 Gretchen, welcome back to the Art of Charm podcast. The last time we had spoke, we chatted about the four tendencies that AJ and I have learned. Well, AJ is an obliger and I am a questioner and I certainly have some questions for you today. And the first one is Gretchen. What are we gonna be learning today and what was the impetus of this new book? Well, I think we'll be talking about how we can harness the power of the five senses to be happier whether we wanna pump up or calm down or get focused or get creative or connect with other people or vote memories with just about anything you wanna do, there's a way to do it by connecting with the five senses. And I got this idea from an epiphany that I had. I had gone to the eye doctor and he had said very casually, oh, you know, you're more at risk of losing your vision, which I did not know. It turns out that because I'm so near-sighted, I'm at greater risk of having detached retina. And when I learned this, I realized I've been taking so much for granted. You know, so often we don't realize what we have until we lose it or we fear that we will lose it. It showed me how much I wanted to connect to the world through my five senses. I feel like so many of us are distracted with to-do lists, technology, routines, that almost feels like our senses are dulled by the monotony. So what was it like for you to tap into those five senses? I think some people are more susceptible to this than others and I definitely am very susceptible to it. Getting stuck in my head, walking around in a fog of preoccupation and being so absorbed in my own thoughts that I don't see the beach, I don't see the beautiful sunset, I don't see the apple blossoms in bloom. So I had to really make an effort to tune into the five senses so that I could get out of my head. And it feels to me like some of us prefer certain senses over others. So some of us might be really visual and pick up on cues. So I'm traveling with my wife in Paris now and I'll see things visually that she completely misses but she'll catch smells and sounds in different parts of the city. So it's really interesting to me how we all sort of tune in and have this different sensory experience of the world but we don't realize it. We often equate other sensory experience to be exactly like our own. There's sort of two elements to what you're saying that I absolutely agree with. One is that we often have some senses that we sort of favor more over others. You know that you're really tuned into sight. So for your most appreciated sense or senses, you probably are interested in exploring it. You learn about it, you talk to other people about it, you turn to this sense for comfort or pleasure but with your neglected sense, often you're not tuning into it and you may be more aware of kind of the downside of that sense than the upside of that sense. Like you're very attuned to like annoyances or irritations but not so much the pleasure and the comfort you can get. So it's really helpful to know your neglected sense because that's low hanging fruit. Now that you know that maybe you don't pay that much attention to smell, it's something that you can like go out of your way to find ways to draw on that. But the other point that you made that we're all living in our own sensory world is absolutely true and it's kind of astonishing really. I mean, part of it is our preferences like what we appreciate and what we neglect but then it's even, it's our genetics, it's our upbringing, it's our culture, it's our expectations. So just to take like a common example is we can't smell our own home the way a guest smells it because we're so accustomed to that site that because of we're just, we don't smell it. Other people's eyes could be watering because the smell of air freshener is so overpowering but if that's my own home, I will not pick it up. Now if I left for a month and came back then I would lose my adaptation to it but it's sort of extraordinary to realize that two people can walk into a room and one person can smell a very strong smell, the other person simply doesn't perceive it. Same thing with hearing, like okay, you have a podcast, maybe you've had this experience, I live in New York City and I record in my home office and sometimes people will say, oh, we need to stop because of the siren but I don't hear the siren. It's only after they say, hey, listen to that and I'm like, oh yeah, there's a siren and somebody said to me, oh, in Los Angeles they don't hear the helicopters because our brains are bringing certain information to the forefront or moving it to the background depending on what interests us and what we need to know. Yeah, when I first moved to LA, I noticed them all the time and then when friends and family come visit now they'll point to helicopters and it's completely just in the background, it's nothing I register. Yeah, so for me, taste is my most neglected sense but hearing was my second most neglected sense and you're exactly right. I think a lot of people were astonished by how rudimentary my engagement with my sense of hearing was and that's just the way it is. Like with the ones that you appreciate, you go deep and then these other ones, you really just don't tap into them. Well, what struck me the most about the book is how all five senses are really geared towards us connecting as humans and in some really novel ways that I hadn't really