The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Sight and Sound: How to Joyfully Awaken Your Senses

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Are you seeing what you look at? Or tuning in to the noises all around you? We take our senses for granted - particularly when it comes to the sights and sounds of our everyday lives. Exploring your senses can be a great way to experience more fun and happiness right now.   Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin was warned that her eyesight was in peril - which spurred her to rethink her relationship with her senses. In the first of two interviews, Gretchen joins Dr Laurie Santos to discuss her journey of discovery and her new book - Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and We love that for you. Someone else will, too. Be more you this year.

And find them on Bumble. Pushkin. I want you to take a moment to think about a few of your favorite things. Whether it's raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, or snowflakes that stay on our nose and eyelashes, the things around us that we love have something in common. We experience and enjoy them thanks to our senses. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. They can individually and in combination make our hearts sing.

They can bring us some needed solace when the proverbial dog bites or the bee stings. But our senses are more fragile than we often recognize. Even if you're lucky enough to be born with all five, it's probable that age and illness will degrade them over time. We usually ignore this fragility, and that means that all too often, we take our senses for granted. I mean, you may say you love chocolate chip cookies, but do you wolf them down in seconds, barely letting the flavor linger? What about the music you say you adore? Is it actually just some background hum as you chat, exercise, or clean your apartment? Really paying attention to the world around us,

savoring the sights, sounds, and sensations of the things we encounter, is a great way to increase our happiness. Being mindful of our surroundings can help us live more fully in the moment and can help us take a break from all the usual rumination about past events or worrying about things to come. But our senses offer lots of other opportunities to enhance our happiness and well-being too. Opportunities that I wasn't even fully aware of until I read an excellent new book from one of the world's leading happiness thought leaders, author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen's new book, Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World,

begins with her story of being just as oblivious to her surroundings as the rest of us. That is, until a doctor warned her that a sense she'd taken totally for granted was in real danger of disappearing. And so Gretchen began a new quest. She started to explore her world with fresh eyes and fresh ears, nostrils, taste buds, and fingers. After reading the book, I found Gretchen's new mission to revel in her senses contagious. After seeing all the benefits she'd discovered, I also wanted to reawaken myself to all the colors, noises, textures, and scents that I'd been missing out on in my busy life. I thought you'd be inspired too. Hey, Gretchen. Hello, how are you? Good, good. So I invited Gretchen to come on the Happiness Lab for a two-part series to discuss her journey into her own five senses. Thank you so much for

taking the time to do this. Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you. And already I'm seeing in your Zoom background the infusion of curated color, the flowers, and the chair. Good reds right there. We'll focus on smell, taste, and touch in our next episode, but today we'll explore hearing and seeing. For Gretchen, it was sight, in many ways the sense at the top of our primate hierarchy, launched her on her quest to be more present. Thinking about vision transported Gretchen back to childhood and to her first pair of glasses. I remember that so distinctly because it was just the most wonderful thing in the world.

I was really nervous about getting glasses. I was little. I was like, you know, in second or third grade. But then when I put them on, I realized what I had not been seeing that everybody else could see. Everything from the words on the board to the leaves on the trees. And it was just so exciting. So I've been very, very nearsighted my whole life. And then I had this experience much more recently where I had pink eye. That's another thing about me. I get pink eye a lot.

And it usually goes away, but sometimes you have to go to the eye doctor. So I went to the eye doctor and just as I was walking out the door, just very matter-of-factly, he's like, well, you know, be sure to come in for your regular checkups because as you know, you're at greater risk for losing your sight.

And I thought, what? No, wait, what are you talking about? And he said, oh yeah, well, you're very severely nearsighted and that means that you are more at risk for having detached retina and that can cost you vision. And in fact, I had a friend who just had lost some vision because of a detached retina.

