The One You FeedHow to Connect More Deeply Through Our Senses with Gretchen Rubin
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- How to utilize our five senses to more deeply connect with the world
- Why exploring the world through your senses to experience life more vividly and playfully.
- How sensory experiences are a meaningful way to connect with others.
- Keeping a “5 Senses Journal” as a useful tool as a form of appreciation
- How to elevate everyday moments with heightened sensory awareness techniques.
- Why sharing impactful sensory memories with others can foster deeper connections
- Understanding how sensory environments shape behaviors and decision-making processes.
In general, we are wired for sight, and so it has the most real estate in the brain, and often when there's a conflict among senses, sight wins.
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Gretchen Ruben, one of today's most influential observers of happiness and human nature. She's the author of many books, including the blockbuster New York Times Bestseller's Outer Order in or Calm, The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project. Gretchen's books have sold more than three point five million copies worldwide in more than thirty languages, and she hosts the top ranking, award winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Ruben, where she explores practical solutions for living a happier life.
Hi, Gretchen, Welcome to the show.
I'm so happy to be back talking to you.
Yes, it is definitely a pleasure to have you back on. We're going to be discussing your new book, which is called Life in Five Senses. How exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world. But before we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with the Parable and the Parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Well, it's very apt for my book Life in Five Senses, because what it shows you is that what you direct your attention to and what you feed and foster is what will grow and what will take over your life. And one of the things I found about the Five Senses was I wasn't feeding that wolf. I was walking around kind of lost in my head, in a fog of preoccupation. And then when I found that, I turned my attention to the five senses. Well, then they added so much vitality and energy and beauty and memory and creativity to my life. But I had to take the time to feed that wolf because it was there waiting the whole time. It was inside me along with the other wolves. But I was ignoring it, I was overlooking it. And so I think it's very apt parable for what I tried to do in the book.
Yeah, I love a book focused on the senses because I don't know how I got it into my head, but I did a number of years ago. And the basic idea was that our senses are kind of the portal to now, Like if we want to be more present, which all of us talk about. Our senses are a direct way to do that, to say, and you reference this in your book to say, well, like, be more present isn't extraordinarily helpful, but what are five things I can see right now?
Is right?
And so some of those exercises I have just internalized so much, And as I was reading your book, I was recognizing, like, yeah, when I walk, I'm always sort of looking and what can I see that I haven't seen? Or how can I look at this different? Or where's all the colors of green that I can see? All these different things? And so I love this idea of just exploring senses more because it's so important to us being present. But before we go into that, I have to ask a question, which is that can elephants really hear the movement of clouds?
They can? They can? They know when the storm is coming.
And they do it by hearing. Mm hmm, that's crazy.
M hmm. Yeah.
Isn't it fascinating to think about the senses that other creatures must have, Like I love to think about octopuses or OCTOPI I'm not sure how you're supposed to say that, but they can change all the color on their entire body instantly, you know. So they've got these senses, you know, controlling all these different suckers. Their sense experience must be so radically different. It's just fascinating to think about.
Yeah, there's a huge amount of interest in this very subject. There have been several popular science books written in the last few years talking about the superpowers of different kinds of creatures, and it really is remarkable. I mean, but then you just think of something like your dog. I so wish that I could experience my sidewalk. I'm just walking around my neighborhood the way my dog does, because of course Barnaby is sensing all these things that I'm not. But it is fascinating to think about what they're tuned into. They can see colors that we don't see. They can see things like heat, They can smell things we can't smell. They can feel things we can't feel. It is remarkable.
Yeah, it tends to be that we think we're getting an accurate picture of what's out there, right, like I'm seeing and hearing in everything. No, I'm not right by not by a long shot. There is so much more that is outside of me than I can possibly perceive. I just love that idea.
Well, there's that like which is kind of outside the realm of your senses, the way we can only see this part of the spectrum that's visible to humans. But what's astonished to me is how true that is even within people. Even people like you think, well, I'm sitting in a room, you're sitting in a room. We're basically having the same experience, but we really are not. I mean, I was just astonished over and over to realize the degree to which my brain is shaping my experience. And it's my brain, it's my genetics, it's my upbringing, it's my culture, it was the conditions you know in utero before I was born. All these things are creating a different environment, and same with you. I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why, like, when somebody complains about something, we shouldn't just handwave it and say like, well, it's no big deal, or I don't know what you're complaining about, or like why are you making such a big deal, Because to different people, different sensations just register very differently. And I mean, you and I are both podcasters, So a funny thing that I found for my life of podcasting is you know, when I'm recording, I don't hear sirens because I live in New York City and my brain is like, you don't need to know about sirens. That's you know, just ignore it. But people who are like on the microphone with me will be like, hey.
Let's hold on totally. Yeah. I was just making this comment to somebody the other day in that I am I think is the term misophenia, somebody who's very sensitive to sound. Yeah, so I am naturally a very sound sensitive person, but I think recording this podcast has made it even worse because I will hear any sound in somebody's background. Yeah, you know.
My producer is like that.
A fly buzzing, you know, two rooms away, and I'm like, uh, what's that noise?
Yeah.
So it's funny how we are all so different. So talk to me a little bit about the process by which our sense organs pick whichever one you want as yours. Know, they're recording a very basic thing, right, and then what actually arrives in our brain is something very different. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on in between those two things.
Well, the brain is just acting as an editor. It's telling us what we need to know. It's helping us to pay attention to the things that are important. The brain is very focused on change because change is opportunity or danger. So if there's a rock flying at my head, I'm going to notice that right away.
There's a rock lying on the ground, well, I'm not going to notice that so much.
You see this with things like touch, like if I pull on a tight hat, I'll feel that around my head when it's a new sensation, but pretty soon it'll fade out of my awareness. One of the most surprising ways that you see this is with smell, because you know, we've all had the experience of odor fatigue where you're smelling something beautiful, like a wonderful dish of your favorite food or a beautiful flower something, and you smell and you smell, and then you can't smell it anymore. It happens over time. We cannot smell our home the way a guest smells it. And if you've ever visited somebody's house where you're like, wow, how did they live in a house that has such a strong smell, it's because they don't smell it, and the kind of more persistent and strongest smell is the more you adjust to it. And so the brain is doing all this. The brain is helping, Like if you've ever heard your name, like in a crowded room where a lot of people are talking, and you're like, your ears perk up because your brain is like, hey, that's important to us, like what we got to get on that conversation, But to other people they wouldn't pick it up in the same way. So it's just it's very remarkable the degree to which our minds are helping us and intervening for us, but then also sometimes maybe making trade offs we wouldn't make, or shaping our perception in ways that maybe aren't even accurate. Like you think about the dress. You know, is it white and gold or blue and black. I cannot see it blue and black. I know intellectually that is the true color of the dress, but my brain will not allow me to perceive it. I just can't see it that way, even though I know that that's an illusion.
