The Liz Moody Podcast - The Hidden Elements of Happiness That No One Is Talking About With Gretchen Rubin

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Genius ways to tap into your best life, including how to boost creativity, calm, and human connection; get closer to your family; make your healthy habits stick; be happier at work, and more with leading happiness expert Gretchen Rubin.  hacks to instantly boost: creativity, calm, energy, and human connection the untapped tool for happiness we should all be utilizing daily the first thing a happiness expert does when she’s feeling down the single most universally helpful hack for making habits stick  the 2 questions that will help you figure out what you want most in life  3 research-backed steps to be happier at work  a genius trick to become way closer with your family  advice for being better at relaxing and restoring yourself in your down time and so much more!  For more from Gretchen, head to gretchenrubin.com, find her on Instagram @gretchenrubin, and check out her new book Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World.  To join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthiertogetherpodcast. This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  ZocDoc: go to ZocDoc.com/Liz and download the Zocdoc app for FREE and book a top-rated doctor today.  Cozy Earth: visit cozyearth.com and use code HEALTHIER35 for up to 35% sitewide.  Seed: go to seed.com/daily-synbiotic and use code LIZMOODY for 30% off your first month. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're getting the tools to start healing childhood trauma, learning neuroscience hacks for manifesting our dream lives, or uncovering the best ways to support our immune systems. And yes, those are all real episodes, so if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives.

Today, I am so excited to welcome Gretchen Rubin to the podcast. Gretchen has been studying happiness and human nature for over a decade. You probably know her from one of her five New York Times bestsellers, including the mega popular The Happiness Project, which honestly might have been the very first personal growth book that I personally ever bought. I read it during the time when I was agoraphobic in London, and she really felt like a wise, comforting friend who was just rich and helpful advice. She is also the host of the award-winning podcast, happier with Gretchen Rubin and the founder of the award-winning. happier app, which helps people track their happiness boosting habits. Gretchen's brand new book, Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses got me out of my head and Into the World, just came out yesterday and you can pick up a copy wherever books are sold. Gretchen is one of the most thoughtful, curious people that I have ever interviewed and I absolutely love her way of looking at the world. We get into so many interesting topics in this episode, including hacks to instantly boost creativity, calm, energy, and human connection, the untapped tool for happiness that we should all be utilizing

daily, the first thing that a happiness expert does when she's feeling down, the single most universally helpful hack for making habits stick, the two questions that will help you figure out what you want most in life. Three research back steps to be happier at work, a genius trick to become way closer with your family, advice for being better at relaxing and restoring yourself in your downtime and so much more. We would both love to hear your thoughts and your biggest takeaways as you're listening to the episode. So definitely screenshot and tag me. I am at Liz Moody and Gretchen is at Gretchen Rubin on Instagram. And if you love this episode, please share it with somebody in your life that you think would appreciate the messages in it.

There are so many fun activities in here that you could do with a friend or bring to the office or do with your family. So send a link to someone to start the discussion. It has been so incredible to see the podcast grow so much in 2023. And it's all because of every single one of you, sharing links, putting them on workplace Slack channels, sending text messages to your friends. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It is so appreciated. Okay. Now let's get right into it with Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen, thank you so much for being here. I have been such a fan of your work for such a long time. So it's an honor to get to talk to you today. Well, I'm so happy to get the chance to talk to you. Thanks for having me on. Well, let's just dive right into your beautiful new book. It's all about connecting to our five senses,

which is something that I honestly had never thought about in my life before I had read your book. So I'm curious, what do you view as the promise there? What can connecting more to our five senses do to increase our life happiness? I started sort of researching and experimenting with the five senses thinking that it would make me happier, but I have to say I was astonished by just how effective it is. It's just sort of a concrete, manageable tool that we all have at hand. It doesn't take a lot of time, energy, or money to turn our attention to our five senses, but it can help with almost any aim that we're trying to change. For instance, if you're trying to draw closer to other people, there are a lot of ways to

tap into the five senses to draw closer to other people. It's a great way to connect. It's a great way to spark memories, evoke memories, and solidify memories for the future. Often we have memories we don't even remember that we have. And through the five senses, we can reach out and recapture those. It's a great way to help yourself. It's kind of funny. It does both things. It both helps you get rid of stress and calm down and chill out. But it also helps you pump up and get energized so you can get whatever you need from the five senses. It can help us stop and really, like be present, appreciate the moment. So there's just sort of spark creativity. It's a great way if you're feeling stuck or you're feeling blocked. It's a great way to write your family holiday

newsletter or you need to come up with an angle to josh up your annual report, cover letter. Whatever it might be, the five senses will often help you to unlock that. It's really a tool that can be used in almost any direction once you think to say, how could I use the power of my five senses in this situation. I would love to dive into some of the ones that you mentioned. What's one way that we could tap into one of our five senses to feel closer to other people? It's a great way to connect with other people because when we share a sensory experience, it's something that we're having right here, right now. So let's just say sense of taste. This is a classic. You go out to a restaurant with other people. You have people over for a dinner party. I decided to put a spin on it. So I had a taste

party. I went to Flavor University and we did taste comparisons. These are super fun. So I had friends over and we tasted varieties of apples and discussed what we thought and different kinds of chocolate. And I gave them a mystery drink, which, spoiler alert, was Red Bull and was like, what do you think of this? And they were like, this is bonkers. What is this? So we just had a lot of fun. This is something you can do with your coworkers because it's fun and it's pleasurable. Doing apples is a great thing because there's actually, they really taste very, very different from each other, but you rarely sit down and eat like an apple back to back with another kind of apples, or like olives.