So this was, you know, felt very real to me. You know, intellectually, I knew that. Of course, we all know like at any moment, you know, life can change. And of course, even if I lost my sight or any of my senses, I could still have a rich, meaningful life. It was just that somehow that moment made me realize, oh my gosh, I'm taking everything for granted. I'm not seeing what I'm looking at. I'm

not tuning into the world. I'm just stuck in my head and everything is just passing me by. And if I lost it, I would feel so, so much regret for everything that I had missed. And so it got me very reoriented. And so this is a shocking story to me about you in particular for two reasons, right? One is you're this incredibly well-known happiness expert that's into mindfulness, into paying attention. But I think beyond that, you're known as somebody who cares a lot about your body. You know, you've talked about your path to getting rid of sugar in your life and trying to treat your body better. But why do you think in this instant you were kind of unable to pay attention to your body that you realized you're missing out on so much of your

visual experience? Well, I mean, this is exactly right, you know, because on the one hand, you could say, if anything, I was, you know, like doing, you know, I'm like the street scientist that's constantly experimenting on myself, but I completely neglected this one area. I was exactly, as you say, in some ways, like I was very focused on things like sleep and exercise and morning sunlight, but I wasn't thinking about seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling in a kind of systematic way, which is really how I like to approach things. And so, yeah, it really was this area. And I had had this feeling that something was missing, that in all my study of happiness, I had a feeling, okay, there's something that I'm skipping over. And I couldn't put my finger on what that was.

And then it was like everything clicked into place when I realized that it was the experience of my five senses. And I think this is something that all of us go through, right? I mean, obviously I teach about happiness and study it too, but I think in our busy lives, we can just forget about the importance of noticing, just like being present and noticing all the little things. Yeah. But your wake-up call really changed things for you, where you really kind of made a decision to pay attention.

And you started even with that first walk back from the doctor's office, right? So tell me what that was like. Well, and that wasn't that wasn't voluntary. That wasn't like a mindfulness exercise that I did. It was it was psychedelic. It was it was like a knob in my brain had been turned all the way up to maximum. And it was like I could see everything, hear everything, smell everything. I mean, the feel of the wind on my cheeks or just the sidewalk under my feet or, you know, I just couldn't stop touching things like the lamppost. You know, it was like 20 minutes.

I live in New York City, so I was walking home from the eye doctor. And it was just like, I still remember the plants that were in the tree wells and the smell of the nuts for nuts cart that was wafting around. It was just, it was as if all of a sudden I had access to this super intense, super rich and vivid experience of my own life, which by the way, was there all the time and I could have experienced at any moment. And it was just that somehow in this moment, my brain just flipped open everything that had been screening things out. And I had access to this much more intense experience of just, you know, an ordinary walk through my neighborhood. And seeing the power of this ordinary walk that could get so intense when you paid attention, that kind of started you on a new Gretchen project. I think my listeners know, but you're

known for kind of, as you said, being a street scientist and turning, you know, these things into personal projects. Yeah, I'm a guinea pig for myself, yes. And so what was the new experiment you decided to run on yourself? Well, the more you know, the more you notice. We all have experienced that. So I thought, okay, I need to learn more about my senses because I don't really know much about how they work. I didn't think very much about, well, surely I'm more tapped into some of my

senses, but not the others. What is my personal landscape of sense? And then I thought, well, let me figure out ways to explore it, investigate it, indulge it, deprive it. What are all the things that I could try in order to awaken myself to the senses? And sometimes that was sort of intellectual. Like I took a perfume class and learned all about perfume. But then it was also experience. Like in that same perfume class, we spent a lot of times just sniffing and thinking,

you know, what does this smell like? And it's, what does it smell like? And so I did it very systematically. And I think for a lot of people, it's sort of like, I'll let Gretchen Rubin do all the research and like lay out a framework. So I don't have to do that. I'll just come in for the fun parts. But it was just absolutely fascinating to learn more about our senses. So as you embarked on this new experiment, what were some of the goals that you had for yourself? Well, one thing

is I wanted to learn more because I do think that the more you know, the more you notice. So I wanted to understand how my body worked, how the senses work more. I wanted to find ways to deepen my appreciation by exploring and investigating. I also, though, I wanted to connect with other people more deeply. And I had this sense that I could do that through my senses. I wanted to tap into memories. One of the things that I don't like very much about myself is I don't have good memory. I don't have a good sense of memory for my past the way some people do. And I thought the senses are famous for their ability to evoke memory. I wanted to tap into that.

