The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World by Gretchen Rubin

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World by Gretchen Rubin https://amzn.to/434nbNE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses. “Life in Five Senses invites us into the seismic shift toward a life grounded in sensation, vitality, and innate intelligence.”—GLENNON DOYLE, author of Untamed “An inspiring and practical guide to living in the moment.”—SUSAN CAIN, author of Bittersweet and Quiet For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she’d been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She’d spent so much time stuck in her head that she’d allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world. From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending Flavor University, Rubin show us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate, sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us—as well as a way to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent. Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by

and sharing and spending the quality time because the Chris Foss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. So there's that going on. But she's a lovely person out here. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show.

I don't know what we do. Like every day, somebody sits down and they put in amazing, brilliant authors into the Google machine. And Al Popsey's wonderful people, brilliant minds, beautiful names. And none of them are me. That's why we have guests on the show. So that we can have some smart people on the show. Some smartness. Because there's none of that left over when I do this show single.

Anyway, we'll be getting into our newest author on the show. In the meantime, refer your show to family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 group over there. And then we're also on TikTok nowadays, so check that out over there as well. She's the author of the amazing new book that just came out April 18th, 2023. Gretchen Rubin joins us on the show.

She's a multi-book author. You've probably heard of her, a New York Times bestseller. She has her newest book called Life in Five Senses. Count them all five. Life in Five Senses. How exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world. She joins us on the show today, and she is one of today's most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. Her previous books include the

number one New York Times bestseller, The Happiness Project, as well as the bestselling books, Better Than Before, Happier at Home, The Four Tendencies, Outer Order, Inner Calm, and her latest book, Life of Five Senses. She's host of the popular award-winning podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. I kind of sense there's a happiness sort of theme that's going on here. We'll get into that. And where she and her co-host and sister, Elizabeth Kraft, explore strategies and insights to how to make life happier. As the founder of the Happiness Project, she has helped create imaginative products for people to use in their own happiness projects. Welcome to the show, Gretchen. How are you?

I'm so happy to be talking to you. Of course. There you go. Well, I think the show is going to be more happier. Like, I don't think we've had this much happiness on the show. Do we know what to do with this? Never know. Well, we're going to find out. That's for sure. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs, please, and get to know you better. Yeah, GretchenRubin.com.

You can find out all kinds of information about me and my books. And that's also my handle on all social medias, Gretchen Rubin. There you go. And you've written quite a few books. How many books have you written? So people can go search those out and buy them on Amazon. Life in Five Senses is my 10th book. I just counted a few days ago. Yeah. So it's hard to believe I've hit number 10. There you go. And they're already writing up the sirens in the background there in New York for you, it sounds like, or something. Yeah, we're keeping it real.

Yes, very authentic. There you go. So what motivated you on to write this 10th book? Well, you know, it was a very ordinary moment in my life. I had a bad case of pink eye, so I went to the eye doctor. And as I was getting ready to leave, he said to me very casually, you know, like, wear enough sunscreen. And he said, be sure to come back for your to me very casually, you know, like wear enough sunscreen. And he said, be sure to come back for your checkup because as you know, you're more at risk for

losing your vision. And I was completely taken aback. I was like, what are you talking about? I don't know that. He said, oh yes, you're very nearsighted. So you're more at risk for having a detached retina and that can, uh, that can affect your vision. And I had a friend who had just lost some of his vision to a detached retina. So that felt really possible to me. And as I walked out onto the street, I realized often we don't appreciate what we have

until we lose it or we fear we might lose it. And I thought, here's all the splendor of everything around me in the New York City streetscape. But I didn't notice one thing on my way over here. I was completely lost in a fog of preoccupation. I didn't notice one detail on my way over. And as I was thinking about that, it was like every knob in my brain got turned up to 11 and I could see every leaf on the tree. I could hear every sound on a separate track. I could smell every smell in very smelly New York City. And it was like this psychedelic transcendent experience

my whole walk home. And by the time I got back to my own apartment, I thought, this is the missing piece. I've been studying happiness for a long time. And this is something that I've been missing. This is a missing puzzle piece, which is connecting directly to the world and to other people with myself through my five senses. And I love that, you know, because there's, there's, there's so much that we take for granted. I think a lot of times, right. Where we, you know, we take a lot of these senses smelling and, and, and, you know, I don't know if I want to smell in New York city in the summer, but there's that. But still, I mean, a lot of this stuff is a privilege, being able to see things clearly.