thought of. So you had this example around sight and how children will often draw faces first and we learned to recognize faces before we even think about any other part of the human body. I love if you can unpack how these senses really tie into the relationships we create with other humans because so much of when we think of the senses we think of our environment, we think of travel, we think of things that don't really involve human connection. That's exactly right and it makes sense that the brain is so wired for people. The brain is the most interested in people and that's because people are opportunity and people are danger and we're among the most social species on the planet and so our brains are particularly wired for people. So as you say, with sight, we have a whole area of the brain that is just dedicated to recognizing faces and when you think about it, faces are pretty much alike and yet we can recognize so many faces even just from a part of the face, like a face in profile or from all different angles you can recognize a face. We see faces where they don't even exist like your electric socket has a little like surprised face or the front of a car covered with snow will look like a face. We're looking so hard for faces that our brains will find them where they don't exist. Same thing with hearing. Our hearing is particularly attuned to the range of the human voice so that we're really, really good at that. We're not, because what's beyond it and below it is not as important to us as the sound of a human voice. This explains a lot of things maybe in everyday life. For instance, if you work in an open plan office, open plan offices now are notorious. Everybody gets it. Like they are really, really hard to work in. People find them really challenging and one of the reasons is that of everything going on, people are the most distracting and so if people are walking around, you're kind of thinking, where are they going? What are they doing? What are they talking about? Are they talking about me? What's my boss's face look like? What's going on? And it's just, it can be very hard to tune that out because we're just wired to notice those things. And the sense of smell. We're drawn to our partner's smell, our children's smell. We're just drawn to the scent of other humans. Yes, I have a lot of friends who lost their sense of smell from COVID, most of whom have had it come back but some of whom have not sadly. And all of them say that of everything that you miss, it's the smell of other people. And that you feel like it's very hard to connect because you don't realize how much you're smelling somebody's shampoo or you're smelling their soap or you're smelling, it's like your partner that early morning smell when they really smell like themselves. Also with touch, we have a whole system in the body that is just for human touch, human affection and touch because it's such a priority for the body to process that information. So it really is quite extraordinary, but you're right. Like when I thought of my five senses, I thought much more about the world but in the end it was really the way that it helped me connect with other people that ended up being the most enriching. And this concept of sight and sound especially, so in our immersive boot camp experience with our clients, they come to us to build better connections and ultimately they're working on their listening. And when we share that your eyes are a part of that listening, they're a little confounded because they just wanna like focus in on the words. And I know there's a lot of different pseudo science around how much is sound versus sight but ultimately you talk about this inner connection between the two in human communication cannot be denied. It is so important for us to have sight and sound sync up when we're communicating with one another. Yeah, and listening is one of the most important things that we do with our sense of hearing. It's just remembering to stop talking and listen to other people, which is often harder than it sounds. So touching on that and obviously the relationships you have with your family members are a big part of the book. Your husband and listening being one of them. And I know many in our audience are working on this exact skillset of how to become a better listener. And the challenge that you face, I'd love for you to share with our audience and then the listening manifesto that you built and how that changed the way you approach communication with your husband because I thought that was so profound. Anything that's important to me, I have to like try to crystallize it in some kind of list. So I have all these manifestos. So I made a manifesto for listening with everything that I wanted to try to remind myself as I was engaging with other people. And as you say, especially with my husband, Jamie. So some of them are pretty obvious. Like when I'm listening to somebody, like put down my book or my newspaper or my phone and like square my shoulders. So I'm facing the person, look at them so that I signal that I'm listening with my posture and with what I'm doing. I realized that one thing that I tend to do is that if the conversation tends to get too vulnerable or too uncomfortable, even before I realized it, I will quickly start steering it onto safer ground. So I really had to remind myself, let awkward silences fall, paraphrase. It sounds