I also wanted to tap into its ability to connect me to the present. Another thing that the senses are very well known for is being able to really appreciate this moment right here, right now. I wanted just more delight. I suspected that it would help me spark my creativity. I wasn't sure how, but it just sort of felt like that might happen. I wanted to know how that would happen. I had a sense that it was another way to tap into my body. As you say, I'm very focused on the physical experience because our physical experience always colors our emotional experience. So I thought, well, how can I dial into my senses to kind of energize me and also calm me down? And it turns out that the senses,

they just add so much to life in all these different areas. It was sort of overwhelming. And so you started by attending to sight. Why did you pick sight to start with as a sense to pay attention to more deeply? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is, you know, we're wired for sight. Sight takes up the biggest part of the real estate in the brain of the senses. And then it's also, if you were going to say like, well, what are the kind of kindergarten senses or the Aristotelian senses? They usually are named in the same order,

seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And that makes sense because seeing, as I said, sort of is the most dominant one. And when there's a disagreement among the senses, sight usually triumphs, which leads to a lot of interesting effects. Next is hearing. And also seeing and hearing are things that we can do at a distance. Then when things come a little bit closer, then we're going to smelling and then even closer

tasting. And smell has a huge influence on what we taste. As unfortunately, a lot of people experience when they lost their sense of smell through COVID is that you lose your sense of smell, but then it also really affects your sense of taste. So it makes sense that smelling comes before tasting. And then touching is like kind of the oddball because everything else is very neatly organized on the head. But touching we do with our whole bodies, you know, it's direct contact. And that's just kind of the order in which they're usually listed to. So it felt like the most sort of expected way that people would see this progression unfolding. And so there are lots of things you could pay attention to with sight. You could look at different shapes, you know, you could kind of like pay attention to all kinds of different

lines and things. But one of the things you started with was color. So tell me a little bit about the Scarlet Project. Oh, well, I went through, even before this, I went through this strange period of being absolutely preoccupied by color. I'm so interested in color and just the enormous richness of color. And so I wanted to pick a color to collect. I'm not a natural collector, but this is something that people find to be enormously fun and exciting. And it kind of makes the world more fun because a quest is more fun than a jaunt. So going to look for something is more interesting than just sort of browsing around. So I decided scarlet. I love the word scarlet. I love the color scarlet. I love like that deep, rich red. It's common enough that you find it. It's not so common that like one out of

every two things is like, you know, royal blue. And at the same time, I was also doing this thing with my daughter where we would go on these sort of adventures once a week after school. And she was in that teenage phase where you get really into thrift stores. So I thought, well, we'll go and I'll look for something for Scarlet for my collection. And that will give me something to look for while we're together. So it was a way, it was something that brought us together and made this weekly experience more fun. And it's really interesting about color that if you have just any bunch of, you see a lot of art, artworks that are created with this in mind, where if you just take a lot of things that are the same color, they just are automatically interesting and kind of harmonious and fascinating. So I thought, well, I'll do that with scarlet.

I'll do that myself. Copy some of these artists that I've seen doing that. And so what were some of your favorite Scarlet things that you found? I mean, they're just like these little objects. Like the first thing I got was like a plastic fire truck. I have a tomato. I have a sort of a rhinestone heart. It's thrift store stuff.

So a lot of times that's kind of what's funny about it. It's a little bit random. I love fake food. I've always loved fake food. For some reason, I have like a fake little dessert cake and a scarlet bird. That's like the kind of thing that you would wire, I guess, into sort of like a Christmas wreath or something like that. But what I love most about this list is that like you're finding things that we might think of as not very interesting in the objective, right? You know, maybe garbage, maybe garbage.

Absolutely. not very interesting in the objective, right? You know, maybe garbage, maybe garbage in some ways. But what you're doing is you're turning even these mundane, boring, garbagey objects into kind of like their own museum, their own kind of art piece. And that's the power of just noticing color that you found, right? Yes, absolutely. And it's so fun because it's the kind of thing where you're like, why would anybody even bother to like sell this or even manufacture it? What is the point of this? And then to me, I'm like, you know, it's like perfect. And I get very excited.

So it really does. It enlivens the world and lets me see these kind of creative possibilities in it in a way that I never did before. So it is. It's really exciting in that way. Another exciting part of paying attention to color was that you started noticing your judgments of color. Yeah. Right. When you walk through the world and you're not paying attention, you know, there are oranges and blues and yellows, but all of a sudden you start noticing that some are better than others. So talk about collecting these examples of which colors were, you know, pristinely good in their own sense. Yeah. It's interesting about color because are

some colors better than other colors? This is like a Zen Cohen, I think. But yes, just looking out for color combinations. Or I did this really fun thing where, you know, Pantone has its color of the year, which I'm always on the edge of my seat to see. One of the exercises that I do is go to the Met every day. And so I'd go to the Metropolitan Museum and I would look for a specific color, if it was the color of the year. Or sometimes I would just pick a color at random and just go look for it in paintings and other artworks. And that was a super fun way to look for color, because a lot of times it's not where you would expect to see it.

