The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Smell, Taste and Touch: How to Joyfully Awaken Your Senses

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin was warned that her eyesight was in peril. It shocked her into realising she'd taken all of her five senses for granted - and so she resolved to wring every ounce of joy from the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures around her.   Concluding her conversation with Dr Laurie Santos, Gretchen explains how to be more alive to smell, taste and touch - building on the ideas in 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 find them on Bumble.

Pushkin. The orange and the walk sign is terrible. Like, the don't walk orange is awful, right? For the last few months, I've been really trying to notice the world around me, soaking up the sights and smells, the good and the bad. It's amazing that garbage day smells so bad. Like, why does it smell so bad? I've always had decent eyesight, pretty good hearing, and a nice sense of smell.

But most days, I've not really appreciated these senses. It's usually only something truly extraordinary that wakes me up. An amazing sunset or vacation, or a super expensive fine dining experience. I usually fail to savor the normal things. You know, the stuff that's around me each and every day. That is, until I was given an advanced copy of Life in Five Senses, how exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world. It's a new book from happiness expert and podcaster Gretchen Rubin. Following Gretchen's example, I've started to better notice and appreciate the world around me. I think the best orange is like the color of Luke Skywalker's X-Wing fighter uniform in the original Star Wars.

Yes. That's like the perfect pristine orange. In our episode last time, Gretchen shared her experience of bringing more joy and wonder into her daily life by paying more attention to sights and sounds. But that still leaves us with three remaining senses to discuss,

starting with the one that's right under our noses. I've always loved the sense of smell. And it's funny because for some people, I think, especially in the West, this can be kind of an overlooked sense. And people don't think about it as much or attend to it as much. Whereas I always have been very, very interested in the sense of smell. So this was one that I couldn't wait for. I just wanted an excuse to spend more time exploring my sense of smell. So for me, this was particularly delightful.

to spend more time exploring my sense of smell. So for me, this was particularly delightful. Now, it was interesting though, too, because of COVID, this was a sense where I think for many people, they became much more aware. And I think just culturally, we became much more aware of the value of the sense of smell and how much it does add to our existence.

So often we don't realize how important something is until it's gone. And I know many people personally who lost their sense of smell. For most of them, it came back. But one of my friends has said she's at 24% now. So she's up, but she still says there are many things she can't smell. And hearing about her experience and the experience of other people made me realize it adds so much to our sense of our vitality and our sense of connection to other people and to the world. But it was one that I was very aware of myself. It was one of my most appreciated senses going into this. And these stories about COVID and people who lose their sense of smell, I think,

can get us to another benefit that comes when we really start noticing and paying attention, right? Which is gratitude, right? You know, it's just something that's in the background. But once we realize, oh my gosh, I can lose it now, all of a sudden, it matters to us. We really want to engage with it even more. Oh, 100%. Okay. Now, Lori, you're a happiness expert. And one of the big things people always tell you to do is keep a gratitude journal. I was deeply annoyed by a gratitude journal.

I tried this a couple times. I just, it did not work for me as a tool, even though it is like a tool that people are often point to as a useful tool. So I started keeping a five senses journal where each day I would just like write one kind of standout experience, you know, just something remarkable or notable, maybe particularly good or very distinctive or unexpected or whatever. Just I just made a little notebook for myself. And what I found is that it really turned into a gratitude journal for me because it felt like my way of testifying to the world.

And by noticing it, that was my way of paying tribute to everything that the world was offering to me that I was otherwise overlooking and neglecting. The benefits of gratitude for happiness are many, but if it turns out that the gratitude journal doesn't work for you, this might be something that you would find

to be a fun, different approach that really does help express gratitude, but in a different way. Yeah. And I think, you know, I started copying this practice a little bit really informally, like after I read your book. And it's funny the kind of things that get in there because for me, it wasn't necessarily the best smells or tastes or, you know, it was kind of the ones that I noticed most. But even that came with a certain sense of like awe. Like, you know, it's amazing that garbage day smells so bad. Like it's such a weird sense of like all these things together. Like why does it smell so bad?