like that must have been angry or you must have been very frustrated to show that I understand or I'm trying to understand. My own particular quirk when things get touchy is I will rush in with a reading suggestion. I realized this is sort of my coping mechanism. You're getting a divorce. Oh, I have a great book about divorce for you to read. Oh, your child is struggling in school because of social issues. I have a great book to recommend about that. And again, this is like a way for me to get, move the conversation into safer territory. But these people are not talking to me about a trouble because they want a reading list. Like they want to talk about it. So I've learned that I need to follow up by email later if there's books that I want to suggest, but in the moment really just listen. When in doubt, stop talking. That's one of the hardest things I've found to do. And here's something, a way to incorporate touch. Appropriately, of course, this doesn't work in every relationship, but when it's appropriate, if it's a difficult conversation, either because it's like an upsetting conversation or it's just irritating because it's like logistics or something that's like irritating for couples to deal with. If I'm touching the person I'm talking to, if I'm holding my husband's hand or I've got my hand on his back or even like our knees are touching while we're both looking at our calendars, it's much easier to maintain a tender and affectionate atmosphere. It's just harder to be angry and sort of irritable with someone when you're touching them. And so it turns out that by reminding myself of all these sort of very practical things, it really helped me to become a better listener. But just as a side note, because sort of on this larger topic of like conflict among people, another sort of aspect, a related aspect of something that I really found to be true. And I've found this like with all of my research into happiness but it was just as true in the context of the five senses is that often when people are arguing, they're saying, I'm right, you're wrong. But what they're talking about is preferences. And once you acknowledge that no one's right, no one's wrong, it's just a matter of preference. We're not trying to convince each other or persuade each other or win. It's just like, okay, how do we manage something where we have different preferences? So you like to have music playing in this office because you think that that fosters your creativity. But I like to have silence. If you show me a bunch of research about, oh, what helps people be productive? Oh, music without lyrics, that helps people to be productive. It's like, it doesn't matter. That is not my experience. It's not that you're right and I'm wrong. It's that we're different. Or you think, oh, I think it's great to have everything put away. Let's be minimal. Let's get rid of everything. That will help us have a calm, a peaceful home. And somebody's like, but I don't care about that. I like a little bit of clutter. I like a little buzz in collections. I like piles. I like having that around. It's not that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. We have different preferences. Oh, get up early in the morning. If something is important to you, do it first thing. Win your fresh. No, I'm at my best late at night. That's when creativity flows. No one's right. No one's wrong. 40% of people are morning people. 30% of people are night people. Everybody else is in between. It's largely a matter of genetics and age. So I think often with conflict, people are trying to convince each other, I'm right, you're wrong. When in fact, it's like, nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. You're right for you. I'm right for me. How do we work it out? And this comes up a lot with the five senses because people have very different preferences. I love incense and candles. And it's wonderful that enrich your environment with lots of beautiful smells. And someone else is like, oh no, this is way too much. This is a cacophony of odors. Like clean doesn't have a smell. Let's just, why are you like fussing with the atmosphere? It's like, okay, nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. How can we get to a place where we both feel comfortable? And you brought up an excellent point there around age and how age impacts our senses. So children are more sensitive to sounds and our sense of smell and taste change. And yet we don't bring this into consideration when we're talking to family members or people of different age groups, we are again talking mostly from our experience. It's the scent that I have that I'm smelling right now. And someone else might not even have the sensory ability to have that experience with you. But we're talking from a place of I'm right. And I remember having these arguments with my dad growing up around scent. And for him, it was like his strongest sense. And he could smell dirty, musty, he could smell sense that I as a child was not privy to. It was just not part of my sensory experience. And it would definitely lead to some arguments. Yeah, I mean, it's just one of these things where people have different sensitivities and they have different preferences. And it really, somebody was telling me how she took her kid to the pediatrician and he was complaining about the wine that some machine was making. And she thought he was just like