Or I could sort of test my knowledge of the Met and being like, okay, I think that I'm going to see this kind of olive green in Impressionism. But did they actually use this olive green? I don't know. Maybe it's more of a medieval color. I'll have to go see. I think the best orange is like a pumpkin orange, like a good sugar pumpkin. Uh-huh.

Also the color of Luke Skywalker's X-Wing fighter uniform in the original Star Wars. Yes. He's got this orange helmet. That's like the perfect pristine orange. And so this was like a ridiculous dinner party conversation for me and my friends for like days, right? And then later they'd text me like, saw a great blue, like, you know, or like the orange and the walk sign is terrible. Like the don't walk orange is awful, right? And so, but I think this is not, this is, you know, often when we think of the benefits that we might get from paying attention to senses like sight, we assume

it's internal, right? It's mindful. I'll be less bored. I'll notice these magnificent things. But you are also seeing that this could be really social too. Yes. No. And I love this example of you and your friends trading back good oranges and bad oranges. No, it turns out this is a really, really good way to connect with other people. And in fact, a hack that I learned is that if like, let's say you're in a situation where you don't know anybody and you're sort of desperately trying to think of something to say to somebody who you do not know, a really good thing to do is to comment on a sensation that both of you are experiencing at the same time. So what do you think of this music? Or have you tried the food? Or I love the art on the walls

of this apartment or whatever it might be, because that is something that's just like, you're both experiencing it at the same time. And it is a really good way to be social. But I did over and over, I found that I was able to connect with other people more deeply through senses. Now, sometimes this was as obvious as like, my daughters and I tested each other on smells. And that was just sort of silly and fun. We made a non-Newtonian fluid out of quicksand. That's also super fun. But then I also thought, well, I'll use my sense of taste to connect with my mother-in-law. And we went on a walk on the Lower East Side because she was raised eating traditional Jewish foods. She cooks those herself still sometimes. And the Lower East Side is famous for having many kind of world-renowned places that sell traditional Jewish food.

And let's go on a tour with her and have her tell us. First, it was just going to be me. But then when my daughters heard about it, they wanted to come too and hear about her memories. And this was something where, you know, I've known my mother-in-law for decades. I feel like I know her quite well, but we never really talked through it. I got a much deeper sense of like what her life was like on just sort of like a very day to day level. And even of her family members just talking about her grandmother's cooking, what her father would do on Friday nights, things like that. It was a super fun adventure.

And it was kind of more active than just me quizzing her about her childhood, which I don't know that I ever would have done otherwise. But this gave us a reason to reflect on those memories. And it was also just very, very memorable as like a thing that we did. There was the day that we went, we all went to the Lower East Side together. And, you know, I'll remember that forever. Another way that you use sight to connect socially was just to start paying close attention to the visual input you were getting from the people you loved. You know, talk about

how you did this with your husband, Jamie. Oh, I mean, I realized that I was like, you know, I looked at Jamie without seeing him and there were all kinds of things that I started to notice. And one of the things you see is when you see the outer person, you also get insight into the inner person because there were clues to what was going on inside Jamie from things that were happening right in front of my eyes. I mean, like a good thing was I realized like Jamie sort of bought himself some new shirts that kind of had a little bit of a bolder pattern and were a little more fitted. I was like, oh, you know, Jamie is like, he's kicking it up a notch. You know, he's busting out a little bit. But then there was other things where Jamie, I realized that I had been, when I came down in the morning, I would see a peanut butter

encrusted spoon on the counter. Why? People in my family just do not rinse their peanut butter spoons. I do not know. This is like a whole family thing. Long story. But I would just see this on the counter. And I knew that a spoonful of peanut butter was his favorite midnight snack, but I didn't think anything of it. I just kind of dealt with the spoon day after day. And then finally, I thought, let me really look at the spoon. And what this spoon is telling me is that Jamie is not sleeping because he's having this midnight snack night after night after night. And so then I said to him, you know, is something on your mind? And it turned out like he was dealing with this sort of tricky situation at work. But it was like there