I mean, I've been one that's been losing my vision, you know, over 12, since I was 12 years old. And you start to really become appreciative of these things. But tuning into them and not taking for granted is probably really important. Right. And you're exactly right. So not everybody has, has five senses, but whatever compliment of senses we have, we can really, uh, take, appreciate them and use them to connect with other people, to spark creativity, to calm ourselves down or, you know, boost boost ourselves up whatever it might be there's so many ways we can harness the power of our our five senses you know to do all these

things and also just to appreciate the moment whether or not we have all five um i think you're right i think a lot of them are taken for granted i think one thing with the sense of smell which you mentioned is that because of covid um a lot of people who considered the sense of smell kind of a bonus smell or kind of like, well, it's nice to have, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not that important. I think it made people much, much more aware of how, how important our sense of smell is to our sense of vitality, to our appreciation for the flavor of food, you know, our sense of connection to other people. Like now I think people are a lot less likely to take it for granted. There you go. And we live in kind of a dumbed down world.

So I'll lay a foundation. What are the five senses and what sort of exploration as in the title of your book, what did you go on to explore these? Well, how many senses there are is an excellent question because these days scientists actually say that we have more like 33 or 35 senses oh i feel tired already yeah but there are five senses which we could call uh the kindergarten senses or or the aristotelian senses and that's seeing hearing smelling tasting touching. That's when you think of the senses. I think that's what most people think of right away.

We're very aware of these senses. We think about them all the time. It's not like the other senses like proprioception, which runs in the background. We're kind of only really aware of it if something goes wrong. But with something like seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, we really notice that. We talk about it.

We have adventures with it. We reminisce about it. We look to it for comfort or pleasure. These are the senses that really, you know, we're very aware of those senses. Is there one that's more particular than others. I imagine if someone's missing one, like say sight, their ability to hear, smell, and taste maybe learns to be amplified to offset the loss of that. Is there one dominant sense that most people have in your study? Well, when we lose one sense, it's not that our other senses become stronger. It's that just we become more skillful at using them. So, for instance, with using something like hearing, echolocation is something that pretty much anybody can learn to do.

But if you can use sight, you don't really need to draw upon echolocation. So you don't you don't take advantage of it. It's not that you're hearing any better. It's just that you're hearing more effectively. When it comes to the five senses, we are as human beings wired for sight. That has the most sophisticated wiring in the brain. It has the most real estate in the brain. If there's a conflict among senses, sight will usually trump. So we do bring that into the world with us after that is hearing. And then the other three kind of have a, or take a much less space in our brain.

But people definitely have different senses that they appreciate and that they neglect. And that's, that really varies from person to person. Hi, Voxers, Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second.

I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. There you go. So what sort of exploration did you do of your senses and to help you discover better happiness, awareness, and just enjoying the richness of life as we're kind of, you know, we're kind of edging to that point where, you know, we're seeing things disappear as we get older. Oh, well, I mean, I did so many things.

I mean, this was just the most fun. With every book I write, I think it's never going to be this good again. And I'll never enjoy writing a book so much again. And then with every book i write i think it's never going to be this good again and it i'll never enjoy writing a book so much again and and and then with every book i do and with this book it was just so fun because i have to confess like i didn't do the kind of sensory exercises like the five four three two one meditation or like let me sip a cup of coffee for 20 minutes and really notice it. I took a much more kind of playful, fun, energetic, just like high energy way of engaging with my senses. So I did all kinds of things like I had a taste party for my friends. I wanted to use the sense of taste to connect with other people. So I love doing taste comparisons. I went to Flavor University for two days and we did all

these taste comparisons and I loved that. So I had my friends over and we compared varieties of apples, potato chips, chocolate. We really experienced the magic of ketchup. If you taste like a little bit of Heinz ketchup, you will realize that it is one of the incredibly rare foods that manages to have all five basic tastes in one. It's sweet. It's salty. It's sour. It's bitter.

It's umami. That is really, really hard to pull off. That's why ketchup is the secret ingredient in all kinds of foods where you probably do not expect to find it like pad Thai thousand Island dressing. Like a margarita has four but it doesn't have a mommy it's hard to get to all five um and so we just had fun it was like this new way to connect with a sense of taste um and to connect with other people but in in a fresh way and um i learned a

lot about my sense of taste and and how i i how my preferences were different from other people's. It was really, really fun to do. Yeah. Sadly, throughout my life, I've enjoyed sense of taste a little too much because I'm wearing most of the burgers and pies that I ate and desserts, but we're trying to get rid of that. So we've kind of backed off the sense of taste so much. But no, you're right. Appreciating these things and reveling in them.