being annoying. And she said to the pediatrician, oh, my son is just complaining about this made up problem. And he goes, oh no, some kids can hear that. Every once in a while we get a kid who can hear that machine. He just had a really good sense of hearing. And she was dismissing it as like him just being whiny whereas he was actually perceiving a very annoying whining sound. So yeah, you're exactly right. And sometimes it's like literally people can't perceive it like maybe they're colorblind or they don't have a sense of smell or they've lost some of their hearing. And some of the part of it is what are they attentive to? And then it's also their own experience and context. I mean, your experience of how good tequila tastes will definitely differ depending on your previous experience with that because you have a really bad experience with it at one point in your life, you may never really get a taste for it again where somebody else thinks, oh, this is so smooth and delicious. My husband drinks whiskey. I can't believe that anyone would willingly drink whiskey. I just can't believe it. I just, I simply can't understand it. And he loves it, you know, he enjoys it. And it's just tastes differ. Another fascinating point was the cultural differences. So we often think about sites, colors and sense and taste culturally without even realizing it. So other cultures have more predominant sensory experiences. They, like for example, with lilac for some cultures and for other cultures, as you mentioned in the book, there are these differences that we don't often realize just based on the way that we were raised and the culture that we are raised in. So I'd love if you could share some of those examples with our audience, because I also found that fascinating. Well, it's very true, especially with smell because when we come into the world, we are wired for certain preferences for taste. We have a craving for things that are sweet because things that are nutritious are often sweet and we have an aversion to things that are bitter because toxic substances are often bitter. And so it's very important that even a newborn baby gets it because that could be life-threatening. But nature does not threaten us with killer smells. And so we don't have any kind of association that you have with the smell is a learned association. And so people will say very confidently, like you say, lavender is calming because in the United States, many people associate lavender with something being calming but in Brazil, they say, well, lavender is energizing. And you know, they say a rose by any other name would smell sweet. Well, you're trained by your associations to think of things as smelling good or smelling bad or being calming or energizing. There's nothing inherent in the smell that evokes that in you. It's funny, my daughter, for the holidays I bought, I bought a Paperwhite Narcissus for the first time, which is kind of a traditional holiday flower. It has a very, very distinct smell, which I love. And I was sitting, but I had never bought one before. So I was sitting with my older daughter, my younger daughter. I said to her, oh, I love the smell of Paperwites. And she said, oh, I didn't know they had a smell. And she leaned in and smelled it. And she's like, oh my gosh, I detest that smell. She said, actually, I'd been smelling it a little bit here and there. And I thought maybe we had a dead mouse somewhere. And I was like, no, I love the smell. And then a couple of days went by and then she's like, oh, you know what, I don't mind the smell. Because when her brain was saying like, oh my gosh, you're smelling a dead mouse, she was thinking, this is a terrible smell. But then with experience, she saw, oh, this is a flower smell. And my mother loves this flower smell. Well, then her association started to change and her actual perception of the smell started to change too. Because she was bringing her own expectations to that kind of that information. Our culture tells us what's delightful and what's horrible. It's very funny, they tried to create, the Department of Defense tried to create a stink bomb. They wanted to create like a stink bomb that smelled so bad that it would disperse crowds. But it turned out to be incredibly challenging because there was no stink that kind of the whole world agreed was so bad they would just run in terror. Because different people have different associations with smells, so what smelled terrible in some places other people weren't so bothered by. So it's interesting to realize how much a creation of culture we are. Yeah, I know durian fruit in Southeast Asia, French cheese can turn some people off and others will run to the table to try that cheese. Yes, one of the things about me is I feel like I don't have a very good memory for my own past. So I'm always trying to find ways to remember things better. One of the things I found to be really powerful is to deliberately try to reach back in time through the five senses. And it was funny, it would kick up a lot of memories that I sort of forgot I remembered. So yeah, I did a taste timeline where I divided my life into four periods and thought, well, what were the most kind of notable or favorite tastes of that period? It was so fun and I called my sister and we reminisced about our taste of childhood because of course my childhood taste or her childhood taste. I mean, I