These are just great ways to connect to feel closer to other people. A great way to connect with other people is through listening. I mean, one of the most important things we do with our sense of sound is listening to other people talk. I did a manifesto for listening to help myself listen more actively. Listening sounds sort of passive, but it's actually very effortful to be an attentive listener and to show that you're an attentive listener, it really does bring people closer together. There's interesting research showing if a child is trying to solve a problem and is explaining it to a parent who's just listening quietly, they will be more effective in problem solving

than if they didn't do that. There's something about just having somebody listen that helps us come to solutions, even if the person isn't. We think we need the right thing to say. But sometimes it's just listening in the right way. that. And then you mentioned we can use our senses to become either calmer or more energized. Could you share an example in either of those categories? This was something that really surprised me. It's how we can use the sense of touch to stay calm and grounded. I think now people are very aware of things like fidget spinners, pop toys, therapy dough, weighted blankets as a way to calm down. Those are familiar. One of the things

that surprised me was the idea of holding a prop. What I found for myself and then talking to other people, I found they did the same thing. There's something about holding something. thing that helps people to feel grounded and calm. And I have been doing this for years without consciously understanding the pattern of my own behavior was when I'm anxious, I'll hold a pen. There's no paper. If I had to take a note, I could just write it on my phone. But holding a pen just helps me to feel grounded. This happened to me recently. I walked into a party where I did not know one person. I found that holding a pen helped me to feel grounded. And I've heard of a of a teacher who held a mug or an organizer who would hold a clipboard or a photographer who would help

people getting their picture taken. People would hold a wine bottle or a wine glass and that would help them to relax so that they could have their picture taken or somebody would hold a stone or a cold water bottle. There's something of it having something in your hand that helps you to calm down. And then of course there's petting a cat or dog or horse. Some people have horses. There's something about that warm touch that is also very, very calming. That's something that we can reach out for and to help us calm down. And then when it comes to being energized, one of the quickest, easiest ways to intervene in your mood and give yourself a boost is through music. Listening to your favorite upbeat song is one of the quickest ways to intervene in your mood. And you can really tap into this

by creating playlist for all kinds of moods if you want to feel energetic and pumped up, If you want to feel focused and productive, if you want to feel meditative and reflective, you can really use music to help you do that. I called it my audio apothecary because I did one to cure the blues, it's all very, very happy upbeat songs. That's my audio apothecary. Then smell often will give us a feeling of energy or a friend of mine when she wants to focus, just like sometimes people will turn on white noise or music without lyrics or

go to a busy coffee shop to give themselves the kind of sensory environment they need to focus. She has a candle that she burns when it's like her signal, okay, it's time to put your head down and really think. She's created that association. She only uses that candle and experiences that smell when she's trying to put herself in that energized focused mood. So a lot of times we can think of imaginative out of the box ways to harness the five senses once we start thinking about it. That's so interesting. And then you mentioned creativity. Could you use? share one way that we could use our senses to get in touch with our creative selves? So here's a really fun, unexpected way, is just go someplace that has materials and raw tools.

Go to a hardware store, an office supply store, a thrift store, a farmer's market, a department store, an art supply store, a craft store. And it doesn't have to be something that you intend to use. You could go to a hardware store, even though you're not going to like make a table or, you know, put up shelves or something. There is just something about materials and tools. You can touch them. You put your hands in the bin of screws or you brush your hands on the tips of the paint brushes and you see all the cans of paint or you see all the notebooks and pens that really unlocks our sense of possibility, suggests new associations. And I figured this out because I go to the Metropolitan Museum every day. That was one of my most ambitious exercises for the book.

And I thought that visiting the Met every day might spark my creativity. And I thought maybe I'll want to like do collages or start drawing or something. And in fact, what it did is it sparked my creativity with words, which is my medium. So it made me more creative, but along kind of my natural path. And I've noticed that this is true of going to the hardware store, going to the cooking store. It doesn't even have to be something that you would make use of. Being around that stuff has this enlivening sense of possibility. That's very, very exciting. I found that part of your experience, meant so interesting because I'm a person who has always tried to love art museums and I cannot do it. I like a history museum. I like a photography museum. I like something that I can really

clearly associate the story with. And I found the parts of your book where you were exploring, connecting with the art in really different ways, very interesting as a person who's trying to learn to connect with art. I think in some ways it was more the experience of the museum itself. as an experience rather than going to look at a painting. So I was like, what is it like when there are fountains? And how is it different if there are skylights? And how is the sound different in every room? And are there different smells here?

So I did appreciate the art. I did love the art. And it was interesting how that changed. But a lot of it was about just the place. So maybe you can think about what it's like to be in that space rather than, okay, I'm going to go look at these paintings. And that's what the experience is. And no tool fits every hand.

