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