And so it took something that would normally be either in the background or something that I walked down the street judging like, oh, terrible smell again today. And it brought me almost like a sense of awe, like this sort of curiosity that I brought to it, like kind of just felt good in this really interesting way. No, I think it does. It helps us tap into that sense of transcendence. And it also just helps us to notice because I think anytime you're sort of looking

for things in the world, it just helps your mind pay attention because in a way our brains are trying to help us out by moving things into the background. It's like, you don't need to know this this isn't important you don't have to be distracted by that and so we need to have some kind of conscious practices to help us tune into everything that's happening around us and so i think doing something like this also it's sort of like like i remember um i can't say the word can you say the word about the the dog weimaraner

weimaraner yeah those ones that have that fur that looks frosted, you know? And I remember thinking like, oh, I've seen these dogs so many times, but it's like, because I'm keeping my five senses journal, I'm really noticing like, oh, I can't say the word, but I love the way that very unusual quality of their fur. And now every time I see a dog like that, I think I really take a moment. And like you said, I have this almost moment of transcendence, which is like, look what nature can do, this kind of glaucous quality. Yeah. So I think it helps us tap into this transcendent quality of everyday life. And the noticing of these transcendent qualities also comes with yet another benefit that you've talked about in the book, which is that we can

use our senses, especially smell, not just to be present in the here and now, but we can use our senses to create these new kind of more vivid memories in the future. And this is something that I found so powerful about what you talked about with smell, which is that we can kind of use smell to do this. And very smart people have done this. You mentioned the example of Andy Warhol, which I was hoping to share here because it's such a lovely way to kind of create memories for the future. Yeah. So Andy Warhol would choose a scent and would use it for a particular period, and then he would kind of retire it. And then he would use that scent if he wanted to evoke memories from the past, because we have such a strong tie between a sense and a time.

And what's interesting is like, okay, this is Andy Warhol. But many people, after we talked about it on the Happier podcast, many people said that they had done something similar like for their honeymoon, they had a very particular scent that they wore for their honeymoon. And then for the rest of their lives, it was like, oh, that was the scent that I wore for my honeymoon. In my life, there was a very particular perfume that I wore my senior year in college, Tea Rose. If you've ever smelled Tea Rose perfume, it is really powerful. Like I don't wear it now because I'm just like,

that is just too much for the average person. Like I wear it to bed when it's just, you know, at home. I wouldn't wear it out really. But I smell that and I mean, senior year in college just comes back to me. And so again, it's interesting how this can happen accidentally the way I sort of accidentally formed the connection between college and my perfume. But then this other person really consciously did it as having like, this is the scent of

my honeymoon. And I will tap into this as a way to tap into memories. And so I think it can be really fun to preserve a sensation in order that it kind of had that crystallized ability to evoke memories. And I think this is one of the unique things just neuroscientifically about the way that smell works. Like, you know, the other senses we talked about in the last episode, sort of sight and hearing, they kind of go through old school parts of our brain and the thalamus, and it takes a while for those actual sensory inputs to get organized into

something. But smell, just because of where your nose is, goes straight into your temporal lobe, like that's a cortical tissue, like the smarter parts of our brain tissue. And so it gets organized really quickly. And that means it can kind of tap into memories even more quickly than I think some of our other senses, which is funny because I think we don't assume that smell has this property or that taste, which, you know, oddly, I think people don't realize is really mostly made up of smell. Right. It has that property, too. And so when you jumped into the taste domain, this was also a spot where you really tried to use that sensory experience to tie into your memories. So talk about the taste catalog you created

to kind of get you back to some of your older memories. Yeah. And this was super fun. And so I divided my life into sort of four epics. So there was childhood, college and law school, my children's childhood, and now. And thought, well, what were some of the standout flavors of that time? So flavor is taste plus smell, because taste, you just have the five basic tastes, but with smell, you get the whole complex flavor. And what was funny was that I didn't even need to go out and taste these things. Just thinking about their taste helped bring back all these memories. It really took me back to those times in a way that was really, really remarkable. And what I tried to

