go sight seeing with people, or we
go to contact with other people, or we have share
meals with other people, and so these are obviously ways
to share share sensory experiences, but I think we often
don't think of those those examples as like this is
an example of sharing a sensory experience with somebody as
a way to draw closer to them. And so when
you think about, okay, well, how could I put a
(25:32):
different new kind of twist on it. So like I
did that with taste because I'm like, I'm not a
big taste person, and you know, it's like having a
dinner part of me is very hospitable, but then part
of me is kind of like, oh my gosh, it
seems like like really hard and demanding to like have.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
A dinner party.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So I had a taste party where I just had
some friends over and we all did taste comparisons, and
so it was a way to connect with people socially.
And what I found is like we we connected on
this really deep level, Like we were talking about our memories
and like like people in our lives and you know,
our childhoods, and we had a whole thing about candy,
(26:09):
you know, like wait, what kind of candy you ate
as a kid and why, And it just became very intimate,
and yet it was super fun and everybody was laughing
and sort of like talking, and it kind of much
more engaged way than I think, you know, sort of
like a dinner party. And so but the only reason
that it occurred to me is I was thinking, like, well,
is there another way that I can connect with people
(26:30):
with taste that's different, that might feel more interesting to me,
more engaging to me, And so I was able to
find a new way because of course there's very they're
very like classic ways to do it, but then there
are new ways to do it too. And so when
we kind of broaden our view of what of what
it might be to share a sensory experience with someone,
(26:52):
like again, like you might go to a concert with somebody,
or maybe you're like, let's go have a let's go
to a sound bath together. That's sort of different and interesting,
and it's another way to share a sensory experience with someone.
Maybe you don't you wouldn't want to go to the
same concert because you don't like the same kinds of music,
or you're like me and you just want the one song,
like let's go, let's go try a sound bath that's different.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I think this is sort of maybe a final
tip as we think about how to use sensory experiences socially,
it's important that if we're trying to kind of be ourselves.
I know you have this mantra b Gretchen, we might
need to think about what the other person likes too
and find spots where there's kind of common ground. And
I think we can only do that through experimenting and
getting really much more creative and remembering that we can
(27:32):
use sound in this way to connect with other people.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Right, and realizing there's probably a lot more possibilities. Then
you might kind of think at first glance, because again
there are these sort of traditional things that you think of,
but then when you open it up, you might see
that there are different things and things, as you say,
that could bring you together with someone even though you're
what you prefer might be very different in some ways.
Maybe you could find a different way, a more unexpected
(27:56):
way to show it. I mean like I had a
friend we were going to go to cryotherapy together, and
it's like, there's really I don't we don't have that
much in comment. I don't know that we would want
to do lots of things together. Our interests are very different.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
But was like, we're both interested in cryo therapy, let's
do that.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
And you know, I would not have thought of that
if I hadn't been thinking about, well how do I
tap into my senses as a way to connect with
other people? And I was like, well, she's interested in cryotherapy,
maybe we should do that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And so I wanted you to end just with my
favorite story from the book, because it just shows how
transcendent your experience of life can be even in boring
times when you start paying attention to the senses. And so,
can you share this story of the traffic cone that
you ended the book with.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yes, this was a very uncanny and transcendent moment of
my life. One of the exercises that I did for
the book list to visit the Metropolitan Museum every day,
so you know, I was looking at things all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You know, these are like classic masterpieces.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But then one day I was out walking my dog Barnaby,
and was very unusual sky conditions, the light was very unusual.
It was just getting ready to storm, and it was
just an orange traffic cone that was against the asphalt,
and it was like, in a moment, this traffic cone
became like the only true object in the world. It
(29:20):
was like the platonic ideal of an object. It seemed
like it just glowed in the light. I felt like everything.
You know how in a movie they'll show everything like
moving back from some central object is kind of like
to show how central it was.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
I felt like, literally like I.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Could see everything in the street, sort of moving back,
like in reverence of this traffic cone.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
The traffic cone, it seemed like a natural thing.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You know, there's certain things that seemed both natural and
man made, like sea glass or a scholar's rock or
a park bench. It looked like that, and I just
was transfixed and everything just again, like everything seemed to
heighten in my mind, just seemed to experience everything in
this moment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
This is this sort of timeless moment. And then you.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Know, just the light cloud was deeper over the sun,
or the wind picked up, and then it just turned
back into an ordinary traffic cone. But it was definitely
one of the most transcendent experiences of my life. And
it was transcendent in a very impersonal way. It was
like the beauty of nature, pure nature, just like pure form.
(30:30):
And it was an extraordinary moment. And maybe the only
reason that I was able to experience it was that
I had been doing so much to try to tune
into my surroundings that it didn't pass unnoticed.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
The ability to find such joy, such awe and the
sight of sun bouncing off a traffic cone is something
I now aspire to. It reminds me that we often
get true moments of pleasure wrong. We assume we can
only experience joy from perfectly crafted sensory moments taking a
mouthful of ridiculously expensive wine or the feel of a
cooling breeze on a tropical island, or gazing at the
(31:05):
perfect sunset from high on a mountain top. We assume
joy only comes from Instagram or at the moments like these.
But reading Gretchen's book Life in Five Senses reinforce what
I know. The science says that we can find little
spots of happiness each and every day if we just
take time to hunt for them in the ordinary things
around us. So what new things will you notice this week?
(31:26):
What colors are interesting, sounds or odd smells will you
focus on during your commute or in your kitchen or
with the people you love. I hope that by honing
the sensory gifts you take for granted every day, that you,
like Gretchen, can find new wonder and joy around you.
In the next episode of the Happiness Lab, I continue
(31:48):
my conversation with some of my happiness idols. I get
to grab some quality chat time with one of the
founders of happiness science and get to hear what he's
learned over his lifetime of research into what gives us
meaning and makes us feel good. Hear more from the
amazing Marty Selegman next time on the Happiness Lab with me,
Doctor Laurie Santo's
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