I've always loved when I go to a restaurant, Spago's has always been one of my favorite places or a nice restaurant where the, the, whatever the algorithm, an algorithm of foods and tastes that this chef has prepared, you taste something you've never tasted before in your life. You're like, that's not in the bank of taste. And that, that tastes exceptional. Well, it's funny that you you're like that's not in the bank of taste and that that tastes exceptional um well it's funny that you mentioned tastes like that because so i have a quiz that

people can take which is what's your neglected sense and it tells you what the five senses which one you neglect um and this is good to know because with your appreciated sense you already are like really enjoying it and and and uh and, uh, leaning into it for pleasure and comfort with a neglected sense. There's a lot of low hanging fruit because you don't typically turn to it for fun or adventure. You don't reminisce about it. You don't engage with it. You're not with friends. You don't want to learn about it. You don't turn to it for comfort or pleasure, but my most neglected sense is taste. Oh yeah. So it sounds like that's one of your, your most appreciated senses. But for me,

that was a sense where I was like, so many people enjoy this sense so much. What can I do? Given that I pretty much don't do much with this. I eat kind of the same food every day and I'm not very adventurous. And I found that there was a lot of things that I could do with the sense of taste. And if people want to take the quiz, it's at Gretchen Rubin.com slash quiz, and it tells you your most neglected sense. And then you have a whole new arena to explore, uh, to have more happiness. There you go. You know, it, the simple joys of life.

I know that when we're young, you know, all this is fresh and new and, you know, you, you look up the stars, you're like, Hey, this is really cool. And, you know, everything, you know, smells and things are, are all new, but when you get older, it's like, yeah, it's another burger, you know? And, and so I think we take a lot of it for granted until we start maybe losing some of the edge on some of it, whether it's sight or, you know, my smell, my, my sense of smell. I don't know what happened. I, I, I guess years ago I had a lot of sinus infections from colds and stuff living in the Northern States. And for some reason it's done some sort of damage where I, I can't smell stuff very well, unless I just have really close or it's part of the aroma. But you know, like people will be like, Hey man, have you cleaned up the office garbage in your thing?

You threw some food out there, man. It's been here all weekend. And I'll be like, I can't smell it. Oh, but that could be another reason too. Really? So part of it could be that your sense of smell is affected, which it sounds like it probably is. Like you just don't smell as acutely.

But also one of the funny things about the senses is that all of us live in our own different sensory world. And you can't smell your home or your office the way a visitor smells it. Because of adaptation, your sense of smell just tells you about things that it thinks you need to know, changes. So if there's a very familiar smell, like let's say my apartment smells like cats or my apartment smells like air freshener. It's so familiar to me that I won't smell it. Or like if you work in a in a in a in a coffee factory, you won't smell it. But to people for whom it's new, they will smell it.

So maybe you don't smell it because you don't smell very well. But maybe you don't smell something because it's just very, very familiar. So somebody who comes in for the first time smells it and if you left for a month you might smell it but you don't smell it if it's something that you smell every day so that's just kind of a funny little a funny little uh uh fact about the sense of smell you know that makes a lot of sense for why some people block stuff out. When I was younger, I used to work for this company called Car Products, K-A-R, and they did shop tools and welding and stuff like that,

and you would go to shops and sell them their gears. And there was a place that we would go that took old carcasses at the time, roadkill old horses and stuff, and would grind it up into meal for dog food. I don't think they do that anymore but uh this is a while back ago but the smell when i would go there i always have to make it the last stop on my route to different shops because the smell was off the chart intense

and i i would say to people how can you work here yeah and uh there was like yeah you know this well after a while and i'm like how how is that possible yeah and then there you go in gaming i'll hear people that they have their fire alarm batteries that have gone out in the background and it will drive me mental because you can hear the beep beep beep you know like hey man is it this hard to just reach up and change a nine volt battery and they're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, you can't hear that beeping. Like that's maddening. You know, if you go to New York, when I remember when I went to New York to visit, you know, it's sometimes it's hard to tune out all that traffic because I'm not used to it.

But New Yorkers are used to it. You know, the honking and the sirens and stuff. Well, we just had a siren in the background here and you heard it and I did not because my brain just takes that out. But then, like, my sister lives in Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles they don't hear helicopters. Oh, yeah. Because, again, it's a noise that's so common, and it has no information value.