Yeah. I use that dress in my Spiritual Habits program where I show it on the screen and I ask people to vote on what do they see, because it's the part in the program where I'm trying to make the point of we don't see the world as idiots, we see it as we are. Right, everything we are processing is going through through our filters. Like you said, it's a different experience for all of us based on so many different things.
Well, and then also context can matter.
So my daughter, I love the smell of paper white narcissus, which is a very sharp, distinctive smell, but very tied to my childhood and kind of Christmas growing up. So I finally was like, I'm going to buy one of these flowers myself put it in there, and my daughter elan Hur was like, what is She had smelled something and she was afraid, like we had a dead mouse in a wall or something, because she kept smelling this terrible smell. Then she realized it was this paper white narcissus. She hadn't connected the smell to the flower, and then I was like, oh, I love that smell. And at first she said, oh, I hate that smell. But then once she knew that it was from a flower, it was not from a dead mouse, then she became much more accepting of the smell. So part of it is also like is this parmesan cheese or vomit. Is this like a very strong floor cleaner or is it pine needles? How much we like something, our brain is also giving context in which to experience something, maybe as pleasant or not, depending on kind of what else we bring to that.
Yeah, exactly. And in so much of you know, the Zen tradition that I've studied, In so much, there's this idea of really, can you get to the point where you experience the world more directly, you know, without as many of your filters? And I think in many ways that in some ways would be leading towards what you know, they might refer to as enlightenment, being that you just aren't overlaying all your stuff onto the world and you experience it more directly, thus much more freshly and much more newly.
I think that's pretty hard.
Oh, it's incredibly hard.
I don't know that the brain would permit that, because even bringing no filter is its own filter. So if you're saying my filter is no judgment, that itself is a decision.
So it's an interesting question, not one that I think about. Love.
I love noticing the things that I like them or I don't like them, or they're interesting or whatever.
But that is not the zenway.
Well, the zenway would be noticing that and saying doing a lot of what you do in this book, actually, which is can I just experience this thing again more deeply, more closely, more focused, so that it comes alive beyond being something that we feel like we've seen five hundred times before.
M Yeah, yeah, but what's familiar is easy to ignore. And I think that is one of the challenges of our life is like, how do you really look? I find this with the people that I love as I was taking them for grants, and I wasn't really looking at them, even though you know, they were so dear to me. It's just like, why should I look at my husband? I look at it morning, noon, and night. Why really pay attention? So I wanted to make sure to start to do that.
I think that idea that you reference throughout the book that our senses are particularly alert to changes, and that if nothing is changing, then in a sense, we stop sensing. I mean, obviously we don't stop sensing, because our sense are always going, but it never or very rarely makes its way actually into consciousness because our brain just filters it out as unimportant. Because it's seen it so many times before.
Yeah, so I think what we want to do is to awaken our attention so that we can experience things more vividly. I have to say, I'm not a fan of things like sit and taste a sip of coffee for twenty minutes, or you know, we're like look for every color of green. Like some people are very drawn to those kinds of exercises. I think my kind of exercises are sort of more loose and playful. I didn't take a very serious approach to this because I felt like part of what I wanted was kind of recess and fun and immediacy and energy, whereas I think many people might approach this with sort of a meditative you know. Like one of the exercises I do for the book and I still do to this day because I enjoyed it so much, was to visit the Metropolitan Museum every day. So I love going to the met And of course I'm incredibly fortunate that I have the time and the freedom to go, and I also live within walking distance of the met so it's you know, I'm so lucky. I'm a New York State residence, so I can go for free, though I did join. But somebody said to me very confidently, well, if you're going to go to the met you have to sit on a bench and look at it one painting for half an hour.
And I'm like, no, I don't. Like, maybe one day I'll do that.
And that is definitely a thing a person could do, but that's not why I'm going. But this person said it was so much authority, as if like that was the right answer. I'm like, there's no right answer here. There are many ways that you could go to the Metropolitan Museum, and the more you go, the more you can try. And I'm excited and I'm sure one day I will try that and it'll probably be a fascinating experience. But I just thought it was funny that somebody was like, well, that's the only kind of legitimate thing to do. I'm like, no, it's not. There's a lot of ways we can connect with our five senses, but some with more freedom, some with more discipline.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you that if we turn it into too much of a serious exercise, it sort of loses a lot of what we're tr trying to do exactly.
It just becomes another kind of discipline. And I'm a huge fan of discipline. I'm a very, very disciplined person. That's probably one of the reasons I was attracted to this because I wanted to let my mind off the leash. I wanted more energy and playfulness, and I think through the five Census is a terrific way to do it. Not to say that you couldn't achieve other aims through it, but yeah, for me, I was like, I don't want to make this so demanding and kind of dry that I missed the point of what I was seeking.
Right, you say early on in the book, I realized I'd grown serious and impatient, too eager to hurry back to my deskert my to do list, you know, my focus on efficiency and productivity. It left me with a heaviness of spirit, a feeling of staleness or stagnation. I wanted to stir myself up with the quick hits of exuberance that my senses could provide.
Right, Yeah, I have.
That tendency also, right, I have a tendency towards just very focused, very serious, you know, very like turning anything into a project, right thing to get better at. You know, I started rock climbing. It's into a rock climbing, but I loved it for the tactile piece of it, the feeling, the experience of being up high all that.
Of course, I never thought about rock climbing as a touch exercise. What a great example I wish I thought of that. I'm gonna write that down.