find was things that were either distinctive, like I ate them during that time and no other time in my life, or they were like my favorite standout tastes of that time. Reading your account of this was funny for me because, you know, during your undergrad and grad school time, you were based in New Haven at Yale, which is where I am. And so there were lots of restaurants in your list that were really like, oh my gosh, I love that. Yes, York sides, Greek salad, the chunks of cheese. Again, yet another way to kind of use taste for social connection, which I think is one of the big benefits of taste is that not only can we taste things with people, but it actually enhances the experience when we try to share it too.

Absolutely. No, and with my sister, after I did my childhood, you know, of course we shared a childhood. So I called her up and we just, you know, we talked about what we ate on long car trips and what we ate when our grandparents would like let us get junk food that our parents wouldn't let us get. You know, it just, we were just laughing. Yeah, it's really, it really does help you connect with other people and those memories. And so the final sense that you decided to dive into was, I think, the one you were absolutely most excited for, which is the sense of touch. And so talk about why touch is a little bit weird. In some ways, it actually is like literally our biggest sense, like just in terms of how it works with our bodies.

Yeah, well, it's funny because, you know, you think of, I always thought of skin as like packaging, but you know, that's where we get our sensations for touch. It's incredibly complex systems of how we touch, how we perceive touch. It's different all over the body. Some places really only get vague sensations, some, you know, very, very fine. And, you know, you think of touching

as being kind of like the final reality. Like if you reach out and touch something, that means like that's how you know that think of touching as being kind of like the final reality like if you reach out and touch something that means like that's how you know that it's there and so I hadn't realized before I started this like how touch focused I was and that's one of the things that really surprised me with this is you're like how do you not know your own preferences like how do you not know what you like or don't like it seems like there's nothing that would be more obvious but I realized I just sort of bumbled around in this fog and I really didn't notice a lot about what I did and didn't like. And I've gotten a much more nuanced sense of my own preferences

having done this. And one of the things I didn't know is how much I am attuned to the sense of touch and how much I love certain touch experiences, even things like peeling hard-boiled eggs. And tell a friend said, oh, I can't wear like a cotton button-down shirt unless I have an undershirt on because I can't stand that feeling of cotton. And I thought, oh my gosh, I can't stand that feeling of cotton. Like, how did I not know that? But now that you say that, there is something about that feeling that I don't like either. How did I not know that? You know? that, there is something about that feeling that I don't like either. How did I not know that? But once you figure out what you know, then you can try to avoid the things that feel bad.

But maybe more importantly, you can put more of the things that feel good into your life. And this is something that you did a lot with touch, which is to realize that you can use touch for self-care. You can set up environments where just what you touch makes you feel good. Yes. So part of that is textures, like what you're wearing. And I think a lot of people are more and more... In fact, I have a brand of t-shirt now where they print the label right on the shirt. So there's no label. And I think that's because a lot of people just...

That scratchy sensation of a label is something that's so common that people don't like. But yeah, I found that... And I think more and more people are aware of this. There's fidget toys. There's pop toys, therapy dough. All these things are great as a way to use your hands. I also think like if you're on a Zoom call or something, I think it can be a great way to kind of channel your restlessness

to have something in your hands that you're manipulating. I have a fidget spinner that I will just spin and spin and spin and spin. But here's something that I didn't expect. And this was as a way to stay calm. And I had read a celebrity memoir by Andrew McCarthy where he was talking about using bongos for a difficult performance that he was giving and how just having something in his hand sort of helped him organize his performance. And again, this is the kind of thing where it's like, how do you not know this about yourself? You just hang out with yourself all day long. And yet I had not noticed this about myself, which is that if I'm anxious about something, I will often hold a pen in my left hand. I'm left handed. There's no paper. There's no reason to write anything down. But if I'm like backstage before I'm giving a big talk or I'm going to like a cocktail party where I don't know anybody,