And so the brain just brings that down. Yeah. And earthquakes, we just think we just, I don't know, eat some Taco Bell and things were feeling weird. So, you know, we don't even notice earthquakes unless they're really large. Like when the house starts shaking, we go, is there an earthquake happening? And, you know, then, but it's interesting. So how do, how do we try and develop these better to achieve joy and happiness and uh and kind of uh i don't

know experience our world more i guess that's what we're after absolutely i mean and that's what the whole book is about which is how with each of the different senses what what are ideas for how you can use it um and and what i was really surprised when i was working on the book is like sure i thought i would it would make me happier like that was my hypothesis going into the book. But what I found is that with the five senses, you could really use it for kind of anything you were aiming for. So for some people, what they want is they want to chill out there. They need to calm down.

They're very stressed out. They need to find more serenity, but then other people feel kind of like sluggish and listless and they need to find a way to get energized. Then there are people who want to spark creativity, like they're feeling stuck. Then there are other people who are just like, I just need to sit down and focus. I just need to, you know, be productive. Then some people want to engage with others. That's probably the highest form of, you know, anything that you're doing that's going to broaden or deepen your relationships, probably the most

important thing you could do to make yourself happier. and then you can also use it to evoke memories um this is you know the senses are famous for their ability to memories these are called proustian memories memories evoked by a strong sensory experience and i'm somebody who doesn't have a good memory of my own life so i'm always looking for like ways to tap into memory and the senses are great for that or to create memories in the present. And so sort of depending on what you want, it almost became kind of hard to manage as I was writing because I was like, I just keep thinking of more and more and more things to try.

Like one thing I love to do, and this is good if you just sort of want to become more, just more present in the moment generally, just more like more appreciating your five senses is I just have a journal where i write seeing hearing smelling tasting touching and every day i just like write one notable thing it doesn't have to be my favorite thing just like like i remember the other day i walked by uh a movie theater and i had i smelled that movie popcorn smell you know which is so distinctive and i just wrote it down smelling movie popcorn. And, and, and this is something where it kind of reminds you as you're going throughout the day to stay alert,

because my problem was, you know, I was so lost in my head for so long. I thought it's easy to feel changed. It's harder to stay changed. Like once I'm done with my book, how am I going to stay, you know,

keyed into my five senses and this kind of like note keeping, it's very easy. It doesn't take long but it really gives me that feeling of connecting to the moment appreciating the world it acts kind of like a gratitude journal i i i used i kept a gratitude journal when i was writing the happiness project because everybody says you should i was very deeply annoyed by the gratitude journal it did not work for me but this is kind of a gratitude journal because it's sort of like you're, you're recognizing the beauties of the world. You know, you're like

movie popcorn smell. Yes. Like I recognize you. I mean, so it's funny. It's a much more effective gratitude journal than my actual gratitude journal ever was. So that's like one very easy way to stay tuned into all five senses every day. And I think you hit it on the head there. We really struggle, especially as we get older, and we got so many things going on and so many goals and deadlines and all that stuff. And we're kind of used to everything so far. Staying present is a real fight sometimes to be in that gratitude where you can be present and really try and enjoy life. And that's one of the things I love about the five senses is they are happening right now. You cannot bookmark them. You can't save them for later.

Especially the sense of smell, because like you can listen to a song on a loop and, you know, until you're like sick to death of it. But with the sense of smell, because of what we were talking about before odor fatigue, like even if I'm smelling something beautiful, if I sniff it, sniff it, sniff it before long, I can't even smell it anymore. You can't glut yourself on perfume. And so the senses are a way to tie us to the moment because that's the only way we can experience them is right here, right now. So it's, if you want that feeling of connecting with the moment, it's, it's really powerful. It's interesting. As you were mentioning earlier, how, when you're a child, you experience things more intensely and there's something very interesting called the reminiscence bump. And some people put this between like 10 to 30 years. Some people say

it's more like 15 to 25 years, but this is like a period in like childhood and young adulthood where for the rest of their lives, adults will report having more intense memories. Like we have clearer memories of that period than like being in our forties. And it's, so it's a very interesting thing to think about how certain parts of your life do stand out more vividly in your mind it isn't just yeah i think sometimes we think this is like our idiosyncratic thing that we can remember high school better than we can remember you know being 38 um but that's that's a very that's a very common phenomenon there you go. Uh, what about, uh, what about,

I, you, you hear the people like have like love languages and sentences like, well, I like to hear people say, I love you. Or I like people to show me or, or I like to see things be flowers brought to me. Is there a real truism to that?