Yeah, But I noticed after like two sessions, I was like, maybe I should get a rock climbing coach. I was like, just just stop. Does it make any difference whether you can climb? You know, I don't remember the scale of five point one versus a five point three, Like, not for what I'm trying to do, not for the reasons I'm here. It's the same reason like I've taken up surfing and I love it and I want to get better at it. But I have to watch again my desire to get too serious, because what I like about it is the sensation of it. You know, I love being in the water and the sun and the sounds and the sense elements of it. And I know that for myself. When I start to get too serious about it, as like I've got to I got to get better, my window of attention shrinks down, very, very small. Yeah, and I'm kind of back into my usual way of relating to the world.
Absolutely, I think that's an outstanding example. It sounds like you and I are very much the same. And that's one of the things with the MET, Like people kept saying to me, well, what were the rules and like what counted, And I'm like, I tried to just avoid all that because I'm exactly like you if it's like it's got to be this long, I've got to do this. What I did do is I went through the whole met like room by room, because I'm like, I felt like I needed to plot it out, but I didn't have like, oh, you have to do this much in a day. I tried to keep because I think you're exactly right. For some people, it's a real temptation, which is to sort of professionalize everything, like try to make it good and try to make it regulated and achieve. And I think you're right, Like, if you tend in that direction, it's very helpful to have a practice where you're very deliberately letting yourself stay loose, stay unfocused, just kind of roll with it, not try to up your game all the time.
It's an interesting temptation totally.
Yes, that I think people don't talk about very much, but maybe there are many of us who experience this. But I absolutely know what you mean where it's like, I don't want rock climbing to become like my next career where I have to, like, you know, up my game all the time.
I'm a guitar player, and early on I played guitar and bands and I wrote songs. I mean, I had an ambition with it, and then there came a time where it became very clear that that just wasn't the right ambition for me. So I had to go through a really deliberate process of undoing all that so that I could get back to playing the guitar, because I like to play the guitar. Yes, you know where I wasn't like every time I played something that sounded kind of cool, I wasn't like, oh that could be something. I got to make that into something. Now I'm almost to the opposite extreme where I capture almost nothing. You know, I just play, and you know, if I play something pretty, I'm like, well, if I can remember it next time, I'll play it again. And so it was that same thing, which is I'm taking something that should be an enjoyment for me, and I'm turning it into a job.
Yeah.
I think if you have this relentless aspect to your nature, it can be exhausting. It's exhilarating and it's satisfying to have that kind of relentlessness, that it can become draining and overwhelming and just sort of take the fun out of things.
Yeah.
I hadn't really thought of in the context that you're saying, of playing an instrument or rock climbing, but I see exactly how that would apply. It's very interesting. This is my hope for the book. Like with everything I write, it's not like what I do is so important. It's supposed to be like this is going to help you think about yourself. This is something you could try in your own way. I've never done rock climbing in my life, but that doesn't matter because you're thinking about your own rock climbing. And so my hope is that people will bring their own sensory experiences and interests and challenges to it. Sort of get excited because I think a lot of times we can learn from other people. We get ideas, and even if we wouldn't do what they would do we kind of get an idea for ourselves. That's maybe even more exciting when you're bringing your own creativity and your own ingenuity to something. They need a little spark to get you thinking along those lines.
Yeah, You've got a lot of very creative ways of engaging with your senses that I had never thought of. And I've thought about this a fair amount, and so, yeah, there's a bunch of new things I'm interested in trying. There's a theme throughout the book that our senses are a way to connect to now, to being present. They're a way to connect to the world around us, but they're also a way of connecting more deeply with the people around us. Will you share a little bit about why that is and maybe give us a couple examples.
Yeah, this was one thing I really hoped that I could achieve from going deep into my five senses, because, of course, ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree it's relationships with other people that really contribute the most to our happiness, So this is very important. Aim is to connect with more people and more deeply with people, and I did. I found the sensory experience is a great way to connect with other people in all kinds of ways. Now, of course, if some of these are classic, like we all get to meals with other people. You know, that's universal in human culture, is that eating together is tied to you know, hospitality and fellowship. And then like we go sightseeing together, right, Like we'll go to a museum together, and we'll go to a concert together, and we'll listen to something together. So sharing a sensory experience is a great way to connect with other people.
But then I also.
Found like it's very useful as a way to connect with people through memory. So like I did a fun exercise for myself to connect with memories, as I divided my life into sort of four stages, and then I wrote down all the tastes I remembered from those times, either that were the most distinctive or that.
Were my favorites at that time.
But then what made it even more of an is I called my sister Elizabeth, and I said, well, let's talk about let's talk together about what we remember from our childhood. And I mean we just were laughing and talking. I mean I had forgotten all about you know, the foods that we ate on lung car trips and like how we would beg our grandparents to buy a strawberry pop tarts and cinnamon pop darts and the cereal that we ate, you know, when we were little. This kind of reminiscence is a really great way if you want to connect with, say, coworkers or people you don't know well, because it tends to be very personal and kind of fun to talk about, but it's not intimate in a way that can make people uncomfortable. If you say to somebody like, is there a food that you can get in your hometown that you really can't get anywhere else you go. You got to go back to your hometown to get it. That's a fun thing and it brings people closer, but most people wouldn't feel uncomfortable with that, Whereas I think sometimes when people are sort of like do these get to know you questions, sometimes it can be tricky. So it's fun to have something where everybody like, what was your favorite candy as a kid?
Like people just like talking about that stuff.
It's a really fun way to connect with people or talking about their preferences. Like a question I'd love to ask you is, if you really need to focus and be productive, what kind of sound environment do you like do you like silence? Do you like a busy hum like in a coffee shop? Do you like music with lyrics? Do you like music without lyrics? And people have a lot of thoughts, you know, people are very specific and some people will like shape their sound environment depending on what kind of work they're doing. How about you, what's your preferred sound environment for deep work?
Either quiet or instrumental music, but no words, no words won't work, and even the instrumental music needs to be relatively spare.
Mm hmmm.
I'm sound sensitive and I love music, so I just get my attention. I need something that's just kind of there.
Back to this idea that we all experience things differently. So I'm talking to a friend of mine, who, like you, is really really into music, and I was saying, hen, when I go to a restaurant, I'm very sensitive to the noise level, which is a very common thing. Like the number one complain of restaurants is they're too noisy. And he was like, oh, but for me, it's it's like the music selection, whereas I just tune out the music if it's not too loud. But he was like that, He's like to me, that's a huge part of the experience, just like the food. If I don't like their choice of music or I love their choice of music, that's a major element in why I would choose a restaurant or not. And I was like, Wow, as somebody who is not a huge music lover, I wouldn't have thought of that.