I just feel better if I hold a pen. There's just something about having my hand around it, that touch of that object grounds me. And when I started asking around, people like teachers said they held mugs, or an organizer said they held a clipboard, or a photographer said for subjects who felt uneasy getting their picture taken, he would give them like a wine glass to hold because there's something about holding something in our hands. Hands are very important. Hands are special, I found. And I realized like I could tap into that. I could consciously shape my environment in a way that made it more comfortable for me. Because if I say like, don't forget your pen, Gretchen, because you'll feel better if you're holding your pen,

then that's something that I can consciously use instead of just like unconsciously groping my way toward. So far, we've seen that paying more attention to our senses can help us find out more about our preferences. And that we can use our knowledge of what sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds we do and don't like to improve how we feel in our everyday lives. But after the break, Gretchen will take us further into how we feel in our everyday lives. But after the break, Gretchen will take us further into how we can use our senses to feel happier. She'll share the hacks that she uses to make her days more vivid and more enjoyable. Hacks so powerful, they can turn even the act of staring at an ordinary traffic cone into a feast for the senses. It was definitely one of the most transcendent experiences of my life.

The beauty of nature, pure nature. Gretchen and I will be back in a moment. 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. In most respects, the way that we experience the world via our senses is deeply personal. The smells we love and the tastes that make us swoon might not be shared by any of our friends. But as podcaster and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin found as she explored her own senses, there are great opportunities to combine seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting with joyful social interaction.

My mother grew up eating sort of traditional Jewish foods. And I live in New York City, and the Lower East Side is known for having all of these places that have amazing traditional Jewish foods. And so I thought, well, I would love to connect with my mother-in-law and her childhood. So like, let's go on a taste tour of the Lower East Side and we'll go to all these places and try these foods, many of which I hadn't tasted before. And my daughters were so interested that they decided to come too. This kind of bonding over food is familiar to many of us. And Gretchen's culinary tour of New York was a great success. But she also preaches a little bit of caution.

Because as we learn more about our own sensory preferences, we also need to stop to appreciate what other people do and don't like and show their sensory preferences a bit more respect. People live in different sensory worlds. And again, this is something that I think we all intellectually know, but it's sort of hard to realize how true it is, how concretely true it is. And I think when people say, like, this is really bothering me, or I don't feel comfortable in an environment with this, instead of dismissing it or saying, well, obviously it's fine. It's fine for me, so obviously it's fine for you. Or, wow, what's wrong with me if something is really bothering me that other people don't seem to be bothered by? It's to say, like, well, people really live in different sensory worlds. And so we can shape those to some extent to make sure that we're in an environment that is as comfortable to us as

possible. But then also to have empathy for other people who maybe are feeling discomfort. Like, I love perfume. I love it when people wear perfume because I'm always like, maybe there's a new great perfume for me to discover. But I know that a lot of people don't like for people to wear perfume. So I don't wear it out and about. I wear it at home because I'm always like, maybe there's a new great perfume for me to discover. But I know that a lot of people don't like for people to wear perfume. So I don't wear it out and about. I wear it at home because I know that people have different preferences

and I try to be respectful of that. But realizing that there are things that we can do, like for some people visually, like they want things to be very orderly. So it's like clear clutter. And then there are people like me who need a lot of silence. So I clear clatter. Whereas for other people, they want music playing. They want things to be very orderly. So it's like clear clutter. And then there are people like me who need a lot of silence. So I clear clatter. Whereas for other people, they want music playing.

They want people talking. They like that. That helps them to think and focus. So really saying to yourself, well, where do I thrive? What does feel right to me? Instead of trying to jam yourself into someone else's model or just assuming that because other people like something, it might work for you.

Sometimes it takes a little experimenting. And so that's the example of kind of changing your environment to be a little bit more focused, to kind of perform better, right? You clear the clatter, clear the clutter. There's also transforming your environment to experience a little bit more self-care. And so talk about some specific sensory examples that we could bring in, whether it's adding a fragrance or adding a new texture. Like, how can we really kind of make ourselves feel good with our senses?