Uh, you know, like for me, auditory is really big. Like music takes me back to places and brings back memories. No, I think you're exactly right. I think, I think that we, that's, we tend to have like appreciated senses, foreground senses. And these are senses where you really, you, you love to learn about it. You like to have new experiences in it. You like to talk about it with other people. You'll use it for comfort or pleasure, or like you say, to connect with your

past. It's very, very powerful. I don't know if you know about the website Nostalgia Machine, but you can put it in a year and it will kick up all the most popular songs. So if you like to tap into music for nostalgia, it's like so fun. But then, so those are the senses that we really do take advantage of. So it sounds like you're hearing and taste. Funnily enough, these are my two most neglected senses, those exact ones. But your, but if your two most appreciated senses are hearing and tasting, those are the most common. Those are the biggest ones. Cause I, I, not that this is scientifically valid. So on my quiz that I mentioned, what's your neglected sense? Um, there's selection bias. It's not scientifically proven a hundred percent, not saying that, but tens of thousands of people

have taken this quiz. And what's interesting is that for neglected sense, what people neglect, that's very evenly distributed, but for appreciated sense, the senses of hearing and tasting are the two most appreciated senses. Wow. It's fascinating. I thought it might be seeing just because we're wired for seeing, but that wasn't what I found. Wow. You know, it's something that, I mean, yeah, you can't take it for granted. Sadly, in a lot of times in life, we wait too long to where, like you mentioned earlier in the show, where we don't appreciate until we lose it. I have keratoconus in my left eye, which is a sagging cornea, which eventually reaches a point where you have to get a cornea transplant.

And it progresses and gets worse over time. And, uh, I remember being told by the doctor that, yeah, you're probably going to eventually need one of those. And I was like, damn, I, I, you know, I really love seeing stuff and the beauty of it. And so I started buying cameras and focusing on camera work and taking pictures and editing pictures. And, you know, I, my, my greatest things in my life are my dogs. So, you know, taking pictures of them, trying to capture the moment. After losing a couple dogs, you know, I realized that their time moves much faster than ours.

And you've got to capture those moments and catch them. And, of course, trying to bring out the beauty. And, you know, I started going to beaches in California, taking day trips and, you know, looking through the lens. One of my favorite bands, Rush, wrote a lyric of Neil Peart, said to chase light around the world. And it was basically talking about, you know, you're getting older and you're trying to chase the light.

And you're kind of that, you're kind of almost that mosquito trying to stay alive and and uh and it keeps seeing the world that you can see well you can still see it and so yeah that was my focus of mine for a while yeah well i mean i think there's something that can be done at any time is often done at no time and if you think well i have the rest of my life to go look at beaches in california then you may never go or when you're like, oh, I can see my dog whenever I want. But then you, then you realize, no, this is either time will take the dog away from me, you know, or my own body. Like I'll no longer be able to tap into that sense. And so, and like, that's, that's a perfect example of how, like, when we recognize

the power of a sense, we can think about like, well, what are the activities that I could do? This is part of my ordinary life that would allow me to really harness the power of that and taking pictures of, of like the beauties of nature. And then also of these dogs that you love so much. I mean, what, what a, like a, an effective and constructive way to deal with this threat to your site i mean that's that's like a really constructive way to deal with that um and then the journey that the that brings back when we go through the memories and stuff and google photos is kind of fun where it'll send you back to memory it's like hey four years ago today you were doing this and you'll get i'll see a picture of her puppy or something and you're like uh you're like oh wow okay

you can remember that day and so yeah so many amazing things for finding happiness i love that function and here's something else that's fun to do with reminiscing so i don't know you i've lived in a lot of different places over my life and and you know and then they're the places of the people that you love like your grandparents house or your best friend's house or whatever i realized like if you go online and look up an address you can almost always you can see the outside of it but often you can see the inside of it because if it's been on sale um or for rent you can go and so like i found all these interior pictures of my grandparents house completely unrenovated it looked exactly the way i mean the furniture was gone but everything like the drawer

poles in the guest room like all these little details that i immediately remember the the minute that i saw them um but so like i called my sister and we like went through a house that we lived in when we were like in our early teens. And it was, again, the furniture was all different and like, and the paint and the wallpaper was different, but it was like, oh, I forgot about that staircase. Or, oh, do you remember the time when, you know, he fell down the stairs or whatever. So yeah, when we start thinking like, well, how could I reminisce with this sense? Or how could I connect with this sense in a different way? A lot of times it doesn't take that much effort to think of kind of fresh, new, really engaging ways to lean into it.

There you go. One of the things you talked about was going and visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Flavor University. That was kind of interesting. You mentioned that earlier in the show. What's Flavor University? Is it like a chef school or some sort of... No, it's a free two-day

course that you can take. It's in Geneva, Illinois. It's put on by Fona International, which is a big... It's basically like a flavor manufacturing company. The people who do it are like flavor professionals. I remember they emailed me. They're like, it's fine if you want to come, but we don't know that you're really going to be that interested in this.