was this visual clue that I had been overlooking. But then once I really sort of registered what I saw, then I could be more attentive, you know, and tune into his inner landscape by viewing the outer landscape of our apartment. And this kind of registering allowed you to make some changes to your own inner landscape. I think one of the things we forget we can do with our senses is that we can curate them. And so I know you did this, you kind of had this inspiration from a vase of flowers that you saw, you know, and so talk about the kind of insight that you got about, we can change our own inner landscape by just changing what's in our visual milieu. Well, and this is true of all of our senses. It's really interesting, I think, to a

very great degree. And Laurie, maybe you see this with happiness too. I think for some people, they feel like almost like happiness is something that either does or does not wash over them. And they're not that focused on like, well, what could I do that might raise or lower my happiness level? Like what is within my conscious control? Not everything's within my conscious control, but some things are.

And this is absolutely true with sensation. I realized I was very passive. I was just like, well, it is what it is. What are you gonna do? You know, and instead of realizing like, there's a lot you can do to affect. And again, not everything, not everything's within our control. And people certainly have different responses.

But there are things that we can do. And even to realize, like, other people are fine with this, but this is really bothering me. And I need to take steps to it. I mean, a really good example of this is some people are very, very captured by their smartphone. Like, they feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend on it. And they're always sort of trying to put it down, but they find that to be very, very difficult.

And one of the things that you can do, and I experimented with this, is you turn your phone to grayscale. And so instead of appearing in color, it appears in black, white, and gray. And I will tell you, it is much less fun and it's much more just difficult to use a phone that's in black, white, and gray. It's just tell you, it is much less fun and it's much more just difficult to use a phone that's in black, white, and gray. It's just, it's not designed to be used that way.

And so it's just, it's arduous. And it's just, it's just like a lot less compelling because it's really like watching your grandparents old black and white TV set. And so for some people, this is a really powerful tool because if they want to make their phone less compelling, but they still need to use their phone throughout the day, they can't just like put it in a drawer. You know, I don't have phone notification sounds because I don't like that constant interruption. I'm very jumpy. So it really, it really jumps me. And I don't like having a train of thought interrupted. And when I'm talking to somebody, I get very distracted by it. So I don't have notifications. And some people are like, well, how can you not have notifications? And I'm like,

I don't have notifications. And some people are like, well, how can you not have notifications? And I'm like, very easily. I just turn them off. And again, it's not what everybody would choose, but realizing that it is something that you can choose to address. Another thing I realized, I really don't like noisy restaurants. And I'm not alone. This is one of the number one complaints about restaurants are too noisy. And now I just, I really will say, like, I don't want to go to that restaurant ever again. Like, the food was good, but it's too loud. I don't want to go there. And so instead of just being like, oh, well, if you like this place, we'll go,

I can say, that's not a place that I like, and shape my decisions. Of course, Gretchen's new relationship with sound didn't end with her avoiding harsh and unpleasant noises. She set out to hear things in a totally new way. She committed to listening purposefully to her surroundings, to music, and most importantly, to the people she loved. We'll hear how all that went when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. Ugh, we're so done with new year, new you.

This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too.

Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Music is this universal human custom. It's in all human cultures. It's ancient. Technology has revolutionized our relationship with music. We're the first generation of humans to be able to access virtually any song ever composed and listen to it anywhere we want, in our cars, on the bus, or even while we jog. There's a lot of debate about why we all do appreciate music. There's a lot of theories about it because it's not evolutionarily necessary. But until she started on her new quest, podcaster and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin felt her listening habits were embarrassingly out of step with the rest of

humankind. I always felt bad about my relationship with music because I felt like I didn't really appreciate it the way other people did. I saw people around me who like listen to music all the time. They went to concerts. They liked finding new kinds of music, new artists. They like to talk about it. And I was like, eh, I'm not really so into music. And it always felt like a flaw or a limitation. And being who I am, I always thought, well, if I just learn more about it. And if I took a class or I learned to play the ukulele or I really applied myself, I could learn to love music.