Yeah, I mean, it really is true. It's thinking like, what would add to my environment? And so I think for a lot of people, plants and flowers, and people tap into big different aspects of plants and flowers. So for some people, it's the smell. For some people, it's the kind of the feeling of life and energy that comes from a plant. Another, it's the smell. For some people, it's the kind of the feeling of life and energy that comes from a plant. Another, it's the beauty of seeing the leaves or the colors. There's the touch of like watering them and pulling off the leaves that need to be pulled out. Like there's all sorts of elements to it. But this is something that for a lot of people in different ways, I've talked to people who are like, oh, wow, like just putting a plant in my home office has made the whole room feel just more full of life. And so you can be thinking about things

like that. And I think there's both eliminating the negative, which is what are the things that are bringing you down or draining you? And then the adding, which is what are the things that will make you make it feel richer? So you could say like, okay, I'm in my home office. Like maybe there's something that smells bad that I need to get rid of. I found that we had these garbage bags that had this fresh, clean smell that I really, really disliked. And I just put up with it for years because I don't know why. Then I'm like, okay, let me just tackle that and switch to a different garbage bag. Or you can add something good, whether that's making sure that you open the windows so that you get fresh air and the smell of the outdoors or a plant or a scented candle. Some people really love the smell of some products like Sharpies. I have a friend who

loves the smell of Sharpies. And so every time he sits down at his desk, he's like, I take a whiff of Sharpie and that's like my sign. I'm buckling down. And I thought that was so funny to have like a ritual smell that's like, you know, I'm on it. And I think this is the power of what you talk about in your book is that when you remember that you have five senses, you can start harnessing all of them. You know, I think for me, you know, I often think like, oh, if I'm settling down to some tough task at work, like, oh, I'll put some music on that I'll work through, you know, that gets me working. But I forget like, oh, I can hack my sense, you know,

I can smell a Sharpie or I can put a candle on. I can hack my textures, right? Like I can get either a nice soft blanket, maybe I wear something, you know, more prickly at that point. So I'm like kind of more on and more awake. Like the key is that there's like so many different routes that we can use to hack how we're feeling. And we forget that, you know, we have at least five that we're often not paying attention to. Absolutely. And it's all right there. You know, it's all part of our experience.

And so it's so accessible to us. And I don't know why, but there is just this energy and this kind of almost excitement that comes from tapping into the five senses. And I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it is because it just goes directly into our sense of ourselves. But yeah, you don't want to get stuck in just like your old ordinary favorites.

Like for you, it's like, oh, your favorite playlist or whatever. Whereas for me, it wouldn't be that. But there are other things that I would do just like as part of my ordinary routine to think, no, there's more you can do. You can try new things and it's fun and it's exciting to try something new. And part of my ordinary routine to think, no, there's more you can do. You can try new things and it's fun and it's exciting to try something new. And part of that trying new things is really

trying to harness the noticing part of the senses. We talked a little bit before about using this five senses journal, but give people a sense of like how that practice really works in the trenches. Like, do you have a notebook? Like, do you kind of notice things as you go through your day? What's that like? Yes, I have a notebook that I just, you know, kind of concocted. And I don't write much, so it's not like I'm writing a paragraph. I just write down what it was. So it could be something like the texture of tinfoil. You know, I always have loved the texture of tinfoil ever since I was little. Like it's one of my earliest memories was I had one of those snack, like a, not a Twinkie, but the one, the chocolate roll-up one that came with this very, very thin tinfoil. And I remember I'd like ever since then I've loved tinfoil. So I might just write down smoothing tinfoil because again, it's like,

how did I not notice how much I love tinfoil? But it wasn't until I started this project that I was like back to my earliest youth, I have loved this feeling of tinfoil. I just had never sort of tuned into that. And so I think that this is the kind of thing that helps. Or even like you mentioned, oh, how remarkably bad this garbage truck smells. I find that I like negative sensations more now because I'm just more interested in them and intrigued. You're just like, wow, that color combination is just making my eyes pop out. It's so bad. Or there's that