But of course it makes sense.
If you love music and you're very tuned into music, it would be just as important as the decor of the restaurant, or the smells of the restaurant, or the noise level of the restaurant, how uncomfortable the seats are. All these things matter. But to me, I never thought about it. For him, he made his choices based on that.
That's interesting. I do always notice the music, but I've never actually connected the dots in my mind to say, like, I like a restaurant because the music they play.
Oh interesting, Because.
You were writing about the noise and restaurants, I feel the same way. It's very hard for me to tune out. And it occurred to me, like, do any of the rating services like rate the volume of a restaur Is there any sort of like restaurant volume rat or something. Do you know of anything. Does that exist?
Do you know?
I don't know, And that's very interesting. I imagine that it does exist because everything exists. But you definitely will see that in reviews, like that a restaurant is noisier.
That it's quiet.
One thing that's like kind of an interesting hack if you're trying to pick a restaurant, is that sort of more old fashioned restaurants tend to be quieter because there's sort of this new trend for like concrete and wood and glass and tile open kitchens and that sense sound bouncing around, and if you're in a place that has like thick carpeting, tablecloths, heavy drapes, you know that will muffle sound. And so if you're thinking like, oh, do I want the new trendies pot or do I want like the old fashion, you know, like Italian restaurant. If you care a lot about noise, you want to look for what is the look of the restaurant that will tell you a lot about the sound.
That's a very simple heuristic to try and sort of figure that out, because you're right, I mean, the environment has everything to do with the sound.
Well, and one of the things which is just interesting is sound is often used to manipulate us, and so in some restaurants they turn it up loud because people eat and drink more quickly when the music is loud, but they tend to taste things less, so if they're trying to turn their tables quickly, they'll play louder music. And in grocery stores they play slow music because people move more slowly. We're so affected by music, they'll move more slowly. And the more time you spend in a store, the more you tend to buy. And so often music that is put into our environment is meant to shape our behavior in ways that we may not be aware of.
Yeah, I think there was something about playing Barry Manilow or classical.
Music, yes, yeah, to get people away so people wouldn't loiter in front of like convenience stores, or like a friend of mine did that in college when he wanted.
To clear people out after a party.
He would like, pick some song and nobody liked, and just play it on a loop until people just you know, ran shrieking to escape. It's an interesting question. Music is universal in human culture, and no one is really quite sure why, because if it's not something that's necessary for survival.
Why is it so ubiquitous? But it does have a huge influence.
It helps us with work, it helps us synchronize with other people. There's a huge amount of effect that it has. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it's a little bit puzzling. There's a lot of theories about that.
You developed something called a manifesto for listening. Yes, share a little bit about why you did that and what's on it.
Well, I find that when something's really important, it helps me to kind of crystallize my thoughts by writing a manifesto or a list or you know, I have twelve personal commandments, and I just find that that process helps me really understand my own believes, my own conclusions, and I realize, like, of everything we do to use our sense of hearing, really listening to other people is one of the most important things. And it sounds very passive, like I'm just listening to somebody talk. It's very very demanding. I made it manifesto for listening of everything that I wanted to remember, and it really does help me to remember you know, how to listen attentively, even something as simple as like when you're listening to someone like show them with your body, like face them full on, put down anything that is like a distraction, like a newspaper, a cell phone, or a book, so that people are like, you know, you assume the position I'm listening. So it's full of things like that that I try to remember.
There's a bunch of great ones on there. I think it might be the last one when in doubt, stop talking one are.
The hardest ones.
Yeah, yeah, And I find that very hard to do when there's like an awkward pause or you know, if it feels uncomfortable, and sometimes you just have to let the silence stretch out.
That is one of the most basic and simple rules to being a better listener, right is just to listen and not talk as much. You know, it's always good to know where you fall on the spectrum. I think there are some people who have a tendency to talk too much who might need to modulate it down. There's other people who have a tendency to not say anything in a conversation they might need to modulate it up. So it's not always a good rule.
But I'm so glad you said that. That's a very important thing to remember, which is that not everyone faces the same challenges, and not everyone has the same faults, and so you know, you have to always think for yourself, you know, do I need to do more listening or do I really need to do more talking? Because one of the ways that we show intimacy with people is that we disclose. And if you've ever been with somebody who just peppers you with questions and refuses to say anything about themselves, you feel very shut out by that. It doesn't feel intimate. The person doesn't feel interested in you. It feels like they're kind of controlling you by interviewing you, and so there has to be this give and take. My own personal problem is talking too much. So that's what my manifesto for listening focuses on, which is really being that attentive listener to someone who's talking.
Yep, let's talk a little bit about smell.
M I love this sense of smell.
Yeah.
It's funny. As I was reading your book and you were saying like sound is your sort of underrated areas, but smell was one of your known favorites. I was like, I think I'm kind of the opposite, Like I'm super super sound oriented and smell oriented not as much. But your book helped me realize partially why. It's because of that. Did you call it olfactory fatigue? It's difficult for me to hang onto a smell sometimes long enough to really savor it or be with it, because it seems like I notice it and then it fades quickly. And so just knowing that that's the nature of smell makes me willing to engage with it slightly differently, knowing like, yeah, of course that happens. That's the way it works. It's not like you have a broken smeller, right.
No, it's frustrating when you want to keep smelling something and you just can't. I mean, that's the thing about a smell. You can't gorge on it, you can't bookmarket it, you can't save it for later. It's like right here, right now, and then it's going to go. It's true of all the senses, but particularly the sense of smell. I think it's a reminder of you better appreciate what's happening right now, because it will not persist for you.
Yeah.
You talk about one way being putting on perfume or cologne, and you know, I love it like the minute I put it on, but then minute later I have forgotten it and I don't notice it again right all day. Right, So I'm kind of like, well, how valuable is this really for me?
You know?
But what are ways that you learn to engage with smell differently as a result of this experiment versus kind of what you already knew to do knowing it was one of your favorite senses.
Well, I learned much more about it. The more you know, the more you notice.
And I did love my sense of smell, but I didn't really pay that much attention to it other than thinking like, oh, this feels good or this feels bad.
So I did take a perfume.