hadn't thought about a cinnamon pop tart in years and then, I mean, I didn't even have to eat one. It was just the thought of it brought back so many memories. But you can do this with all the senses. I mean, I'm not such a music person but John, since you're such a music person you could do a music timeline of your life and think about, and there's a wonderful website called the Nostalgia Machine where it will kick, you can enter a year and it will kick up the songs for that year. My whole life timeline, I could put a soundtrack. It's so funny because I was doing an event and somebody said to me, well, Gretchen, what was your favorite song in high school? And I was like, well, I have no idea. To me, those are not salient at all, but I'm sure to you, you can be like second half of the year, I remember what I was listening to. People just, you can call forth. But even for me, when I go to the Nostalgia Machine and enter a year and start playing the music that was popular, I do start remembering and I do start having associations. Oh, like I remember listening to that at a party in college. So it's a way to tap into our memories by casting back into the past, looking for specific memories because that helps them rise to the surface. And one of the things I did sort of for the future is I created an album of now because what I realized is like, if I'm looking at the past, when I look at photographs of the past, often I'm not interested in like, what at the time seemed like the most important thing. Like, we're standing in front of the Eiffel Tower or here I am in my graduation robe. It's more like, what did the cars look like? What did my clothes look like? What did my room look like? What was the wallpaper in the old living room in my parents' house? So I made an album of now. I just took pictures of like every room in my apartment, the inside of the fridge, the inside of the pantry, like what a drugstore looks like, what a couple of aisles in the grocery store, what the street looks like, what people are wearing, what the cars look like. Because I know that in the future, I'll be very interested in like, what does now look like? But at the moment you're like, nothing's more boring than now. It's just like, now never changes. But of course now is changing all the time. When we think about the now, those sounds, those sense, those sights, they're constant. And then you travel, you go to a completely new environment and every one of those senses is brand new. And that's why we are drawn to travel, many of us, to explore those experiences. I mean, even here in France, the siren is a different sound. So you're catching all of these other moments that in normal life, walking around LA, I would not pick up on because I'm saturated in my senses in that experience. No, that's exactly right. And time feels more rich and slow when you're going through novel experiences, which is why travel, like if you go on a week vacation, it feels like a month has gone by. And that's why habit also speeds time because the more consistent things are and the more you're doing things habitually, time starts to speed up. So that's, I wrote about that a lot in my book, Better Than Before, because I love habits, but they do speed time and you have to be very aware of that that's a downside of habits. And at least for me, really mindfully, try to seek out novel experiences so that my time feels rich. And I do think that through the five senses, we can make experiences feel more vivid and therefore more rich. It was like, yeah, when you're like traveling, somebody finally told, I think a lot of people do this, but I had never really thought of it as kind of a hack. It's like, go to the grocery store. If you're in a foreign country, just walk around the grocery store, just look what's on the shelves. Like what does their packaging look like? What do they eat? What is their milk like? And it's just now every time I go to a foreign country, I make a beeline for the grocery store because it's just so different. It's fascinating. It's hard to experience a grocery store vividly in your hometown, but when it's new, it feels very, very fresh and very compelling. For me, I love watching locals eat and sort of the traditions that go along with a meal. So eating in LA, I'll speed through my meal, sometimes faster than my wife and she'll tell me to slow down. But then when we're traveling, I love the sensory cues of seeing people around me, what they're eating, when they eat the bread, how they're approaching their meal. Okay, when are they taking a break? Are they coursing it? That to me is so fascinating and it is one of those universals across all cultures because obviously as humans, we have to eat. I have literally never thought to do that. This is a great idea. The next time I travel, I'm absolutely going to do that. It never occurred to me. See, taste is my most neglected sentence. There you go. I'm not reaching out for this. Yeah. There you go. But see, this is a great example of like you have given me a way to tap into my sense of taste and find interest and make my experience richer by tapping into the experience of a meal in a way that hadn't occurred to me. So that's a low hanging fruit because it's not hard to walk into a restaurant and watch how people eat, but it never occurred to me. And now this is going to be a whole new thing that will be fun to do and will make