terrible smell. Holy cow, I want to keep smelling it because it's so bad. Or, ooh, what is this texture? It's sort of uncanny and it's giving me shivers, but I want to keep touching it because I want to understand it. So I'm just, as I do it, I do it very casually. I want to keep it easy and fun. So I'm not trying to rank anything on like a one to 10 scale or write a long memory of it, though I can imagine that other people might do it in that way. A lot of the exercises that I do, I do it in a particular way, but it's just meant to give people ideas for things that they might try. There's no right way to do it.

People put all sorts of twists on it. You know, talk about how you did this with your husband, Jamie. Yes. One of the things I did is I did a five senses portrait of Jamie. So for each of the five senses, I wrote down five impressions

that I had for him for that sense. This was wonderful. Like, I really, really love doing it. Then my editor said, I think that you should write a five senses portrait of yourself for that sense. This was wonderful. Like, I really, really loved doing it. Then my editor said, I think that you should write a five senses portrait of yourself for the book as part of your about the author. And I was like, that truly had never occurred to me to do it, even though I just wrote a whole book, Life in Five Senses. I did not think to do that. So I did that. I was like that. I got all this insight into myself. But then we talked about it on the Happier podcast.

And somebody said that she did it as a way to hold on to memories of a grandparent who had died, to hang on to those like very concrete memories and to convey them to her own children who were too young to remember this person who was gone. And then somebody else said they did it as a gift to somebody because she said like, what makes you really feel more seen and heard and smelled and tasted and touched than somebody doing a five senses portrait of you? And so she gave it as like a birthday gift. So again, it's like there's no one right way to do these kinds of exercises. It's more like how would you put your own twist on it to achieve your own aims for what you want to do to connect with your senses? And those last twists that you talk about, you know, I'm noticing that many of them are really social, right? You know, kind of sharing sensory observations with other people. And that's kind of the last hack I wanted you to talk about, which is, you know, so many of the benefits that we get from paying attention to our senses, like maybe ironically, because you assume they'd be much more internal benefits, like you're feeling mindful and present and so on. But so many of the benefits we talked about over these episodes are that these benefits are social, right? You're kind of connecting with other people. And so talk about

how we can really engage these senses socially, maybe as like adventures with other people, or going to have hacks we can do to make sure we're getting the social benefits from our senses. Yeah, and I think we do this automatically because, of course, we like go sightseeing with people, or we go to concerts with other people, or we share meals with other people and so these are obviously ways to share share sensory experiences but i think we often don't think of those those examples as like this is an example of sharing a sensory experience with somebody as a way to draw closer to them and so when you think about okay well how could i put a different new kind of twist on it so like i did that with taste because I'm like, I'm not a big taste person. And, you know, it's like having a dinner part of me is very hospitable, but then part of me is

kind of like, oh my gosh, it seems like, like really hard and demanding to like have a dinner party. So I had a taste party where I just had some friends over and we all did taste comparisons. And so it was a way to connect with people socially and what i found is like we we connected on this really deep level like we were talking about our memories and like like people in our lives and you know our childhoods and we had a whole thing about candy you know like what kind of candy you ate as a kid and why and it just became very intimate and yet it was super fun and everybody was laughing and sort of like talking. And it kind of much more engaged way than I think, you know, sort of like a dinner party.

And so, but the only reason that it occurred to me is I was thinking like, well, is there another way that I can connect with people with taste that's different, that might feel more interesting to me, more engaging to me. And so I was able to find a new way, because of course, there are very classic ways to do it, but then there are new ways to do it too. And so when we kind of broaden our view

of what it might be to share a sensory experience with someone, like again, you might go to a concert with somebody or maybe you're like, let's go to a sound bath together. That's sort of different and interesting. And it's another way to share a sensory experience with someone.