If you don't like museums, maybe they're just not for you and you've given it a shot. And now you're going to spend more time going to natural history museums or historical sites. There's so much to do there. Sometimes we feel like there's something wrong with us or we need to keep trying something over and over even if it doesn't work. That's why I gave up meditation. People kept saying to me, oh, you got to meditate. It's so great. I'm like, it's not for me.

And that's okay because other people can do it. And it's fine for them. So maybe it's just not for you. The talk that I saw you do in Brooklyn was with Dan Harris, the author of 10% Happyer, is like a panel. And he was in that talk being like, Gretchen, we got to get you meditating. And you were like, I'm okay. I mean, he was so convincing.

He got me to try it a second time and a really good solid try for months. And finally, I was like, Dan, it's not for me. It's not for everyone. He's like, okay. But he's very, very persuasive. He is. It is interesting, though, reading even. Even your exploration of all of the senses made me think about how different all of our preferences are,

like how some of us like certain flavors. Some of us are desert people. Some of us are mountain people. Do you know why these preferences exist in the first place? There doesn't feel like there's an evolutionary or biological reason for it. It's upbringing, its culture, it's genetics, its preferences, all these things. But, you know, speaking of how people have different appreciated senses and neglected senses, is a really helpful thing to know about yourself is your neglected sense. What is the sense you least often turn to for comfort or pleasure or enjoyment?

But this is kind of a hard thing to know about yourself. So I ended up creating a quiz. It's the neglected sense quiz, which if you go to Gretchenrubin.com slash quiz, it's free and quick. And it will tell you your most neglected sense. And that's good because that's where the low-hanging fruit is. If you know you don't often tap into that sense,

then it's a place where you're like, okay, well, let me look for more possibilities because with your very appreciated sense, you're probably already doing a lot with it to enjoy it. But with the ones you neglect, there's probably more room to grow. And that's very exciting to bring in this new sense of possibility. What were your neglected senses? My neglected sense is taste, which I have not surprised by. And then my next most neglected sense, I would say hearing.

And you might say, hey, but Gretchen, those are such popular senses. People love the sense of taste. People love the sense of hearing. Well, the fact is, people love all the senses. There's huge fans of all the senses. I love the sense of smell. Bill, I love the sense of touch, which I didn't know until I wrote this book. How bonkers is that?

That's how up in my head I was. I thought I neglected my sense of touch. I'm actually incredibly aware of the sense of touch. It was very, very attuned to touch, had all kinds of preferences and opinions, and it had all this influence on my life. And I had no idea. It's harder to know yourself than you might, think you'd think oh, I'd just hang out with myself all day. Of course I know what I appreciate and what I

neglect. It's kind of hard to tell. Could you share some ways that we could begin to heighten our attunement with our senses, that we could like raise our sense of taste and touch and smell and auditory pleasure? One very easy thing to do is a five senses journal because what you need to do is rouse your attention. So if you keep a five senses journal, you just write down like one notable sense from each sense. So something interesting that you saw. It doesn't have to be the best thing you saw. It's just something remarkable. And you do that for each sense.

And that starts to heighten your awareness because you're needing that information. Your brain will start to highlight that information for you and you'll start to pick it out. Speaking of tools that don't work, I'm also a person who did not like keeping a gratitude journal. I found that very annoying. But this is a kind of gratitude journal. It's like paying tribute to the beauty of the world and the richness of the world. I liked keeping it by senses journal, both because it heightened my senses and also because it felt like a way of capturing time and the beauty of the passing experience of my life.

That's one way. Another way is if you deprive yourself of something that will often heighten your sense. Like I spent a weekend in human silence. So I didn't talk to anybody or have anybody talk to me or listen to podcasts or watch movies or listen to music that had lyrics. And having that silence, well, first of all, I love silence. And I found it extraordinarily restoratively restorative. But then also then when I had kicked my family out of our apartment, when they came back, I was so happy to have them back. It really made me realize, oh, oh, it makes me so happy to hear their voices. And oh, I hear the clanking of the elevator because they're coming up. And it really made me love my sense of hearing. If you don't have coffee for a week and then you have a couple of coffee,

like, this tastes so good. Deprivation is not always a popular approach, but it's definitely effective. I love that. It reminds me of one of my key takeaways from your book, which was the line, the more you notice, the more you enjoy. And I think that that sounds really simple. But you have all of these tiny examples of things in the book that we're just not noticing and thus we're missing out on opportunities to enjoy. And I was wondering if you could share some of those really small things we might be missing so we can begin to prime our brains towards the opportunity to experience that pleasure. One thing that's really fun is to look for things that are overlooked. And this is the hidden images and logos. This is so fun. Like, have you seen the hidden Arrow in the FedEx logo? Have you seen

the hidden Hershey's Kiss in the Hershey's Kisses logo? Have you seen the happy people partying on the Tostitos label? Have you seen the hidden eight on the eight of diamonds on a deck of playing cards? There are all these little things that are overlooked. I was so enchanted by this exercise of looking for what's overlooked that on my book jacket, there is something hidden, something that is very easy to overlook, but that will give people the fun of finding something. So as a hint, in the book, I use five icons to represent the five senses. One of those icons is hidden on the dust jacket of the book.

