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