Class, and that was just fascinating because just learning so much about it and you know, kind of exercising it. There was sort of introduction in class, and then there was the advanced class. And in the advanced class we would just put blotters in these vials and smell them. And what was interesting is some people were really good at saying, oh, this reminds me of like a cedar closet on a hot summer day, or this smells like wet Kleenex or whatever. And then for some people you could smell it. But it was harder to sort of characterize it or to kind of identify it, you know. And it was funny because even the professor was like, listen, you guys, you're not going to be able to do this by the end of this class.
This is very advanced.
Like to be able to really have any kind of facility with this very very difficult takes a long time. Not just this class that you would take, which was reassuring, but it was just fascinating. I found out I can't really smell musk, which turns out to be not that uncommon, but I'm like, I didn't know I was missing a whole smell.
It was like it was like.
The end first new clothes, because everybody was acting very normal, like oh.
This that the other thing.
I'm like, I don't smell anything. He was like, oh yeah, some people can't smell musk. So that was one of the things that I did. But back to your idea of the neglected sense, Like this is one of your neglected senses, so you were aware of that, but often, like I find that this is something that maybe we don't really understand about ourselves, is what's our most neglected sense. So I did this very fun quiz and it's free and it's quick. You can go to Gretchen Ruber dot com slash quiz and take it and it will tell you what is your most neglected sense. So maybe for you it's smell. For me, I thought my most neglected senses were hearing and tasting, and indeed I thought it's probably tasting, you know. I checked my own quiz, and that's what my quiz show me was that it was tasting. And this is a useful thing to know because often there's low hanging fruit, as your question suggests, if you don't spend that much time thinking about your sense of smell or dialing into it, that's a lot of opportunity. Like you're like, well wearing perfewer clone that kind of fades away. That's not really and I feel like that does that much for me. But maybe if you brought some plants into your office and you had kind of the smell of fresh plants and earth, that would be interesting to you. Or maybe you want to have a nostalgia smell and get something just because you love the smell from childhood, Like I have a little bottle of Johnson's baby lotion that I don't use.
I just smell it because I love that smell.
So maybe you're like, well, maybe I'll have something that I keep around just because I love the smell lava soap. There are just these funny things. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, and there's a kind of a popcorn store that everybody goes to called Topsy's, and I got something. I'm like, I have to have this smell for the rest of my life. So I put some popcorn into a ziploc bag. I'm like, I don't know if this stuff will rot away or how long I can keep it, but just that smell is so valuable to me. It brings back so many memories. And so when you identify your most neglected sense, then that sort of shows you, oh, well, maybe this is something I can tune into. Because for our appreciated sense, just like with you and sound and hearing, we tend to already have a lot of interest in it. We learn about it, we talk about it with other people, we cultivate it, which is great and it's good to do more of that. But the neglected sense gives us a new opportunity too.
I just got two ideas as you were talking about one was my father passed. It's i mean within the last month.
Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
Thank you. However, I have a smell that I very much associate with him, which is Aqua Velva cologne or I think they still make it, yes, but I never smell it normally. So it occurred to me like, well, I could get some of it, not with the intention that I'm going to wear it, right, but to smell it as a memory thing for him. And then the second thing that you said was I never thought to smell my plants. I have plants. Yeah, I love them, I look at them, I touch them all the time. I love to touch plants. Trees were at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens recently, and I just I'm walking around touching everything. But I never thought to smell my own plants. I mean, if I see a flower, I'll smell the flower. But never occurred to me that smelling my own plants would be just sounds that's a weird thing to say. It sounds strange smelling my own plants, but.
Or smelling the dirt.
Once you've watched you know, they had that kind of dirthy smell that's very pleasing.
Here's the suggestion about your father.
So in the book, I talked about how I did a five census portrait of my husband Jamie. For each of the five senses, I picked five of those sensations that I most associated with him, which was a wonderful exercise, lots of fun, very creative.
And then I have a.
Podcast, The Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcasts, so we talked about doing that on the podcast. But here's what could be useful to you is someone wrote in said that she did it for someone who had recently died, because you want to feel that somehow you're capturing their like concrete essence and really thinking, like, well, this cologne comes to your mind right away, but what are some of the other things, or like what are the favorite tastes? Because you feel like you'll never forget. But there's something about organizing it in like a portrait that really makes you feel like you're capturing that person. And she was also saying that her children were so young that they would not remember this beloved family member, and she felt that like by creating this portrait of these very concrete things, she could really capture the essence of this person and show it to them. And I thought that was such a great idea. And here's another interesting thing. Someone was saying about just smell and its association. Someone was saying how her mother had dementia, so it was very hard to have a conversation. They just kind of looped and looped. But then she said, oh, do you remember your bathpowder?
You know?
And they talked about and the mother remembered the bath powder. And then the next time they spoke, she said, somehow that clicked in a way, and everybody talked behind music is very good. Yeah, people, yeah, having memory loss, and so this is another way to connect with people maybe who are having certain kinds of challenges. But with these memories, these sensations can maybe help bridge.
That, ye or hang on to those memories.
Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. My partner, Ginny's mother last fall passed from Alzheimer's and we'd been with her, you know, primary caregivers for about six years. And I noticed that me playing the guitar for her, she enjoyed that. Yeah, it felt like nearly to the end.
Yeah, And could she remember the words? A lot of times people can remember the words to lyrics even when they came.
Yeah, yeah, I mean after a while she was nonverbal, but you know, it just felt like there was some sense that like it was just her favorite thing was for me to play guitar for her.
Oh you know, Oh what a beautiful memory.
Yeah.
But again, like with the five cents of Portrait, you could write down like what were her Like what was the song you always played for her? Because that's the kind of memory. It's like we forget, we remember. I feel like with memory I felt with the senses, I started remembering a lot of things that I had never forgotten, but that I forgot that I remembered because I never went looking for them. And with the five senses, I was like, oh, I remember the smell of my grandparents' garage, or the smell on my grandparents kitchen, or you know these little things, or you know my dog's dog bed when I was growing up. You just forget, you remember. I was with some friends from high school and we were all talking about the locker room and the basement of our high school, and it was like, man, I forgot all about that locker room. I hadn't thought about it in so long, but the minute we started talking about it.
Oh, I could smell it. I could smell it right in my nose. It all came back.