And if you see it, you will know exactly that you have found it. But it's hard. It's not easy to find. It's the Where's Waldo that we all have from childhood, where it's just fun to do that. So it's fun to do that in your everyday life. It's just very easy to overlook what's all around us, you know, the smell of my daughter's shampoo or things that change. I'm like, when did my husband stop wearing an analog watch and switch to a digital watch?

When did my daughter stop painting her fingernails like three times a day? When did my dog get a new favorite dog toy? What happened to the Abominable Snowman? Now he's carrying around this kind of UFO disc. When did that happen? It's just like a lot of things in our everyday life that it's very easy to overlook. And that's why I like that line so much. Our lives are peppered with these little moments that we can experience a burst of pleasure. And by not tapping into those moments, we're essentially missing out on these little pops of pleasure that we could be filling our lives with. here's a great example because I neglect the sense of taste. You know, when you go to a restaurant and you order something and then it lists with lime juice and distilled blah, blah, and the this

and the that and the saffron, it describes it. I always just would just ignore that. I'd be like, I'll take the chicken. I'll have the grilled salmon. And then I realized, well, I would enjoy all of these more delicate flavors if I would pay attention and then seek them out. Like, can I pick up lime? Can I pick up cilantro? Do I taste a dusting of black pepper or whatever? whatever it is. So I really try to, if I'm in a restaurant, pay close attention because there would be a side dish and I would think, I have no idea what that is. What is that? I don't know, because I hadn't paid any attention and I was in such a fog that I couldn't even tell the difference between parsnips and Brussels sprouts. That's a little way because then you can really

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offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. On a societal level, what are the factors that you think are keeping us from tapping into our senses? Like is it our phones? Is it hustle culture? Is it the fact that we're stressed and busy? Why have we lost those connections? I think it might be two things. are kind of opposite of each other, but both combining. On the one hand, often experience can feel drained and flat. Things are coming to us through a screen. They're two-dimensional. They feel very drained of life. And then on the other hand, a lot of things feel hyper-processed and hyper-saturated. So you're eating food that has been engineered to hit every bliss point. But at the same time, because you picked it up at the store, you're not getting the smells.

of the baking and the grilling and the roasting that would have rounded out that experience and wet your appetite. You go to a movie and you see all these images just like more than you could ever see in real life. And then there's this soundtrack with this beautiful music that's like giving you all of this information and emotion. And yet you're not smelling anything.

There's no air in your face. And so on the one hand, things are too flat. And on the other hand, like things are too processed. This leaves us feeling a craving. for direct contact. People talk about the Metaverse, but it doesn't seem to be catching on. People really want the universe. Everything these days is built as immersive because they know people find that incredibly compelling. They want to engage with their five senses. It's enticing. It just feels exciting to have this promise of like you're going to go in and all five senses

are going to get stimulated. That just feels satisfying where a lot of times people feel like otherwise things just don't feel rich. I think that's such a good point. You talk about in the book, you're hoping this process will help you uncover larger truths about happiness and life. Did you reach any larger truths? And could you share some with us, if so? The larger truth is that tapping into our five senses is a way that we can create happier lives,

whether that's by drawing closer to other people or sparking our creativity or managing ourselves by managing our energy. and our stress. I mean, and there's even funny little things that it can help us do. I wrote a book about habit formation called Better Than Before. And so I talked to people about their habits all the time. And one habit that a lot of people want to change is mid-afternoon on a workday, like they're feeling bored, they're feeling listless, they're feeling restless, and they walk through the kitchen and they're grabbing a snack from the fridge

or they're walking to the vending machine and grabbing something. And sometimes that's fine, but it's often an unhealthy snack. And so often people are trying to break this habit. And what I found is you could tap into your five senses for that. You know, what you're doing is reaching for your sense of taste. And that's leading you to an unhealthy snack. But you could pick a different sense. So if you love music, maybe you save new music and you listen to it when you're in that

mid-afternoon lull and that peps you up. Or like, I love beautiful smells. So I'll go to my perfume collection and smell a perfume. Or maybe I just smell something strong and interesting like fresh towels or a jar of pickles, just something like a strong, interesting smell. Or if you love touch, maybe you go, like, run your fingers through, like, beautiful yarn, or, like, maybe you have therapy dough and you rub it through your fingers and knead it through your fingers.

Does this work because it distracts you, perhaps? Or maybe it is that you're just, we're looking for sensory stimulation as a way to get that boost. One sense is as good as another. So instead of the sense of taste, it's the sense of hearing and that works. I don't know which, maybe it's both, but it really works. I'm connecting more deeply with my memories of people I've, love and connecting with them more deeply. And it's also like, well, now I can stop snacking. They're sort of like the big things, the transcendent things and also kind of the little practical

thing. Here's another little practical thing because I know your listeners love little practical things. If you're trying to get people to be quiet, like you're at a wedding and you need to give a toast or you're in a conference room with a bunch of coworkers who won't be quiet, clanking on a glass or clapping your hands or giving a big whistle, doesn't really work. What really works is a harmonica. You do not even need to play a song. on the harmonica, just blow a note on a harmonica. It is uncanny. It is like we are all kindergartners who have been trained to be quiet when the teacher walks in. People know that sound means time to be quiet and they will just fall silent. And it's such a more pleasing sound and it's so much

more elegant than these other attempts to get people to be quiet. Probably a kazoo would work as well. If you don't have a harmonica, get a kazoo. It must be so gratifying to make these connections over the course of your books and the course of your research throughout time to be like, oh, habit book. And then I'm connecting that now to what I'm learning as I'm exploring the senses. Absolutely. And it's funny because ever since the Happiness Project book came out more than 10 years ago, each book has kind of led to the next one because the happiness project was like a big, broad overview, kind of how do I even think about happiness? How do you even frame it? Because it's such an abstract, complex subject. Like, how do you even approach it? And then with each book, I sort of

shine a spotlight and a different aspect of it. So happier at home was all about the experience of home because for just about everybody, it's hard to be happy if you're not happy at home. So home. And then it's habits because it turns out a lot of times people know perfectly well what would make them happier, but they're just having trouble following through because they're having trouble with habits. That's habits.