Maybe you wouldn't want to go to the same concert because you don't like the same kinds of music. Or you're like me and you just want the one song. But you're like, let's go try a sound bath. That's different. And I think this is sort of maybe a final tip is that as we think about how to use sensory experiences socially, it's important that if we're trying to kind of be ourselves, I know you have this mantra, be Gretchen, we might need to think about what the other person likes too and find spots where there's kind of common ground. And I think we can only do that through experimenting and getting really much more creative and remembering that we can use sound in this way to connect with other people. Right. And realizing there's probably a lot more possibilities than you might kind of think at first glance, because again, there are

these sort of traditional things that you think of, but then when you open it up, you might see that there are different things and things, as you say, that could bring you together with someone, even though what you prefer might be very different in some ways, maybe you could find a different way, a more unexpected way to show. I mean, like I had a friend, we were going to go to cryotherapy together. And it's like, there's really, I don't, we don't have that much in common. I don't know that we would want to do lots of things together. Our interests are very different, but it was like, we're both interested in cryotherapy. Let's do that. And you know, I would not have thought of that if I hadn't been thinking about, well, how do I tap into my senses as a way to connect with other people?

And I was like, well, she's interested in cryotherapy. Maybe we should do that. And so I wanted you to end just with my favorite story from the book because it just shows how transcendent your experience of life can be, even in boring times when you start paying attention to the senses. And so can you share the story of the traffic cone that you ended the book with? Yes, this was a very uncanny and transcendent moment of my life. One of the exercises that I did for the book was to visit the Metropolitan Museum every day. So I was, you know, I was looking at things all the time. You know, these are like classic masterpieces.

But then one day I was out walking my dog Barnaby and it was very unusual sky conditions. The light was very unusual. It was just getting ready to storm. And it was just an orange traffic cone that was sitting against the asphalt. And it was like in a moment, this traffic cone became like the only true object in the world. It was like the platonic ideal of an object. It seemed like it just glowed in the light. I felt like everything, you know how

in a movie they'll show everything like moving back from some central object is kind of like to show how central it was. I felt like literally like I could see everything in the street sort of moving back like in reverence of this traffic cone. The traffic cone, it seemed like a natural thing. You know, there's certain things that seem both natural and man-made like sea glass or a scholar's rock or a park bench. It looked like that. And I just was transfixed in everything. Just again, like everything seemed to heighten in my mind. I just seemed to experience everything in this moment. This is this sort of timeless moment.

And then, you know, just the light, a cloud was deeper over the sun or, you know, the wind picked up and then it just turned back into an ordinary traffic cone but it was definitely one of the most transcendent experiences of my life and it was transcendent in a very impersonal way it was like the beauty of nature pure nature just like pure form and it was it was an extraordinary moment and and maybe the only reason that i was able to experience it was that i had been doing so much to try to tune into my surroundings that it didn't pass unnoticed. The ability to find such joy, such awe in the sight of sun bouncing off a traffic cone is something I now aspire to. It reminds me that we often get true moments of pleasure wrong. We assume we can only experience joy from perfectly crafted sensory moments. Taking a mouthful of ridiculously expensive wine, or the feel of a cooling breeze

on a tropical island, or gazing at the perfect sunset from high on a mountaintop. We assume sensory joy only comes from Instagram-worthy moments like these. But reading Gretchen's book, Life in Five Senses, reinforced what I know the science says, that we can find little spots of happiness each and every day if we just take time to hunt for them in the ordinary things around us. So what new things will you notice this week? What colors or interesting sounds or odd smells will you focus on during your commute or in your kitchen or with the people you love? I hope that by honing the sensory gifts you take for granted every day,

that you, like Gretchen, take for granted every day, that you, like Gretchen, can find new wonder and joy around you. In the next episode of The Happiness Lab, I continue my conversation with some of my happiness idols. I get to grab some quality chat time with one of the founders of happiness science, and get to hear what he's learned over his lifetime of research into what gives us meaning and makes us feel good. Hear more from the amazing Marty Seligman 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 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.