It just made me think, like, I wish I had thought to do that with her, like some smelling things. Yes, that that would have been that have right. Yeah, there are other ways in than music, to your point, senses in general would be really helpful. Yeah, so let's talk about the connection between smelling and tasting.
Mm hmm.
Well, sadly, I think a lot of people became very much more aware of this during COVID because people often thought that if they had COVID they had lost their sense of taste, but it was actually because their sense of smell had been affected. And if we have just taste, that's the five basic taste. There's some controversies. There's other tastes waiting in the wings, hoping to be you know, enter the cannon of five. But traditionally, the widely accepted tastes are a sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and then the latest entrant umami, which now has been accepted for more than one hundred years. But if you are just to have something on your tongue, you're going to get a very simple taste. Flavor is when you have tastes plus smell, because we can actually smell things while we're eating through our nose through our mouth. A really fun way to test this is to take something that has a complex flavor, like a jelly bean, like a jelly belly, you know, there's like those crazy jelly bellies, and plug your nose, put it in your mouth, and you will just taste something sweet. It will taste just very sweet, and then if you unplug your nose, then it will blossom into cherry or root beer or you know, banana dacorie or whatever flavor you're having. Because when that smell comes, then you get that complex flavor. So to really appreciate something of food or beverage, you need to have smell plus taste. So when COVID took away people's sense of smell, it also very much affected their sense of taste.
Interesting, I did not know that. I did not know that was the mechanism of action that caused them to feel like they couldn't taste. In your research on this, is there anything about their smell or taste right after you swallow, Because it seems to me that it gets slightly more intense for me right after the food has left my mouth.
Oh, good perception.
You know, there's a bunch of research about like saliva that I have to say. I did not plum that work, but there is work to be found if you're curious about that. I really applaud your subtlety of your noticing. That's really good. I never have noticed that myself. I'll try that the next time I eat.
I think that's the next book, The Science of Spit by Gretchen Reach.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Well, and it's also probably like the timing of your breathing and it's all very you know, the body is amazing, the way everything's so interconnected. Oh, but there is a myth about tastes that like different parts of your tongue are like, you know, this is the salty part, and this is the sugar part.
That's not true. Not true, that's not true. Now the whole tongue, it's like it's all mixed together.
It's so fascinating. The things that make it into very popular mm that sounds scientific that are simply not true.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's that the science at the time believed that, and then it's later disproved and the common knowledge never catches up. I just it's always fascinating to me when those things sort of linger, you know, when you look a little bit deeper. It's sort of like the twenty one days to build a habit.
Yes, no, oh my gosh, yeah, oh yeah.
Yeah, you're like, but we know that's not true, right, It's like, yeah, you don't need to have a laboratory full of guinea pigs running that to be like, yeah, that doesn't work well.
Since we're just kind of moving through the senses sort of an order like your book does, let's hit touch.
Well.
Touch is interesting because I feel like it's the most different from the other four. The other four are located on the head, touches for our whole body, and the skin kind of feels like packaging to me. It doesn't feel like a sense organ the way like the ear does. But touch is extraordinarily important and very very sophisticated to help us make sense of what we're sensing. Some places it's very sensitive, like on the fingertips, and then other places, like in the middle of your back, it's not very sensitive. Back to this idea of neglected sense, I assumed when I started this that I wasn't that tuned into touch. I was like, I never think about it and I don't really care about it. But so one fascinating thing for me was to realize I'm super super focused on touch. How did I not know that about myself?
I don't know.
I guess that's why I read a book called Life in Five Senses, because I'm the kind of person who doesn't even notice that she's extremely focused on the sense of touch. But I realized all kinds of funny things, like you know how every once in a while you look in your closet and you think, Okay, what did this stuff?
What do I wear? What do I not wear? How could I wear stuff more? And I was thinking, well, I have these blouses that I really like, and yet I never wear them. Why not?
And then I was thinking about it, and then I thought, well, it's because they're cotton. They're like kind of white cotton shirt, and I don't like that feeling of that. And now I'm like, okay, well, I'm not going to buy that kind of shirt because even though it looks good and I feel like, oh, this would be useful, I don't like to wear them because I don't like the feeling on my skin. On the other hand, when I looked at my closet and I saw things that I didn't wear often, they were a beautiful color, and I thought, Oh, this is because I love this color. I buy something even though it doesn't really fit or look good because I'm so entranced by the purple or the brown or.
Whatever or the combination.
And then in the end, I'm like, it doesn't look good, so I never feel like wearing it, but the touch, or like I had the sweatshirt, I should get rid of. This sweatshirt is way too old, it's really ratty, and I just couldn't give it up. And then I realized because it was the perfect stretchiness, softness, weight, like it had side pockets, like the feel of it was perfect, and I just ignored how bad it looked because I thought, Oh, it's just it's just the ideal hoodie, so who could give it up? But all these kinds of thing I had not noticed, not noticed at all.
Yeah, Yeah, there's so many things to that sense of a piece of clothing and its touch. You know, there's the material, but like you said, there's it's weight, it's how it falls on your body. I mean, I'm not even talking about from a look perspective. It's just a feel thing. And I'm kind of the same way. I noticed that there are a number of things in my closet that I just never put on, and it is almost always because I don't like the way it feels. So I'll occasionally be like, well, you know you never warn that thing. You bought it, you should put it on, and I'll put it on, and like five minutes later, I'm like, nope, I now I know why I didn't wear it. It's because, for whatever reason, it just doesn't feel right now.
I don't know if this is an example of this phenomenon, but in general, we are wired for sight, and so it has the most real estate in the brain, and often when there's a conflict among senses, sight wins.
And I wonder if for you and me when.
We're making these mistakes, when we're like in the store buying these items, I wonder if we think of it as a site exercise. I am here, I'm looking at myself in the mirror. How does this look? How does this fit?
Yes?
Whereas you and I should be shutting our eyes and saying I'm not going to get distracted by the way that it looks. Let me really focus on the way that it feels, because it might be that for people like you and me who are making these mistakes, maybe if we shut out the site and really said, Okay, now I'm going to tune into that, it might help us identify things.
I bought a pair of pants that I loved. It was this blue.
Oh they were amazing and I love them, and I bought them just instantly in the store. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to buy these. I got them home and they were so scratchy. It was like, did they do this on purpose? Because this can't be accidental. I had to I wore them with like heavy tights, but it didn't matter. This scratchiness went right through, like to the point I was getting a rash from them, Like why was this even ever manufactured this way?