Then when I was writing about habits, I'm like, wow, I really noticed that people have very different approaches to what works and doesn't work for them. How do you explain that? That led to me to my personality framework, the four tendencies. And then every time I talked to people about happiness, it was like if people talked about getting outer order, they would get so fired up. I was like, what is going on? A friend told me, I finally cleaned out my fridge and now I know I can switch careers. And I said, I understand that. What is why? What is going on? Why is there this connection? So I wrote this funny little book about

Outer Order Intercom. And then with this book, it was really like, there's something missing. I've been studying happiness and human nature, but I can tell there's something. something that I'm missing. There's something that I'm overlooking. There's some piece of it that hasn't been fit into the puzzle. And when I realized it was the five senses, it was like, and I'd been interested in smell and I've been interested in color. There were all these like little, it was kind of edging up on it, but then all of a sudden I was like, oh, that's what it was and it snapped into focus. To me, everything feels like it's a progress into like a deeper understanding of the general question of how do we live half of your lives. And you've explored

probably thousands of different tools and techniques and tips and tricks over the years. I'm curious out of all of those, which things you find have the most outsized impact on your life every single day? Well, here's the secret. The secret is there is no one secret. The secret is no tool works for every person. We all have to figure it out for ourselves. And as much as people want a one-page PDF that has like the best things, it's hard to say, because sometimes something that works really well for one person will be actually counterproductive for another person, like accountability. In my Four Tenancies framework, obligers need accountability. They have to have accountability. But for Rebels, accountability actually makes them want to

resist. It can be very counterproductive. But there are some things that work for just about everyone. What's the most universal? One would be convenience and inconvenience. It is just hilarious, how much we are influenced by convenience and inconvenience. So whatever you're trying to do, you want to make it as convenient as possible. And if you don't want to do it, make it as inconvenient as possible. So if you want to practice the guitar, leave the guitar out in a place where it's very easy to get to, do not put it away in its case and then put it in the closet in the guest room every time you're done. Or if you don't want to do something, like you don't want to use your smartphone, the television

remote control, put it on a high shelf in a room that's very far away from where the TV is so that you're really inconvenience to go get it. That's one that works for just about everybody. It's really important to think about our bodies. Our physical experience always affects our emotional experience. And that's one of the things that's interesting to me about the five senses. It is focused in the body. Sometimes people get very up in their heads when they're talking about happiness.

Like it's about disciplining the mind or the attention or mindfulness. And things like you've got to get enough sleep. You've got to get some exercise. Go outside. Tap into your five senses. These things really matter to our mood, as well as our immune function and our general health and our energy. And the fact is, if you have energy, it's so much easier to do all the other things that would make you happier. Whereas if you're feeling like really sluggish, really low energy,

even things that you know would make you happier just feel like too much work and you can't face it. Some people, I think they would approach the five senses and a very disciplined kind of, let's do the 5-4-3-2-1 meditation or let's sip a cup of coffee for 30 minutes. Let's go to a museum and let's look at one piece of art for 20 minutes. And that is not my way. This is like the playful, energetic way. This is like the skipping around the room way. This is recess.

Don't make it too hard. Have fun with it. Play and really connect with the energy and joy of the body in whatever way is right for you. It's hard to say different tools because I could say for me, strategy of scheduling is great. For some people, the minute something's on their calendar, they don't want to do it. So that's not a good strategy for them. I feel like small treats comes up for you a lot. In a lot of your books, you have the small treats mentioned. It's interesting. I do mention small treats, and it's because I have a pretty abstemious personality. I do have a

tendency to kind of strip away and strip bare. I'm an underbuyer. I'm pretty rigid as an upholder in the Four Tendencies personality framework. I really do try to encourage myself to have small treats or indulge in a modest splurge so that my life doesn't become just too cramped and joyless. So like a modest splurge that I got that I had so much fun with was I was in an office supply store. And you know how you write was blue or black felt tip pens? And this was just all these unconventional colors like oxblood and caramel brown and olive green. And I looked at them and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so fun. And then I thought, oh, I could buy those. I could buy those felt tip pens and I could use those felt tip pens. And so that's the kind of thing. It was just like a

little treat. And now every time I write with them, it's just a little bit of fun, you know, to use some little unexpected hit of color instead of the same old blue and black that I've been using my whole life. What do you do first if you're feeling down? I will re-referral. I will re-referral will reread a book that I love from childhood. I love children's literature and young adult literature. I read new children's literature all the time. I'm in two book groups where we read children's literature. But I also love to reread. And when I really need comfort, I will go back and reread one of my favorite books from childhood. And then I usually go to bed at like 8.30. I always just do feel better in the morning. And if I'm feeling blue, it often makes me very tired. So I often am like,

I should just go to bed and go to sleep and then I'll feel better when I wake up. I loved the part of your book where you talked about the pleasure of nostalgia. You had that one exercise where you wrote out taste memories over the years. I want to do it immediately. I just think it's the most fun activity. Can you talk about that for a second? Because it brought me joy to even think about it. Yeah, it's so fun.