travel more interesting for me. Yeah. So that's a good example of how once you know your neglected sense, it can help you be on the lookout for things that you could do to bring it into your life more because you do it automatically because it's just that's that you appreciate that sense. And but like I love the sense of smell. So I'm probably having a lot of fun with smell that you're not having because it's not one of your top. Yeah, it's certainly a situation where whenever a meal is presented in front of me, that sense of smell is really present and important, but I can walk into a store, I can walk through the perfume aisle and it doesn't hit me the same way as I'm sure it hits others who that is their main sensory experience that they enjoy. Yeah. Like hardware store. I said to somebody, oh, I love the smell of a hardware store. And they were like, do hardware stores have a particular smell? I was like, are you kidding? Yes, 100%. I would buy a candle, hardware store candle. I go to the Met every day. That's one of the most ambitious exercises that I did for life in five senses was decided to go to the Met every day. And I love it so much. I did it for a year, but I'm still going because I love it so much. But the hand sanitizer in the Met is a very distinctive smell. I was thinking for the rest of my life, that will take me back because it's such a particular smell that I only smell in the Met. But maybe for you, you wouldn't even notice that hand sanitizer smell. There is another point made around how some senses are annoying for us. So like sounds will drive you crazy when other people are not at all bothered by it. And I find that so fascinating. So I believe yours is pouring liquids, drives you crazy. Cannot stand that sound. Which is, it's so interesting. Cause for me, pouring liquids is like, oh, I'm sitting down again to have a meal to tap into my other sensory experience that I'm excited for. Yeah, it's interesting though, like cross-culturally. Okay, crying baby is a sound that nobody likes. And that kind of makes sense. You get it. Another one is like nails on a blackboard. I thought that was sort of intriguing. I'm like, I wonder why it is that that like across the globe is a sound that people don't like. I would have thought that was, I thought I would have thought that had just become like in the West kind of our iconic bad sound and that we just sort of all agreed that that stood for an annoying sound. And then some people found it annoying and some people probably didn't even really care. No, it turns out nobody likes that sound. Now laughter cuts both ways. And we talk about this in our classroom. Depending on your mood and where you are mentally, laughter can either feel like you're in on the joke and part of the in group and connecting. And it can also feel like you're on the outside and someone is making fun of you or someone is cutting you out of the group. And it's so fascinating how we're wired across cultures to tune into laughter. So in France, listening to people speak French, I can pick up on laughter immediately. It stops me no matter where I am. And yet if I were to walk down the street with my favorite shirt and hear laughter, I wouldn't think they're judging me, but if maybe I had a rough morning and things weren't going my way, I could hear laughter again and feel like, uh-oh, there's something on my shirt or something I'm doing wrong culturally that's making me outcast. So what was most fascinating or surprising in all of the sensory research for you? What stood out as something that was unexpected? Well, a minor thing was the magic of ketchup. Like, ketchup is magic and there's a good reason that it is the secret ingredient in so many foods like Pad Thai and barbecue sauce because it hits all five of the five basic tastes. It's sweet, it's sour, it's salty, it's bitter, it's umami. It's really hard to do. You can, like, Margarita will get you four, but no umami. So that was like a little thing where I'm, now I, you know, ketchup is so ubiquitous and that we all have just ketchup packets falling out of our pockets. I didn't realize like what an extraordinary achievement ketchup was, but on a more profound note, I think you were asking for more transcendent answer. What I was really astonished by, so of course my hypothesis going into this was that I could make myself happier by connecting to the five senses, but what really astonished me is in just what almost any aim that I had, I could harness the five senses to do it. So if I wanted to calm myself down, I could do it through the five senses. If I wanted to give myself energy, I could get into it through the five senses. If I wanted to spark my creativity, I could do it through the five senses. If I wanted to fall asleep, if I wanted to be more productive, if I wanted to connect with other people, if I wanted to listen better, just about anything, there was a way to do it through the five senses. And what I like about it is first of all, it's very concrete because sometimes with these aims, they can feel kind of transcendent and abstract and it's not that anybody doesn't agree that they're a good idea. It's kind of like, okay, what do I do tomorrow? The five senses, this is stuff that we can do without spending any time, energy or money. It's like very much within our, like really within our grasp, literally. And it feels very tangible and