It didn't make any sense.
And yet in the store I hadn't even noticed for one second because I was so focused on the way they looked.
Yeah, that's a great idea to close your eyes, because you're right, site does tend to be sort of dominant, and it's a very common thing. You know, you'll see people tasting things close their eyes.
You know.
I close my eyes when I'm listening very often, you know, because I know that it allows the sense I want to focus on to be a little more clear.
Yes, and we do that.
We will shut down one sense to help us pay more attention to others. So exactly, that's why for a concert the lights will dim. I'm a fearful driver, so I'll turn off the radio when I'm driving so i can see better. I found it's interesting, like when I'm very stressed out, as I said, I love smell. I wear perfumed to bed. I like, will smell things all the time. But when I'm really stressed out, I stop doing that. And I think it's because I'm trying to bring the sensory load down, so I don't even give myself these pleasures. It's just like, oh, I want less stimulation, so I will take that out of the equation to help me manage it. So I think you're right. Okay, let's try that. This is a new idea for he Okay, next time we're.
In a dressing room, close your eyes.
Shut your eyes, like do a couple deep knee bends. See how that thing feels.
Yep, I've gotten a little bit better at least I at least now contemplate it more than I used to. But I have gone as far as the eye shutting. So that's a good idea, similar to this idea that you know, when we shut down one sense, the other senses have more I don't know what you want to call it, energy acuity whatever you mentioned in the book. Also an idea of noticing that if you satisfy one sense, you may pacify a craving or a desire from another sense. Say a little bit more about that. That's really interesting.
Yeah, this was.
Something that I just discovered from my own experience. So I think like a lot of people, you know, I sort of get this urge to graze often sort of in the middle of the afternoon where it's not that I'm hungry, but maybe I'm bored or I'm restless, or i just want to give myself a break, and so that I'm wandering through the kitchen, you know, opening a cabinet or opening up the fridge, or maybe you're at work and so you're like checking out the vending machine. And what I found is that what worked for me was just to overwhelm and stimulate another sense instead, because the thing about those treats is for some people they're healthy, but for some people they're reaching for unhealthy treats, and they would really like to resist that temptation. So it's like, because I do love smells, I have like a whole collection of just smells. They're not even perfumes, they're just smells. Somebody said to me, what do you do with this thing? I'm like, I just smell it. But by overwhelming and kind of gratifying a sense, then that other desire goes away. And I wonder I for someone like you, like if you love to listen to new music or you have like a playlist of songs that you sort of save, you could tap into your sense of hearing.
And now I don't know.
If this works because it's a distraction, so your mind is moved away from the fridge to your playlist, or whether it really is truly like by overwhelming is what we're looking for is the kind of stimulation maybe the kind of like jolt of energy that comes to our brain by stimulating a sense that we're getting it in a different way. I'm not sure which is at play. Maybe they're both at play. But I found that it really works, and so it's a great thing to try if you're feeling like, Okay, I just can't break my habit of the mid afternoon snack or like the after dinner snack, try this because it seems to work really, really well, and it's easier to pick something healthy and then you just, you know, you don't want to do something to make yourself feel better that just ends up making you feel worse in the long run, So this is a way to feel good about it.
Yeah, it's a really interesting idea because, yeah, on one level, the principle being if you're going to take something away, you want to put something in its place, right, but to be specific about the thing that you put in its place being another sense m m thing is a really interesting twist on that basic idea.
I do think there is something energizing about things that come to us through our senses. When we really tune into that, there's a kind of vitality that we feel. And I think that when we're reaching for that snack, that's often what we're seeking. That we want to be like, you know, we want to get plugged into the wall like a cell phone, and so it's like, Okay, how are you going to do that?
Yeah, yeah, yep, You're exactly right. That is often what it is is either vitality or just turning off temporarily.
Yeah right, so kind of a moment of sort of respite.
Yeah, yeah, where I just can sort of set aside whatever I'm working on or worried about or thinking about and transition. I love that idea. Let's talk about your five census journal.
Yeah.
So this is interesting because it's a different way to sort of again pay attention. We keep coming back to this idea of like how do we pay attention? And I'm actually creating a journal that'll be like beautifully printed out, like I'll have that in a couple months to offer. But I've never seen anything like that. So I just kind of created my own. For every day. I would just write see here, smell, taste, touch, and I would just write down one remarkable thing. It could be best, it could just be notable, could be really bad, like whatever I sort of wanted to remember.
And it was really fun.
It helped me pay attention throughout the day because I would think, ooh, this would be great for my five census journal because I heard church bells when I was walking around downtown. I hadn't heard those before, or maybe I had heard them, but i'd never noticed them. Probably that is probably what it's true. But what I found too that surprised me. And I'm sure you know about this research that the gratitude journal, right, everybody's always saying keep the gratitude journal, and it's definitely true that gratitude is very important for a happy life. But I myself have to say that I did not find the gratitude journal to be a helpful exercise. I find it very annoying. I have to say, this ends up being a kind of gratitude journal, and I felt much more like I was paying homage to the world and really noticing the world and recording the majesty of nature and other people in the world in a way that for me gave me a sense of gratitude and made me feel like I was reflecting a sense of gratitude more than just like a straight up gratitude journal did, which, as I say, when I was writing the Happiness Project, it's such a common thing and people recommend that I was like, am I the only person who can't stand heard gratitude journal.
Yep, yep. Well, I've always thought of it. When I have kept what we would call a gratitude journal or whatever, That's not the word I've used. I've always used the word appreciation, and because that points me towards the smell of a cup of coffee, the taste of something.
Right, Oh, interesting distinction.
Yeah, some of the deeper research on gratitude, if you look at it, they'll say that specificity is the key driver. If you're not specific enough, it becomes just a mental exercise that after a while doesn't have much benefit. But if you're really specific, it's helpful. And I think that's what the senses are is they allow us to be much more specific about that thing. And so I agree one hundred percent when I do you know gratitude practice. I mean, sure, there's you know, the obvious stuff on there, like I'm grateful for my health and my son's health, right, and but so much of it has always been appreciation. You know what did I appreciate today? But I love the idea of a five senses journey because we see what we're looking.