You divide your life into periods and you could do it any way you wanted. Childhood, young adulthood, college, whatever would make sense. And I divided my life into four epics. And then you just think about what are the most salient taste memories. So it could be things that are very distinctive, like something that you ate during that period of your life, but you didn't have it any other time. So like when I was in law school, I drank Diet Peach Snapple. And that is not something that I did any other time.

So it's very closely associated with law school. Or it's like the favorite thing of that time. When I was in young adulthood, I was just super end oatmeal. So I very much associated with that time, my favorite food of that time. And this is just really fun. All these memories start flooding back. You have to make decisions like what are the five or the 10 best memories? It's really fun to reminisce, I called my sister, because my taste memories are her taste

memories from childhood. So we had so much fun talking about what did we pack when we were going on these day-long car trips and what did we eat at Christmas time? And what about that bakery where we get these special cakes that had this very particular kind of flavor that you didn't have in any other kind of cake. Or I'm from Kansas City and it's like Winstead's hamburgers. Everybody eats at Winsteads if you're from Kansas City and they just are very particular kind of hamburger. So we had so much fun reminiscing and we didn't even need to eat those things. We just could say cinnamon pop tart and all came flooding back. So it is a really fun,

creative way to connect with your own memories. And then if there's somebody else to talk about it with, it's fun to connect with them about it as well. What I love about it is that if you asked me to just remember a day when I was 10 years old, I would have a very hard time doing it. Like I have a very hard time accessing memories of my childhood. But if you said like a kudos bar at a soccer practice, I can bring that back in a second. It just gives you access to this whole world that you don't normally have access to. That is 100% correct. That's so well said. And I feel exactly the same way. It's very hard for me to call for memories. And I have a feeling like I don't remember my own life very well, but you find that it's a concrete way to access and it just brings up

those memories much better. My high school, which was in Kansas City, did this event in New York City for people who had graduated. So these were people that many of them I hadn't seen in such a long time. We all got started and I swear I did not even start this conversation, but it is the kind of thing I would have done saying like, well, what were the smells of our high school and our grade school? It was all one school. And we started talking about, oh, remember the locker room? that was in the basement of this one building. And I mean, oh, my gosh, we were all just laughing. Oh, we could all remember it or remember that Turkey Tetrazidi

that they served in the lunchroom. And I had forgotten all about it, but it all came flooding back. So you're exactly right. You may feel like you don't remember things that well because you sort of don't have a general memory, but then when you really search for these specific memories, then all this context, these circumstances, you can see the room that you stood in.

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That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. One of the things that I think is really special about you that I don't think a lot of people do is that you follow your curiosity. You seem to have this very intuitive sense of what you want and what you need, and then you don't get in the way of yourself pursuing it. And I find that to be an incredibly admirable characteristic. And I also think it's hard for a lot of people to tap into that same side of themselves.

And I was curious if you had any advice for somebody who wanted a little bit more of that energy in their lives. Well, I think anytime you have an aim like that, you want to be very specific about what you're asking of yourself. So if you're like, I want to appreciate the moment, that's a pretty vague aim. I want to get more fun out of life. That's a very vague game. I want to eat more healthfully. I want to connect better with my friends. These are very vague. You want to make an aim something where you know, if you're lying in bed at night, you're like, did I do that or did I not do that? So if you want to get more fun out of life, you might say, well, I love movies. So every Sunday, I'm going to

watch an Academy Award-winning movie from the last 30 years. And then at Sunday night, did you watch the movie or not? If you did, then you're like, I am getting more fun out of life. And if you're not doing it, then you have to figure out, like, well, why aren't you? So I think part of it is really distilling aims into concrete, manageable, measurable actions. I want to spend more time with my friends. Okay, well, are you going to join a book group? Are you going to start a potluck dinner club? Are you going to start a mahjong group? Are you going to have a weekly hike? Are you going to get a group of people together twice a year? Like, there's many, many ways to do it. There are many ways to achieve our aims and you would want to pick the way that's right for you. But what exactly would that look like in terms of your conscious thoughts and action so that you know if you're doing it or not?

You're also putting this structure on it. And it occurs to me that you do that in almost all of your books too. You're not just like, I'll wake up today and figure out a new thing for this. You're like, I'm going to go. of the Met every single day. I'm going to watch an Academy Award movie every single Sunday. You're almost taking the decision fatigue of, well, what do I do to wake up and be happier today, you know, out of the picture? And it's something that you can do it anytime. We often do it no time. So if you're sort of like, I should explore the parks in my hometown. It's like, okay, but any one day is today the day you do it? Probably not for all the reasons that you haven't gone already. You don't know how to drive there. You don't have time. You're busy. You're tired. Whatever. But I do have to to say that for some people, they don't like to make things regimented. They don't like to have things

planned out. Again, that's my Four Tendencies Framework. So these are people who are rebels. They like to be spontaneous. So for them, it might be better to think about the aims that they want to achieve for themselves and do what they feel like, but remind themselves that that's what they feel like doing. But for me, I'm very rigid. I like planning. I'm a rebel if I do your Four Tendencies quiz, but I do feel like structure is necessary to calm some of my own. my more self-destructive tendencies in my world. Like what? I think if I were to live in the way that was most natural to me, like I wouldn't wake up

at a certain time. I would leave my life feeling structuralist to the point that I think I would have a lot more anxiety. I struggle with anxiety in general. So I think that structure, it's been a learning in my life that even though every part of my body pushes against structure, structure is like the thing that keeps my brain calm as well. Interesting. Interesting. Well, that's a great example of knowing yourself because only you can figure that out from the outside. People might say, well, if you resist all this structure, get rid of it or you need more and more structure because that's what works for you. And it's like only you are like, well, it's kind of this push and pull. It's a balance because it can't be so much that I feel like the spirit of resistance becomes unbearable, but it has to be enough so that I'm not spinning out of control and feeling anxious.

100% I'm curious if you have any advice for that, which is the knowing. You take these tiny moments, like you took an eye appointment and you turned it into this entire book and this entire exploration of senses. How does somebody even know that they're interested enough in movies that they want to watch an Academy Award winning movie every Sunday night? I think that we can feel really disconnected from what we even want or need. 100%. This is a huge mystery. It's like, why is it so hard to know ourselves? I just hang out with myself all day long. How do I not know these things? But it's very, very hard.

That's why I did the neglected sense quiz, because it's like people don't know what they're neglected sense quiz. Here are some questions that are helpful if you're trying to get a sense of yourself because it is surprisingly hard. Let's say you want to get more fun out of life and you're like, I literally don't know what I would do for fun. I think it was Jerry Seinfeld that said there's no such thing as fun for the whole family. But I think people sort of convince themselves like, oh, I love doing this.

I love doing that. It's like, no, you don't. It's fun for your family. okay, good, you'll go, but that's not the same thing as it being something that's honestly fun for you, and you want to know the difference. Here's a good question to ask yourself, what did you do for fun when you were 10 years old? Because something that you did for fun when you were 10 years old is probably something that you would enjoy now, though of course adapted for your adult life. So if you liked walking through the woods with your dogs for hours every afternoon, if you liked making arts and crafts every day,

if you played guitar with your friends, that would be something. When I was 10 years, years old, I would spend hours copying out my favorite quotations in these books that I called my blank books. This is exactly what I do in my moment of happiness newsletter. I now have a newsletter that goes out every day where I have one of my favorite quotations about happiness or human nature. It's exactly the same thing. And I enjoy it in exactly the same way as I did as a 10 year old, but it's adapted to my adult circumstance. So that's something that you can tap into. And it is astonishing. How often people will say, well, gosh, I love doing that.

I did that for hours. I did that all the time in high school. I don't know why I don't do that. Oh, I played tennis every single day in high school. I don't know why I haven't played tennis in 10 years. I think you would probably enjoy tennis now, too. At least it's the start. Another thing to ask yourself is whom do you envy.

Envy is a very painful emotion. We often want to deny that we feel envious, but it's a very instructive emotion. because if you envy someone, they have something you wish you had. If you find yourself really envying your coworker who goes on a lot of really interesting trips, well, then that tells you, maybe you wish you could go on an interesting trip. Or if you're really envious of your friend who's taking a cooking class, maybe you would like to get more into cooking. I do not envy somebody who's taking a cooking class because I'm not interested in cooking. And I think sometimes people think, well, of course, we just envy people who have these desirable things.

But they're not universal because we don't all have desired the same thing. So that's why it's helpful for you because it's telling you what you want, even if you might not otherwise admit it. I started my career in law. And one of the reasons that I switched from law to writing is I noticed when I heard about people had cool law jobs, I was kind of mildly interested. And when I heard about people had cool writing jobs, I was sick with envy. These are the people who I envy. I want what they have. So that can be a really useful thing.

I love that. What is one thing that we could all do to be happier in our careers? One thing that the research shows is that if you ask people, are you happy at work, they say they have a friend at work. And a friend is not just somebody that you talk to about pop culture around the coffee pot. A friend is somebody you can confide in. A friend is somebody who has your back. And if you have a friend at work, you're much more likely to be happy at work. Also, if you feel like the person you report to cares about you and you achieving your aims for your