And I was like, well, if you'll have me, I really want to come. Because most people were there. They were like, they worked on dog food or they worked on toothpaste or, you know, they were like candy engineers, which I thought was like very Willy Wonka. But so they're like flavor professionals. You know, there are many people who are flavor professionals so but they let me just tag along and um like one of the things we did was we tried every kind of milk we did like again like just taste comparisons is so interesting because we never sit down and think like okay let me taste cream and whole milk and two percent milk and and and skim milk and oat milk and almond milk and chocolate milk all in a row

and really compare them because you're like, they taste so different from each other. You know, you're like, well, milk is milk. It's like, no,

they can, they taste completely different. You just maybe want to go buy like a whole plethora of different variations of milk, including chocolate. It is so fun. Or like one thing I think would be fun to do is like get get like six varieties of of vanilla ice cream like from premium to cheap and have a bunch of people say

like well can we let's rate them can you tell the difference between what's expensive and what's cheap do like or do you do you like it more creamy do you like it more icy like because you never sit down and just compare and it's so fun to do and there's there's the textures of it too and the textures the mouth feel yes yeah and i remember i i think i went and studied a little bit of uh you know how to be a wine connoisseur and a whiskey scotch connoisseur in Las Vegas. You're definitely a taste guy. I am. I'm wearing most of the things I've tasted, uh, which, which has been very fatty, very

fatty foods and other things, but we're trying to, we're trying to get good. But one of the things I did learn in losing weight and, uh, eating more healthier was learning to make salads that tasted great. And, uh, you know, different products that weren't high in fat and bad for you, you know, like getting away from McDonald's and,

uh, but eating more healthy foods and then enhancing that, learning to season it so that you can enjoy the taste because that's a lot of times what we were just looking for. My mom's kind of funny. She'll, she'll get something bad like a donut or a burger or something. she's just she realizes she's just have to taste she'll actually bite it eat it you know taste the flavor and stuff and then spit it back out um but but you know it's kind of smart

because she realizes she just wants to taste like well if you if you get a craving for a big mac you kind of like that special sauce flavor and you flavoring of it, but you really don't want to eat that whole gross thing. I mean, maybe some people do, but usually about halfway through, I'm regretting all the choices I've made. But you just kind of want that initial thing. And sometimes people eat foods because they're actually dehydrated or maybe they just want the salt. They need some electrolytes. And so, uh, it's kind of interesting how we play with our minds and our senses that way. Well, one thing that's interesting to know is that, um, we tend to like food less and

less as we have bite after bite. And like, this is why a lot of times if you go to a, like a fancy restaurant, they'll have lots of little dishes because our appreciation for something is the highest when we're having like the first bites of it. And then it sort of diminishes. Um, and so, um, and there's something called the buffet effect, which is that if you've got a whole buffet of foods, you'll tend to eat a lot more because if you're just eating one thing, you get kind of sick of it and you fill up. But if, if you keep trying new things, you'll think, oh yeah, I would love to taste that. I would love to taste that. And so it keeps your appetite high and your eagerness to try something

high. And so one thing you might say is, okay, well, I'm just going to have the one thing. I'm not going to like have like a bunch of different things. Like when I go to, I never get the buffet option. When I go to a restaurant or something. I always order from the menu because then it's like, you have what you have because the buffet, you know, it, it, it, you, you try a lot of things and you tend to eat more because, um, because, uh, you're, you're, you're having a wider array of things. Yeah. And, and I don't know what it is. I, I, you know, in Vegas, I've been to the Bellagio buffet. I've been to, I think it was over the Rio. For some reason, everything tastes the same to me in a buffet.

I don't know why. It's just all, there's a blandness to it. I don't know if it's all cooked in the same place. So it's picking up flavor. Las Vegas. Yeah. You kind of get the feeling it's quantity, not quality. They're titillating you, but it's in a very mass-produced way yeah and so it gets me uh

what have we touched on that you discovered and researched in your book well one of the things that really surprised me is really just how different people's sensory universes are and like how they're cued into anything and i just imagine like if you and i walked into a restaurant like i could imagine that for you, the playlist would be really important. You seem to love music. You're very attuned to your head. And so, but for me, like I'm not so tuned into hearing and music.