also it feels fun. I think a lot of people would approach the five senses in kind of a meditative way or like a very sophisticated way, like let's have a sip of coffee for 20 minutes and really analyze them. But I think you can also just do it in a fun way. And I found it so energizing and freeing and playful and I found I was connecting with people and we were just having fun together and laughing like through whatever sense we were sharing. And I think for a lot of people, they're really eager for that. That's why so many things build themselves as immersive because as much as people go on about the metaverse, people are really more interested in the universe. And so I was just really surprised on how it was this, it was sort of this tool that could be applied in so many ways, it was so flexible and yet it was so easy and fun to use, which are sometimes things that are very useful, take a lot of discipline or a lot of effort to deploy. This one, the five senses turned out to be a lot of fun. Let's unpack that. Cause there's a few examples that I'd love to explore. One that really stood out to me and I think a lot of people in our audience will be struggling with this is those cravings that we have, whether it's for salty or sweet. And oftentimes they feel insatiable. Like I need to have that extra M&M. I need to have that extra Pringle. And you shared that just engaging in other sense entirely could diminish that craving that you're having, which is counterintuitive when you think about how strong that craving is for that one sense. Absolutely. This is something that I stumbled upon in effect that I stumbled upon but it turns out it works really well. I've heard from a lot of people. So when we're like, so say it's the middle of the afternoon and you have that urge to have an unhealthy snack. So you're feeling restless or bored or listless and you want to give yourself a little charge. So you're turning to the sense of taste, which is a classic move. But what you can do is you can turn to a different sense instead. So like John loves music. So maybe he saves new music to listen to in kind of that down period. Or I love the sense of smell. So I could go smell something really wonderful. Like I have a whole collection of smells or like something that's just like a really strong smell like a smell of pickles, which is a really strong good smell. Or if you love the sense of touch, you could like use therapy dough or run your hands through beautiful soft yarn if you're a knitter or whatever. And I'm not sure it could be that this is just a distraction. And it works like in my book better than before I talk about the strategy of distraction. So it just, you're on the way, you're headed to the fridge, you're headed to the cabinet to get the crinkly package. And because now you're going to do something else that just distracts you. That's the strategy of distraction. So that's a good strategy. Or it could be that it really is that the body is seeking stimulation that you are craving some kind of sensory stimulation. It's like a cell phone that needs to be plugged into the wall. You need a little shot of energy. And so you're just trying to give yourself some stimulation and you can substitute one for the other. I don't know which is truly an operation. It's probably a combination of both but whichever is at work, it is effective. And you can just instead of heading for the vending machine, you do something else. You give yourself a different source of sensory stimulation and then your urge to snack goes away. Now, call me anxiety is a big one for a lot of our audience members. And I'd love to hear a little bit more how you tapped into your senses to help with anxiety. Well, one of the best ones is the sense of touch and there's so many ways you could do it. Now, I think nowadays people are very aware of things like fidget spinners, therapy dough, pop toys, weighted blankets. A lot of people find those effective hugging a person appropriately or like petting a dog or a cat. That also is very, very calming. And one of the things that was interesting about writing life in five senses is there were aspects of my own behavior or my own experience that I never really noticed or never really understood. Like, you know, I was just sort of a mystery to myself and a lot of things became much clearer. And one of the things that I had kind of noticed about myself, but not really, and I certainly didn't understand why I was doing it, is how I would hold a pen. So I'm a writer, but I type. I almost never write with a pen. But if I was standing behind a stage before I was giving a big talk or if I was walking into a party where I didn't know anyone or I was in a stressful meeting, I would hold a pen. And there was no paper. Like, I was never actually using the pen but I would find myself holding a pen. And what I realized is that holding a prop helps people to feel grounded. And when I started asking around, people would say like, oh yeah, like I always hold a clipboard because I get rattled at work. And if I hold a clipboard, like that makes me feel grounded or like a teacher was saying during the pandemic when she switched to teaching virtually, she's very stressed about it. And she held a stone in her hand and she would move the stone from one hand to the other and that made her feel grounded. A lot of people use a mug or a water bottle because