For, yes, exactly, well, and that's back to the brain. When the brain knows, oh, this is interesting information, it will highlight that. So when my brain was like, yep, oh, are there any interesting sounds happening, I was like, oh, I'll notice those church bells where. I mean, I've walked around downtown a thousand times and I never noticed the church bells. But of course they were ringing. It's not like they just started doing that. You know, probably start in seventeen fifty.
Yeah.
Right, And so you're exactly right. It's a practice that helps.
The brain to attend because it knows that you want to have that information.
Yeah. I never thought to take it to all senses. I will do periodically that picture a day idea because it makes me look for beauty.
Right.
It's you know, I'm not trying to produce any particular picture, right, It's just that by doing it, my brain is sort of looking like what's But I never thought to expand it to all the senses until I read that Five Senses journal, And it does make total sense why that would tune you in so much more.
I think the photo a day is a great exercise. A lot of people like to do that.
It doesn't cover all four senses, but it is something that many people take great pleasure in and there is a creative thing, and it's also pretty easy.
Yeah, so I'm a fan of that.
And some people sort of take the view that if you're taking a picture of something, you're not really engaging with it, But the research shows that a lot of times people are engaging more deeply when they take photographs. And again, like so many things, it's what is the spirit you bring to it? Yes, is there opportunity cost? Is it driving out other things? But if you feel like you know, I walk to the river every day and take a picture of it, and in that way, I'm sort of like creating a don't break the chain and a memory of my life, I'm like that sounds good to me. The fact that you're using your phone to do it, I don't object to that. I feel like sometimes people feel like technology doesn't bring us any benefits, and I think it used wisely, it definitely can.
Yeah. I think the taking picture thing for me is another way of seeing differently than you would see normally. Like you know, you talk in the book about closing one eye or squinting, or you know, I often like to look and see like where are all the shadows? Where are all the edges? Right?
Right?
Because it causes me to actually look and I think photography for me, yeah, often will do that too. It's just it causes me to look more closely than I normally would look because I'm thinking about the light and I'm thinking about the angle it's bringing me into, at least in the way that I'm trying to do it, closer contact with the object I'm looking.
At right right, Well, again, the more we know, the more we notice, and so right, because you're bringing more to it, you get more from it.
Yep, We've only got a couple of minutes here, but I would like to pivot out of the five senses to a phrase that you have in the book that I love. And it may be a phrase that you've had for a while, but I haven't caught it in your work before, and it just jumped out at me and it was I must both accept myself and expect more from myself. And I love that phrase because I'm always thinking about that balance, you know, and that tension. You know, how do I accept me in my life just the way it is, and how do I also continue to expect more out of myself and talk to me about how you think about doing both those things.
Yeah, it took me a long time to come up with that formulation because I was very much kind of caught in this tension, which I think is a deep tension within a happy life, which is, on the one hand, we want to accept ourselves. We want to recognize the natural limitations of our nature. We don't want to be lost in sort of you know, frustration or you know, fantasy that on the other hand, you want to go out of your comfort zone. You want to have an atmosphere of growth. You don't want to be limited, you don't want to just sort of handwave anything that feels uncomfortable of saying like well, I'm not the kind of person who does that or that's not me. I finally was able to put it into words after months of trying of like fussing with the with the language. It is that you want to accept yourself and expect more from yourself. And you know, sometimes people will say to me like, well, how do you know, Like what is that line? And like everyone has to decide that for themselves, because it's different for everyone, and only only I can know what is when I'm accepting myself and when I'm expecting more from myself, and that would be very different from someone else. But there are a lot of these tensions within happiness. It's again sort of like do you think about the present or do you think about the future. Well, some people are sort of like, well, just think about the present, it's all we have. It's like, yeah, but a life where you only think about the present is not a very good life.
I mean, I took that to its furthest extent with my heroin addiction. Right, that was exactly the whole game, right, It's all about right this very second, And yeah, you know, taken too far, that is ruinous.
Right.
And then on the other hand, you don't want to be too focus on the future because you know the future may never come and you may be able to predict the future, and you know you want to enjoy the process and all we do have is now. So there are these tensions that I think are sort of the great challenge of our lives, which is to navigate our way through for ourselves.
Yeah, and I think back to what we talked about earlier, and you talk about so often this idea of self knowledge. You know and knowing more is it doesn't always provide the answer, but it is helpful for me to kind of know. Oh yeah, I tend to be very oriented towards the future versus the present moment, right or I tend to just accept myself and not really push myself as much as I need to versus someone else who might be Like you know, my tendency is to be too much on the expecting things from myself. So if I at least know where I naturally go. It's not always that black and white. I remember from Carol Dweck's research on the growth mindset. You could have a growth mindset in one area of your life and not the other. So it's not like this advice always applies across the board. But knowing where our tendencies are can be helpful in the first step of that discernment.
Right, Yes, No, I think that's really true. Yeah.
The more we know ourselves, the more we can shape our lives to help us to be happier.
You know, one of the things I'm fascinated by in your work is continuing to find new ways to know yourself. Hmmmm.
Yes, I am always looking for to know myself, absolutely that's true.
That is true.
Yes, yes, So just before we end, do you want to give us what your current favorite sense experiment is? Can you pick one out of your big list, like or the next one that you plan to do, or just leave us with one very simple experiment.
Well, a very very simple one is light a match, and like, people love to light matches and know I know why because it's so censory. It's like you touch it, you see it, you smell it, you hear it.
Just so satisfying.
So that's an easy one, I would say hard. One that I really loved was visiting the met every day. And people might be like, well, you know, no to self live within walking us into the Met. But I've talked to many people who have done this with a park with a high I talk to a guy who goes to the drug store every day, Like, there's just something I'm very interested in, the power of repetition and familiarity and watching things change.
Very slowly over time.
I thought that was very idiosyncratic, but it's turned out that a lot of people are drawn to that. And so if that sounds like the kind of thing that would be interesting to you, you might really think about the same thing about taking a photo every day.
I think a lot of people do that.
When you do something every single day, it has a special power. You will experience it with all your five senses or you can so I love doing something every day.
Awesome. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up. Thank you so much for coming on, Gretchen. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. The book is called Life in Five Senses. How exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world. And it was a fun book. And this was a fun conversation.
Thank you, Thank you. I so enjoyed it.
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