And so if a place is too loud, I really noticed that because a lot of time with your neglected sense, you're very aware of the negative. You're less aware of the positive. Whereas for you, you might be like, I don't want to go to that restaurant. They have terrible, the food is fine fine but they have terrible taste in music whereas for me i wouldn't even notice that but like for me the light in a restaurant is i've been in

restaurants where i'm like i want to leave because the light is so ugly it makes my eyes hurt and the people i'm around are like what are you talking about it's fine so you know it's just like, we're, it's very, very different. Um, uh, uh, and, and just to remember that we're, we're experiencing things. We have such different things that we're aware of or bothered by. This is why we have to show consideration for each other because just because I feel like something's fine and it's no big deal doesn't mean that for you, it's not, um, it's not, it's not an issue. I mean, like one thing is like when you want to focus. Okay. So Chris, let me ask you this. If you really needed to focus, like there's something that was very taxing that you had to do. Would you want to work in silence, in a busy hum, like a coffee shop,

music with words, music without words, or something like white noise, brown noise, pink noise, green noise. Metallica. Okay. So music with words, music with words or something like white noise brown noise pink noise green noise metallica okay so music with words music with and familiar music with words that helps you concentrate yeah and a good anger beat you know that sort of thing so like even if you were doing something where like you really had to focus that's what you would choose yeah now if if i've got to write something yeah like an article or review or something like that or i'm trying to conform my thoughts i might have to turn the music down or or pause it or turn to like some piano music or something because uh you know vocals will yeah kind of start converging on

that but then usually i go back to the metallica but see isn't that fascinating because i really prefer silence but if it's not silence then a busy hum like working in a coffee shop or like a busy library i i i like that as well and it's just interesting because both of us just need a different environment and and i think sometimes like sometimes you you think like well listen if every if you want to focus you need to like turn off the music but that wouldn't be good good advice for you you know i mean so i think we have to be aware that just because something works for one person doesn't mean that it works for someone else and vice versa i think sometimes we we are hard on ourselves because we're like well why can't i do xyz thing that somebody else can do why can't i just sit down in the middle of an open open office plan

and focus the way my co-workers can it's like because that doesn't work for you and that's fine so let's just figure this out do do men and women uh experience senses the same way i i imagine maybe women are more connected emotionally to their uh senses i had a girlfriend once who man she would put a lot of salt on her food. Like, uh, like in a lot of, like anybody,

I think anybody else in the world would be like, really? Like back that off a little, like what's going on over there. Um, maybe she had issues with, uh, you know,

uh, electrolytes and stuff or something, but, but she could have been a super taster because, uh, super tasters, things are more bitter. And so sometimes salt cuts bitterness.

So maybe she, did she not like to eat a lot of things like broccoli or black coffee? Like, did she seem to like, think a lot of things tasted very bitter? I don't remember exactly, but I do remember going out to very nice restaurants and being like, I think you're killing what the chef did and he's going to come out and be angry. Yeah. It's funny because the, the, the name super taster, you might think that these people are real foodies and that they love taste, but often they, there's a lot they don't like because it'll taste too sweet or too bitter. Like they're experiencing things so intensely that often, um, people who are

just like regular tasters, like I'm me, I'm a regular taster. We actually like more things because we, we, we, we, we don't have that like sort of extremely high sensitivity. So it could have been something like that. I mean, I'm just guessing. Cause that's one of the things that's, that's like why some people put salt on grapefruit or like, if your coffee is really bitter, if you put just like a pinch of salt in, it'll cut the bitterness. It's like one of those, those, uh, those kind of bonkers thing. But, but as to men and women, here's the thing. A lot of people are very interested in studying like differences in men and women,

but I find, I think myself, the gender differences tend to be swamped by individual differences. I feel like it's much more interesting to think like, well, what's true for me? What's true for you? Rather than thinking what's true for women generally, because there's

always so many exceptions it just doesn't feel that that helpful to me so i'm always more interested in thinking like well what's my experience what's your experience uh because i'm always very focused on the end like on what the individual can do kind of like in their everyday life and so i don't i i didn't spend much time looking at that at that research though i know other people are interested in those questions. Maybe when we seek mates, we should seek people that have similar, I don't know if you call them love languages, but similar tastes like us. That is a great idea, Chris. I am going to look at that. like a questionnaire where I said, once people know their appreciated sense and their neglected sense to ask

them, have your sweetheart take the quiz and see, do people tend to match up? Do they tend to not match up? Somebody just told me that every, the all five members of her family took the quiz and they had all five senses of neglected senses. So they didn't have like,

they had no overlap, but it would be really interesting because is it like you and I both love music. So we go to concerts and we talk about music all the time and we swap playlists. And so like, that's part of like how we got going as a couple. So we share that. Or is it like opposites attract and you're into music and I'm into smell? And I don't know. I, I, I, I think that's a really interesting question.