But I never felt like doing that, right? Because I wanted to spend time doing the things I already liked. But then when I was thinking about this, I sort of said offhandedly to my producer of my podcast, who's a really, really huge music person. I said to him, well, you know, I'm just not that into music. And he said, oh, I think you are into music, but just in your own way. And this was a huge epiphany for me. And in all my work, all I say is, there's no magic one-size-fits-all solution. What works for me may not work for you. So I deeply knew that. But even here, again, I had this spot that I was overlooking where I thought, well, there's just something wrong with my approach. Instead of saying, well,

how am I different from other people? Or maybe I'm not as different from everyone. Maybe there are other people like me, but we just sort of haven't seen ourselves as kind of a different way, an alternative way. And I realized like, I really like a song. Some people like music. They want to listen to music all day. They want to listen to new music. They want to listen to country music. And I'm like, I like the one song and I will love that song. And I will have a deep emotional response to that song. And I love it when I find a new song that I love, but I just want the one song, which that explains like why I don't go to concerts. Why would I go to a concert when I just want to hear the one song? And it was just, it was, it opened up this whole new way for me to think about how i could engage

with my sense of hearing in a way that i loved because instead of trying to jam myself into this model of what i thought was the right way i accepted myself to say well this is my way how can i lean into that and tap into my way of loving music and so that was a huge boon for me it was like a whole new joy that I had that I could have access to, which in a way and before I always felt sort of discouraged about. And that epiphany also led you to really be Gretchen through another practice that you came up with, which is this idea of the audio apothecary. You know, what is that and what was in your audio apothecary? Well, as you know, there's so much research about how a quick,

upbeat song is one of the quickest ways that we can intervene in our mood. It helps us deal with pain. It helps us get energy. It makes workouts seem easier. This is why you go to the gym, they're always playing music. And so I knew this. But I realized when I thought about the songs that I love, because now that I knew I was a song lover, I thought, well, what kind of mood do most of the songs that I love put me in? And most of them are kind of like melancholy, reflective songs that put me in sort of kind of a meditative state and maybe a little bit, not sad, but, you know, bittersweet. And then I thought, but sometimes you just want to give yourself a lift. You just want to give yourself a lift you just want to give your you know give yourself a boost of energy and cheer and so I thought okay I'm going to make a list of

those songs so that when I I can really intervene in my mood and when I feel like I do need a quick lift or a quick boost of energy I can use my audio apothecary for that not that I don't love those other songs but this is when I want to evoke a very specific mood. So I made my own playlist. And this gets to, I think, another benefit that you realize by paying attention to your senses, right? Which is that we can really use sensory experiences for emotion regulation, right? When I think in my own personal life, I'm dragging, like, you know, I'm feeling a look like a low energy day. My instinct, you know, unlike you and your kind of, you know, sugar carefulness, like my instinct is to like turn to something that's often really unhealthy to get my instinct, you know, unlike you and your kind of, you know, sugar carefulness, like,

my instinct is to, like, turn to something that's often really unhealthy to get my energy, right? Like, I'm going to grab a cupcake or some, like, really caffeinated latte or something like that. But you realize that sometimes these quick sensory hits can play that emotion regulation role in a way that's sometimes even healthier, too. Absolutely. And this is one of the kind of hacks that I stumbled upon, which I hadn't been expecting, which is I think a lot of times when we want to get a boost, like we do, we want to kind of jolt ourselves through our senses. And as you say, eating something is often kind of the most obvious thing to do, most familiar thing to do.

But what I found is that any kind of intense sensory experience tended to give me that lift and that energy and kind of that feeling of like shaking yourself awake. That is often what you want sort of at three o'clock in the afternoon when you're dragging, like taking a big whiff of something like grapefruit or fresh towels, just kind of like overwhelming a sense or like really rubbing my fingers over like a velvety pillow and really feeling that. Or, you know, even something rough like wicker, you know, where you feel all those bumps and it's sort of smooth and it's just, there's something really

engaging about that. That kind of served the same purpose. So I think that for people who are trying to maybe redirect what they're doing to give themselves that little boost, because I think you do need a boost. We're like cell phones that need to get plugged back into the wall. You need to give yourself a boost. And so I think you want to have these sort of healthy treats that you can give yourself. And I think some people think of treats as being something that they would eat, but you could actually tap into all your senses. Or I know somebody who loves music, loves, loves, loves music, loves new music. And so that's his treat is he'll let himself listen to a new song. And that does the same thing for him.