again, it's like, there's kind of a nice weight to it. You hold it in your hand, it helps you to feel grounded. And once you realize that, well, then it's a tool that you can use deliberately because I was sort of instinctively grabbing a pen but I wasn't thinking like, oh, I know this is gonna be stressful. Let me make sure that I have my pen in my hand and that's gonna help make me feel more grounded and calmer and now I can do that. And once you know that, you can sort of figure out what is the prop that works for you in your circumstance and it really helps. Yeah, we touched on your husband in the senses but I'd love to hear for our parents in the audience how you involved your children in the sensory exploration. Oh yeah, well, my children, they would call themselves innocent bystanders. They got dragged into so many experiments but after the first few, they became very enthusiastic because it was so fun. So we made, for touch, we made a non-Newtonian fluid out of cornstarch which is so fun. We did dining in the dark which is where you wear a mask over your feet. You go to a restaurant, you wear a mask over your face. So you're eating in the dark. That was bonkers. I involved my daughters in a lot of smell games like blindfolding and trying to identify smells or I actually have a board game called Follow Your Nose where it has like little cylinders. It's so fun to do. We didn't even like compete. We just like tried to identify them. So fun to do. I could not get them to do ammonia inhalants. You know, how we read about Victorian smelling salts. It's always like, but what do smelling salts smell like and what do they do exactly? And so I found out that today, you can buy them today too. They're marketed as ammonia inhalants. So I tried to get my daughters to do that with me. They were not interested. It's bonkers, by the way. It's a really weird sensation. It definitely makes you kick your head back. We tried the M Berry. This is, it's a tablet that you dissolve on your tongue and it makes sour things sweet. Bonkers, that's so fun to do. So yeah, I was very fortunate that I had these willing participants to do these exercises with me. Now outside of going to the Met every day, what have you implemented in your own life to involve more of the five senses? One thing that I do that's very helpful is I keep a five senses journal. So like, it just says seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And so each day I'll write down one notable example. So it doesn't have to be the best or my favorite. It's just like, oh, I, you know, I was just in the San Francisco airport and they have this like very, the texture of the floor is very interesting or whatever it might be. And this just helps me stay attuned to sensations because I'm always thinking, oh, oh, there's one. Oh, that's interesting. Maybe that's my most notable touch sensation. And it actually sort of functions as a gratitude journal because I was somebody who tried to keep a gratitude journal. I was deeply annoyed by the exercise of keeping a gratitude journal. But this really turns out to be a kind of gratitude journal because you feel like you're sort of paying tribute to the beauty and richness of the world. So that's one thing that I do. I do go to the Met every day and that's kind of my recess time. And when I go there, I'm very, I'm very like unstructured. I tend to be very kind of rigid. So it's very unstructured. And I really am deliberately tapping into all my five senses as I go through. A lot of it is just, once you start noticing it, I'm just much better at stopping and paying attention. But I do worry, it's easier to say you're changed and feel changed than to stay changed. So I do feel like you've asked the million dollar question which is, okay, what does your three look like? Can I keep it up? Now that the book is out, the research is over, exactly. Yeah, I feel like I will because I get so much pleasure from it. I feel it in reading the book and then talking about the senses, even Johnny and I before this, sharing our experiences and understanding what his primary sense is and recognizing it in me. And now me and my wife as we're traveling here in Paris, like thinking about all the senses in a different light, it really does enrich your experience. And thank you so much for sharing the book with us and coming back on the show. Johnny and I love asking and I know you answered in the past, but I'm curious now with your five senses, what do you believe your X factor is? I think my ability to notice the very ordinary. I think it's very hard to notice the very ordinary and I do think that I spend a lot of time trying to notice what's very obvious. I love that. And where can our audience go to find the quiz and more about your latest book? Yes, go to GretchenRubin.com. You can find everything there, the quiz. You can go to GretchenRubin.com slash quiz or you can just find it on the website. And there's excerpts of the book and all kinds of information, discussion guides, audio clips, about all my books, more information there than you ever want. You can follow me on social media. I'm everywhere at GretchenRubin. Or you can listen to my weekly podcast which is called Happier with GretchenRubin where I talk to my sister, Elizabeth who is a television showrunner in Hollywood about practical ways to be happier. Thank you again Gretchen, it was a pleasure. Thank you.