Like, are there patterns or are there no patterns? Is it just there are five senses and people have different pairings up of their most appreciated and their most neglected. And it just, it's just sort of happenstance. It's just one, such a minor factor in who you end up with. It would be, but also often when we're connecting with new people, we do connect with them through the five senses, because this is a really easy way for us to share an experience and get to know each other. So it would make sense that people would more than more than randomly match up but i don't know i think that is a fascinating question i'm so glad you posed this is your next book maybe well there you go or at least uh at least it's something to uh to add to the quiz because so

this again it's gretchenrubin.com slash quiz again i'm not claiming any scientific validity for what i've seen because it's all it's not like a nationally representative sample or any of that um but still when a lot of people take a quiz it it does sort of it can it can reveal it can reveal, it can suggest interesting patterns. So maybe in a new, in a, in a, in a future iteration, I'll throw in a question or I'll, or I'll email the people who've already taken the quiz to say, Hey, have your sweetheart take it. And let's see if we see any patterns that can be really fun. Yeah. And, and, and patterns of people that end up in those lifelong long-term relationships and people that maybe it doesn't

work out you know like if there's a difference in in their similarities you know you you mentioned that you know maybe we get together in music like you know we used to go meet clubs to to meet up and so you know maybe listen to your favorite artists and the song and then you're dancing with somebody and then you're you're getting sapatico and you take them out, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe you end up in a relationship with them. You know, it kind of started from that auditorial sort of sensory thing. And of course, there's a lot of senses that go into it. We had Peter Gabriel's.

We couldn't get him on for the show for a book he wrote called Reverbation, and a company that's studying the science of music and the other aspects of life. And we had his daughter on and one of the co-authors and people in the company, and they had done some studies about love language between couples that are happy together. And they found that their music and listening, and they have a lot of songs that tie them together, kind of like love songs, this is our song sort of thing. And so it was kind of interesting, the whole aspect of it. Well, see, I have to say,

as somebody for whom hearing is one of my most neglected senses, that is not true for me at all. My husband appreciates music much more than I do. And it's not something that brings us together, but that's because of me. I'm not that interested in it. One of the things I did in the book, Life in Five Senses,

is I really tried to find my own ways to tap into a love of music, to find my own ways of appreciating it. And I did, and it's much a bigger part of my life now, but when I compare it to people who truly appreciate it, who, where it's one of their kind of leading foreground senses it's very different. And, and that's okay because, you know, like I love the sense of smell and I do all kinds of things with the sense of smell. And so that's really fun. My husband doesn't really care about the sense of smell,

but it is nice when you overlap, you know, when you're just like, well, I'm interested in trying new recipes and going to new restaurants and exploring new cuisines and let's watch a cooking show on TV and let's watch a cooking competition show and let's reminisce and let's have traditions that are built around foods. And we have family foods and we have hometown foods. That can be really fun. And then for someone like me, I'm like, you know, I like the same diner.

You know. The, you know, it's funny. There's an old adage that people used to do in the old world where it was called breaking bread. And when a stranger would pass through a traveler, you would bring them into your home and break bread with them. And that was a way of getting to know each other. And probably over a lot of those senses, especially of food and taste, but smells and atmosphere and stuff and stories of the road.

And so really interesting how all this comes down and how we can really get in touch with being present in our happiness. Absolutely. There you go. So it's been fun to have you on the show and talk about this stuff. And hopefully everyone can focus on being happy. Gretchen, tell us where people can find you on the interwebs again. GretchenRubin.com is where you can find out everything about my books.

I've got articles. I've got resources. I got excerpts, I got anything you want. If you want to take the quiz that we talked about, that's at GretchenRubin.com slash quiz, or you can just go to the site and look up quiz. My podcast is Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where I talk about how to be happier, spoiler alert. And I'm all over social media and my handle everywhere is Gretchen Rubin. And I love to connect with people about questions and observations and examples and resources. So hit me up because I feel like

the world is my research assistant. I get so many great ideas and insights from other people. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you. I so enjoyed the chance to talk to you. Thank you. And so did I. her book, wherever fine books are sold Folks, stay out of those alleyway bookstores Because you might get some smell senses in them Life in five senses How exploring the senses got me out of my head

And into the world We certainly need to find happiness More than ever these days Thanks for tuning in to my audience Be good to each other, stay safe And we'll see you guys next time