Wouldn't work for me because like I say, I don't want to listen to a new song. I like the songs I already like. But for him, that was sort of an exciting adventure and overwhelmed his senses in a very pleasant way. And so we can use hearing in our other senses to kind of do this emotion regulation, whether it's kind of like, you know, moving our energy up a little bit or putting ourselves in a good mood, even maybe being contemplative like the kinds of songs you tend to gravitate towards. Yeah. But you also had this realization, particularly for hearing that, you know, yeah, we can do all this stuff, but like many happiness practices, it actually takes a little bit of work. And I think this can be something that's particularly surprising with listening where it's just like, you know, we just hear sounds in the background,

it happens. But you started to realize that listening well actually takes a little bit of work. Talk about this realization and kind of how you tried to put more of this work into practice. Absolutely. Listening is arduous. And I noticed and I thought, oh my gosh, maybe I'm the first person to realize that the word listen is just the word silent with the letters rearranged. Turns out I'm not the first one to notice that, unfortunately. But no, and I realized that I wanted to do a better job of listening. And so I wrote, and when I need to crystallize my ideas, I often will write a manifesto or something like that. And so I wrote a manifesto for listening that was all the things that I

wanted to remember about how to listen. And that I wrote a manifesto for listening that was all the things that I wanted to remember about how to listen. And that was everything from like my posture, like turn to face the person, you know, so my shoulders are square with their shoulders, put down my book or my phone, you know, very obviously be in an attentive posture. And then listen.

And, you know, there were things that for me were really hard. One was I realized that like unconsciously, almost before I know that I'm doing it, I will often redirect a conversation away from something where it feels very vulnerable. And I've really tried to do a better job of that. I mean, to the point where sometimes I have to go back to somebody and say, I feel like you were trying to talk about something and I interrupted and redirected the conversation. Let's go back. I'm trying to, you know, get there faster. And just being aware of that as I'm listening, you know, don't try to steer it away from something that feels vulnerable. And another thing is I realized

that another kind of coping mechanism I have is because I love to read and I have so many books that I think are like so, so, so helpful that anytime anybody brings something up, I'm often like, that reminds me of this book and you should get this book and let me email you the link. And, you know, and you know, I can't be, my sister calls me a happiness bully because I can get pretty insistent if I think I have something to suggest that I think would make you happier. And I realized like, yes, I think that this is really helpful and valuable, but that is not what the person is asking for at this moment. Like, hold that back and maybe offer that later if they want it.

But in the moment, rather than getting distracted by this reading list that I'm suggesting, I need to just listen and respond to what the person's saying. You know, I think these are mechanisms for kind of handling emotion. I think these are mechanisms for kind of handling emotion. So I'm trying to listen better so that I can really be present in hearing what a person is trying to tell me. And that act of listening better also led to, I think, really important new social connections for you, even within your family, right? I know just as a parent, this act of listening sort of transformed for you as you engage with this practice more? Yeah. I mean, with my daughters and my husband, too, you just realize that instead of constantly trying to figure out, well, what am I going to say and how am I going to respond and what's my advice? I can just listen. And I realized, especially with my younger daughter, she will talk herself out of a bad mood. She will talk herself into a solution if I just stay with her and let her keep talking and let silence fall and let her keep talking. And in fact, research shows that

we do generate better solutions and answers when we have a listener who's attending to us. And so rather than thinking like, well, what am I going to say? It's more about, well, how am I going to listen? And that proved to be much more effective. But it's not, as you said earlier, it's not effortless. It's not like you're just sitting there. What's that whole thing? Don't just do something, sit there.

It's kind of that. So I think it's sometimes it's hard. It's hard to just say like, wow, that sounds really hard or like, wow, it sounds like you must have been really frustrated and just not rush in with solutions or questions and just listen. Yeah. I'm glad you're not the only family member who's a happiness bully. I feel like I have to have to work on this myself. Yes. So that's how you can get more intentional about the audio and visual domain. But there's still so much more to embracing all five senses. Gretchen and I still have to talk smell. It's amazing that garbage day smells so bad.

Like, why does it smell so bad? And taste. York sides, Greek salad, the chunks of cheese. And of course, touch. I always thought of skin as like packaging, but you know, that's where we get our sensations. So be sure to come back for part two of our journey into better savoring through your senses.

Next time on The Happiness Lab, with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. Ugh, we're so done with new year, new you. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want.

And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble.