Life in Five Senses, with Gretchen Rubin

26:32So this is why we can't smell our home the way a guest smells it. If you've ever visited somebody whose home had a very, very distinct smell, but the people who live there don't seem to be aware of it, it's because they're not aware of it. Or if you work in a coffee shop every day that really, really strongly smells of coffee, that will fade out almost instantly as you walk in because your brain is like, oh, yeah, we've seen this before. No, we're just going to bring this down. Now, of course, if you traveled away from your home for a month and then you returned, then you could smell it. But it's just this very interesting thing where you think, well, a smell is a smell.

27:05And if there's a strong smell in here. Of course, if somebody has an active sense of smell, how could they miss it? But they just simply do not smell it. Right. Throughout my childhood, I'm Nepalese. I would bring friends over and they would all tell me that my home had the smell of spices and incense and I can't smell it at all. To me, I smell absolutely nothing. There you go. I mean, that's a perfect example, Right. Because it's always there. And so it's not flagged for you as important information. Right. Yeah. No, I hope my apartment doesn't smell like dog food or something, you know. Right.

27:44And I think that's why sometimes people use way too much perfume or use too much air freshener or whatever, because they might think it's not working anymore because they don't smell it. And it's just because they've become habituated to it. Right. One thing that you mentioned earlier about how more of our experience takes place through screens, and screens are, by definition, they're visual, they're audio, but we don't engage with the sense of smell, the sense of other than tapping a screen, the sense of touch. These are our senses that we're not engaging with during screen time. Are we getting worse at those senses?

28:23Like, how does that impact us when we habitually face stimuli that ignores a few of the senses while heavily appealing to a few others like sight and hearing? Well, you know, that's fascinating. I have to say, I've never thought about that, but are we out of balance? Is that part of why people want immersive is because sort of certain aspects of our sensory or our sensorium are overstimulated and then others are under stimulated. So it kind of creates this craving. I never thought about that specific thing, kind of the balance question. Now it is true that we are wired for sight. I mean, sight has the most real estate in the brain and we are just hardwired for sight as human beings.

29:05And so it's natural that we would gravitate toward a tool that is a very site-based tool. Of course, people have been reading for a very long time, but that is interesting. And it's funny because there have been sporadic efforts over time to have a technology that would allow us to incorporate smell, and it never has worked. You know, people write about them as kind of these oddities, but they've never taken hold. But then with touch, you think of how many people back in the day, when they used to be devices that had actual buttons that you pushed, many people resisted giving up those devices specifically because they wanted to be able to push the button.

29:39They didn't like a flat screen. They wanted the sensation. And then you have things that incorporate haptics, which are very, very important in technology now. So, but yeah, you're never going to be licking your cell phone. We hope again, it's like overstimulation and understimulation together. So it's not just like Las Vegas where everything you're smelling, you're tasting, you're touching, you're seeing, you're hearing and everything's kind of being stimulated. This, there's over and under simultaneously. That is really fascinating. I want to think about that. It seems likely to be true. We do have this kind of hunger for that direct contact and for that intensity of sensory stimulation.

30:21Right. Right. You mentioned that there are, depending on how you frame it, more than five senses, there could even be up to 33 senses. What are some of the other senses beyond the big five? Oh, yeah, there are senses like interoception and proprioception. And so these are senses that help us do things like stay in balance or notice the experience of our own body, like I'm hungry or I have butterflies in my stomach or things like that. And these are all extremely important, very fascinating in their own right. And they contribute very greatly to our sense of wellbeing, but they're kind of like the heartbeat where they're operating outside of our conscious control.

31:05They're running in the background. You're very aware of them if something goes wrong, but you're not very aware of them if they're operating as they should. And so they don't have the glamor of the big five because the big five, we study, we seek experiences, we talk about them all the time. They're very much in the forefront of our, of our attention. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to stick to the big five. That's the one where there's, you know, a lot of low hanging fruit for things that we can reach out to do. Do most cultures around the world share in the agreement that there are the big five senses or are there certain cultures that emphasize a sixth or seventh sense or some different senses?

31:47How is that understanding? There are cultural differences and different cultures will sort of have a more sophisticated language or framework of understanding something like smell. There's a culture where they know the direction like north, south, east, west. They're very oriented towards kind of north, south, east, west in a way that we in the west, we are not. there are different ways to approach the senses depending on your cultural upbringing and I mean even with things like color I mean there are wide ranges of difference of how many sort of basic colors a culture will refer to sort of in English we talk about we have 11 but there are cultures that have three and different cultures break it up differently for instance in the Russian language there's a word for light blue and dark blue that are different words.

32:39And like, there was no word in the West for orange until literally the fruit, the orange appeared on the scene. And then they're like, we need a word for that. And the word, you know, was orange. It was just considered to be kind of a shade of yellow or red. So it's very interesting how every culture, every human culture sees the same visible spectrum, but how you slice that up and how you refer to it is very different. And then it's interesting, if you have a word for something, you identify it more quickly. You're able to see distinctions more quickly because you have a word for it. So it's really very fascinating.

33:13As you went about experiencing the five senses in a more intentional way, at the end of this, in retrospect, did it positively impact your happiness and your subjective sense of well-being? Oh, absolutely. I mean, far more than I expected in so many ways. It gave me all these sort of new tools and new approaches to calm myself down and to get energized and give myself a boost when I needed to and to connect with other people. And also, it just had fun. It's interesting because with the five senses, there's a certain kind of approach that's very disciplined. Like a lot of people, I myself do not meditate.

33:51I've tried it a couple of times. It's just not a tool that works for me. But a lot of people do the five, four, three, two, one meditation. vacation. Some people will do the thing where they like sit and like enjoy one sip of coffee for 20 minutes and like really, really analyze it. That is not my approach. My approach is much more like the playful. Let's have fun with this. Like, let's get out in the world. Let's get our hands dirty. Like, let's just do whatever we want. Recess, like really tapping into the five senses for like a sense of vitality. So I think you could tap into the five senses to achieve many different aims, not necessarily what I was going for, but it absolutely did.

34:27It made my life so much richer. When you tune into your five senses, you notice more kind of beauty and fragrance, but you also notice more kind of racket and stink because you're just more aware. But even that, I'm glad. I welcome that because it just makes my range of experience feel so much richer. Now, of course, I am the kind of person that was walking around in a fog all the time. I'd be walking, there'd be a beautiful sunset and I don't even see it because I'm busy editing a paragraph in my head. So I'm exactly the kind of person who needed this book, which is why I wrote it. Research is me search.

35:02So I think some people are more tapped into their five senses just naturally, or maybe they've already disciplined themselves to do it. But I think that for people who do feel like maybe they've become disconnected from the world or from other people or from themselves. The five senses is a great concrete way that can help you shine a spotlight on that aspect of your life in a way that feels very, very manageable and very exciting, you know, very fun, very playful.

35:34We'll return to the show in just a moment.

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39:15your daughters were with you throughout a lot of this experience first how old are they well one now is 24 and one is 18 the the big one kind of came in and out but whenever she was around i would snag her for my experiments and then my younger one she's home all the time so she She definitely got conscripted. But they loved it. I mean, after a few, they saw how fun they always were. So they were very enthusiastic. Do you think that the experiences are different at different ages? Do 18 year olds or 24 year olds have a different sensory experience of the world than someone of your age? And would someone in their 70s have a different experience?

40:00Well, it's definitely true that you, as we age, then our senses become less acute. So often when people age, they think things don't taste as good or they don't taste as much. And that's often because the sense of smell has been affected. Definitely the sense of hearing is something that's affected with age. Loss of hearing is highly, you know, as people age, that's highly correlated. So absolutely. I mean, they probably just had more vivid experiences just because they're younger. Yeah. Oh, here's something interesting though, too, that I learned, which is you should try by 25. That research shows that if you have not tried and enjoyed a food by the age of 25, or you have not listened to a genre of music by the age of 25, it is unlikely, or I should say less likely, that you will go on to enjoy it in the future.

40:49You know, and there's something called the reminiscence bump, which is from ages 15 to 25, we have a particularly vivid memory for the rest of our lives. most adults will remember that period most vividly. Maybe this is the time when we're sort of forming our tastes. But so if you're under 25, it's like, try as many things as you can, because you're setting yourself up for future enjoyment. And if you're over 25, and you sort of are like, oh, I don't understand like, why I never feel like listening to this kind of music. It's like, well, maybe you need to make a special effort. If you want to bring that into your frame of reference, because, you know, it's not something that you experienced when you were younger.

41:23So that's something to think about, just how our tastes are formed throughout our lives. That's interesting. It's interesting, actually, that that starts at 15. I would have expected the lower bound to be quite a bit lower, you know, the foods that you eat when you're five. Yeah, maybe it has to do with the kind of sophistication of sort of memory that you do. I don't know. It is very interesting. Like, do you remember 10th grade better than second grade? Yeah, it's interesting. Interesting. So for the listeners, what recommendations would you give them to the person who's listening to this as they're commuting down the highway on their way to work right now?

42:04And they're about to go into one of those really ugly offices with fluorescent lights and terrible office carpet and drink like cheap watered down coffee and use single ply toilet paper, right? That's the morning that they're about to have. Yeah. you know, they might be like, I don't think I want to be more in touch with my senses. I think it might just be depressing. What recommendations would you give to them? Well, one thing you can do, don't do this on the highway, obviously, but you can do it when you get to the office is I have a neglected sense quiz. So you can just go to GretchenRuby.com slash quiz and take this.

42:39It's like nine questions. It's free. It's very fast. And it will tell you your neglected sense. And so this is the sense that you least often turn to sort of for comfort or pleasure, you probably spend the least time exploring it or learning about it. This is a really helpful thing to know because this is low-hanging fruit. Because if you don't tap into that sense very often, well, maybe you can find some kind of quick, easy ways to tap into it. And this will bring something new into your life because this is something that you tend to overlook. So for instance, my neglected sense is taste. And so I thought, well, what are some ways that I could have fun with taste, given that I tend to not tap into it this much.

43:19So like I had a taste party with a bunch of friends where we compared varieties of apples and potato chips and chocolate and I had them guess the surprise taste and we reminisced about like the junk food we loved as children and things like that. So it was a very, very fun thing to do but it would never have occurred to me to do it unless I sort of explicitly said, okay, what can I do with a sense of taste given that I tend not to look there for enjoyment. So that's one thing you can do. Another thing is to look for maybe one thing that you can do that will help you connect with other people using the senses.

43:58A very fun thing to do is a taste timeline where you make a timeline of your life. I divided my life into four periods. And then you can reminisce with people from those periods. So I did it. And then I called my sister to reminisce about the taste that I remembered from childhood, because, of course, she shared my childhood taste or her childhood taste. And like we spent a lot of time talking about cinnamon pop tarts. And then you could call your college roommate and talk about, oh, well, what were all those things that we ate and drank in college? Like, did you have like a drink that everybody drank in college?

44:30Like we always drank sangria because we could get it really, really cheap at this restaurant. And we got free chips. We ordered sangria. So that was like loomed. And I've never had sangria since. I don't think so. But, you know, it instantly takes me back to that feeling of college. And so this is a way that you can sort of get in touch with your own memories and then also use it as a prompt to connect with other people by reminiscing. And you don't even have to go experience it again. Like, I don't even feel like I have to go get sangria. I can just remember it and all those memories come flooding back.

45:01So that can be a very fun, easy, creative way to connect with yourself and your memories and then also connect with other people who would share those memories with you. Excellent. Well, we are coming to the end of our time. Are there any final thoughts, tips, advice that you'd like to share with the listeners? Well, I will share one hack that it seems like, as I've been talking about the five senses, this is one that people seem to find particularly useful. Well, there's two. One is if you're trying to quiet people down, just blow on a harmonica. That will instantly quiet people down. It's magic.

45:33And then another thing is a lot of people, when they're kind of bored or restless or listless, like say it's the middle of the afternoon of a workday, they'll try to do something to simulate their sense of taste. They walk into the kitchen, they're opening up the fridge, the cabinets, going to the vending machine. They want to give themselves a little lift. And so they reach for the sense of taste. And sometimes this is fine, but for some people, this is kind of like an unhealthy treat. And this is a, cause I write, I, my book better than before. I wrote a lot about habits. I know that's a habit.

46:02A lot of people want to tackle. Right. So if you experience that, try stimulating a different sense, instead of saying, I'm going to reach for something through taste, say, I'm going to reach for something through a different sense. So if you like hearing, maybe you're like, I'm going to listen to my favorite upbeat song or I'm going to listen to new music. I'm going to save it for these like mid afternoon. And that's when I get to like listen to that new music I'm excited about. If you love the sense of touch, maybe you get some therapy dough or you squeak some cornstarch between your fingers or you play with tinfoil like, you know, you try to give yourself some kind of stimulation through a different sense.

46:41Take a big whiff of something, whether that's a jar of pickles or a bottle of almond extract or whatever it might, fresh towels, a grapefruit, whatever would give you a big hit of smell. And this seems to work really well. And I don't know if it's because it's sort of distracting because you have to like go off and pull up your new music and listen to it. And so that kind of distracts you from the fact that you were wandering towards the unhealthy snack, or if it's really the fact that what you're seeking is some kind of sensory stimulation to give yourself energy. And so by stimulating a different sense, it just scratches the same itch.

47:13I'm not sure, maybe both. But for whatever reason, this is something that people are like, you know what, that really works. So I offer that up as a way to tap into the senses to solve a common problem that I hear from people. There are so many, many more transcendent aims that we can achieve through our five senses, but that's a very concrete little one that many people talk about. Oh, that's a very good one. Cause I find myself doing that all the time when it's 2 or 3 p.m. I'm really tired, but I still have like another seven hours of work ahead of me. That's exactly when I hit the vending machine.

47:51Right. And I think people don't think of it as like, oh, I'm tapping into my sense of taste. Right. Yeah. But it's just like, okay, just sub something in and see if that works. Right. Yeah. Oh, great. Well, thank you, Gretchen. Thank you for spending this time with us. Well, thank you. I so enjoyed the conversation.

48:10Thank you, Gretchen. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, we innately crave fuller, more sensory experiences. So much of our lives are processed through screens that we often miss out on the sensory experience of the 3D world. Experiencing something through a screen has a flattening effect. I mean, that's why you don't go on dates on Zoom, right? It's just not the same. So many experiences these days are billed as immersive because they know that is so compelling to people. And I think it's because there's sort of two things going on at the same time. One is that experience feels sort of drained and flattened because it's coming to us through screens.

48:58It's kind of drained of its life. But then on the other hand, things almost feel like hyper-processed. Like this food has been engineered to hit every bliss point. And yet you got it as takeout. So there aren't the smells of grilling and baking and roasting that would have tantalized your sense of smell. So that's the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, we have additional senses beyond the big five. And being aware of those might help us tune into them. Oh, yeah. There are senses like interoception and proprioception. And so these are, these are senses that help us do things like stay in balance or notice the, like the experience of our own body.

49:42Like I'm hungry or I have butterflies in my stomach or things like that. And these are all extremely important, very fascinating in their own right. And they, they contribute very greatly to our sense of wellbeing, but they're kind of like the heartbeat where they're operating outside of our conscious control. They're running in the background. You're very aware of them if something goes wrong, but you're not very aware of them if they're operating as they should. And so they don't have the glamour of the big five because the big five we study, we seek experiences, we talk about them all the time.

50:15They're very much in the forefront of our of our attention. So think beyond the big five. That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Your sensory experiences can change by culture and essentially by need. The more you encounter something, the more of a nuanced lens through which you see it. There are cultural differences and different cultures will sort of have a more sophisticated language or framework of understanding something like smell. there's a culture where they know the direction like north south east west they're very oriented towards kind of north south east west in a way that we in the west we are not there are different ways to approach the senses depending on your cultural upbringing and I mean even with things like color I mean there are wide ranges of difference of how many sort of basic colors a culture we'll refer to.

51:15In English, we talk about, we have 11, but there are cultures that have three and different cultures break it up differently. For instance, in the Russian language, there's a word for light blue and dark blue that are different words. There was no word in the West for orange until literally the fruit, the orange appeared on the scene. Then they're like, we need a word for that. The word was orange. It was just considered to be a shade of yellow or red. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. Thank you for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast.

51:52My name is Paula Pant. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please share it with a friend or a family member. That's the most important way that you can spread these ideas. You can subscribe to our show notes for free by going to affordanything.com slash show notes. That's affordanything.com slash show notes. I am currently in my last three weeks doing my fellowship at Columbia University. So I'm in crunch time right now, final papers, final exams. So things are a little nutty, but I'm really excited for what's ahead. I've got some big plans for Afford Anything. I have learned a ton.

52:34Once this chapter at Columbia is closed, which will be in less than a month, which is kind of crazy, I will be coming back to afford anything full time, which means that I have the time to implement all of these ideas. In the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram. I'm there every day in posts and stories. Feel free to DM me just to say hello. So Instagram at Paula Pant, P-A-U-L-A, P-A-N-T. You can also chat with other members of the community at affordanything.com slash community. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything Podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.