So this is not your charismatic boss who's at the very top giving the big vision. This is the person who's like you know and you work with. If you feel like that person knows you, cares about you and wants to help you succeed in whatever you want for yourself, that's going to make you happier. So those are important. Having a sense of control. I think this is very interesting post-COVID. A sense of control is very important to happiness and control over time and control over how you do your work. We're all still working through the implications of hybrid work, remote work. But one of the reasons people like it is they feel like they have more control over time. I live in New York City, and many, many people have extremely demanding commutes. And if they don't have to do that commute,

they just feel like they have so much more control over their time. And that feels very significant. So if you think about making a friend, choose your boss wisely, not always possible, and trying to find ways to have control over your work. These are things that will make you happier work. I love that. And then you host a podcast with your sister. Could you share one thing that we could all do to be happier in our familial relationships? This is a great one. So in my family, we use email, but you could use text if you wanted to or people use all kinds of different apps. And every, say, five, eight days, each of us, my mother, my father, my sister and I will send something called Update. The title of the email is Update. And the motto of Update is, it's okay to be boring. And you write just like the most boring report of what's

going on in your house. My father will report on his golf. game or my mother will be like, oh, I got my hair colored. Or I will be like, for a baby woke us up in the middle of the night, throwing up, and, you know, it was a hold to do. Whatever. It's okay to be boring. And we do this because my mother had observed something that I think everybody's observed, that when you see people all the time, you have a ton to tell them. And when you see people very rarely, it's like, how are you? I am fine. How are you? I am also fine. You have nothing to say. And the more frequent the contact, the more rich and full, your understanding of someone else's life is. So we do this. So then I can say,

say like, oh, how did that go? Oh, I know you guys were going to go to that movie. How was it? Or you said, this was really fun. Are you going to do it again? It just seems like these little things. It just makes you feel like you're in such closer contact with the people that are important to you. The reason that it's okay to be boring is I think sometimes we feel like we need to be funny, we need to be complete, we need to be well crafted. And kind of the less often you reach out, the higher the stakes. And the more often you reach out, the lower the stakes. If you're texting with somebody all day long. You write one word or like an emoji. If you're texting with your college roommate that you haven't talked to in two years, you feel like you have to craft some

heartfelt thing. And nobody wants to craft the heartfelt thing, right? It feels like too much work. So by doing something repeatedly, we make it easy and bring down the stakes, and yet it serves very effectively to make us feel closer to other people. And of course, you could do this with a friend group. You could do this with a bunch of old colleagues who we had our first jobs together, but now we're scattered all over the city. We could just stay in touch this way. I absolutely love that. Okay, last one. What is one thing that we could do to be happier in the moments we're trying to be happy or we're trying to rest or relax? Like when we're going on vacation, I feel like in these moments, sometimes I find myself thinking about my to-do list or having a

hard time kind of being present in the moments I've designed for myself to feel my best. And I'm curious if you have any tips for tapping into those moments and maximizing them. put down your phone. If you're thinking about your to-do list, you're going to whip out your phone and send yourself a note or write something down or put something in notes. Put down your phone. Here's a trick. Turn your phone to gray scale. I love that tip in your book. I thought that was genius. And then it's just a lot less fun to use your phone. It's a lot more arduous. It feels much more utilitarian. And without the phone, it's easier to slip into the moment of wherever you are. And I love the gray scale tip because you said that the way you use it is you kind of like toggle in and out of it. Like if you feel like you're using

your phone too much, you'll put Grayscale on for a few days. I love just the idea of interspersing it into our lives to break those moments where we find ourselves reaching for our phones more than we want to. Right. It's extraordinarily powerful. Can you tell us a little bit about your new book and your own words and all of the other stuff you have going on with your podcast? You have new quizzes, it sounds like on your website. My new book is called Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses got me out of my head and into the world. And this is all about my attempt to get out of my head because I felt like I was sort of in this fog of preoccupation and I wanted to connect with the world and with other people and myself through my five senses. With every book I write, I think I will never enjoy a book as much

as this book. And then I do. It was such a joy to write this book and to think about the five senses and to tap into the five senses. As you mentioned, I have a podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. And it's a weekly podcast that I do with my sister, Elizabeth Kraft, who's a Hollywood television show runner. And we talk about just practical, try this at homes, know yourself better questions, hacks, happiness hacks, lists, their questions, all about how to be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative.

On my website, Gretchenrubin.com, you can find everything related to my books, to the podcast, I have all kinds of free resources related to all my books. The quiz that I mentioned, the neglected sense quiz is at Gretchenrubin.com slash quiz. we kind of alluded to the Four Tendency's personality profile, which is this personality framework that I created called the Four Tendencies.

You can take the quiz and find out what you are. You get a little report there too, Gretchenrubin.com slash quiz. That's super fun. The neglected sense quiz is new. And then I have the happier app if you're interested in tracking your habits. It's designed with the Four Tendencies in mind. People love that.

And then I'm all over social media under Gretchen Rubin. And I love hearing from people with their own insights and observations and questions. and resources. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. Gretchen, I really appreciated it. Oh, I had so much fun talking to you. Thank you for having me. This conversation was so fun for me. I've been a fan of Gretchen's for years, so it was amazing to get to ask her all of the questions that I've had since I read her first book ages ago. You know, I love some actionable takeaways, and I just feel like she is chock full of them. If you're new here, make sure that you're following the podcast on whatever platform you like to listen

on. Just go to the main podcast page. the one that lists all of the healthier together episodes, and you will see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. That way, all of the new episodes will show up right in your feed so you will never miss out on one. And you are definitely going to want to be following along because we have some amazing episodes coming up, including one all about the science of healthy hair that is highly requested. And another one all about hacking our circadian rhythms. So make sure that you are following so you do not miss out.

Okay, I love you, and I will see you next Wednesday on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refuse to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells, and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs, spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells.

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