Sight and Sound: How to Joyfully Awaken Your Senses

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

Hello, how are you good? Good?

So I invited Gretchen to come on the Happiness Lab for a two part series to discuss her journey into her own five senses. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you.

And already I'm seeing in your zoom background the infusion of curated color, the flowers, and the chair. Yes, good red start. We'll focus on smell, taste, and touch in our next episode, but today we'll explore hearing and seeing. For Gretchen, it was sight in many ways, the sense at the top of our primate hierarchy that launched her on request to be more present. Thinking about vision transported Gretchen back to childhood and to her first pair of glasses.

I remembered that so distinctly because it was just the most wonderful thing in the world. I was really nervous about getting glasses. I was little. I was, like, you know, in second or third grade. But then when I put them on, I realized what I had not been seeing that everybody else could see, you know, everything from the words on the board to the leaves on the trees, and it was just so exciting. So I've been very

That's another thing about me.

I get pink eye a lot and usually goes away, but sometimes you have to go to the eye doctor.

So I went to the eye doctor, and just as I was.

Walking out the door, just very matter of factly, he's like, well, you know, be sure to come in for your regular checkups because, as you know, you're a greater risk for losing your sight. And I thought, what, no, wait, what are you talking about. And he said, oh, yeah, well you're very severely nearsighted, and that means that you are more at risk for having detached ret and that can cost you vision. And in fact, I had a friend who just had lost some vision because of a detached ratna.

We all know, like at any moment. You know, life can change.

And of course even if I lost my sight or any of my senses, I could still have a rich, meaningful life. It was just that, somehow that moment made me realize, oh my gosh, I'm taking everything for granted. I'm not seeing what I'm looking at, I'm not tuning into the world. I'm just stuck in my head and everything is just passing me by. And if I lost it, I would feel so so much regret for everything that I had missed.

And so it got me very re oriented.

And so this is a shocking story to me about you in particular for two reasons.

Right.

One is you're this incredibly well known happiness expert that's into mindfulness, into paying attention. But I think beyond that, you're known as somebody who cares a lot about your body. You know, you've talked about your path to getting rid of sugar in your life and trying to treat your body better. But why do you I think in this instant you were kind of unable to pay attention to your body that you realize you were missing out on so much of your visual experience.

Well, I mean this is exactly right.

You know, because on the one hand, you could say if anything I was, you know, like doing you know, do I'm like the street scientists that's constantly experimenting on myself.

But I completely neglected this one area.

I was exactly as you say in some ways, like I was very focused on things like sleep and exercise and morning sunlight. But I wasn't thinking about seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling in a kind of systematic way, which is really how I like to approach things. And so, yeah, it really was this era. And I had had this feeling that something was missing that in all my study of happiness, I had a feeling, Okay, there's something that I'm skipping over and I couldn't put my finger on.

What that was.

And then it was like everything clicked into place when I realized that it was the experience of my five senses.

And I think this is something that all of us go through, right, you know. I mean I teach about happiness and study it too, but I think in our busy lives, we can just forget about the importance of noticing, just like being present and noticing all the little things. Yes, but your wake up call really changed things for you, where you really kind of made a decision to pay attention, and you started even with that first walk back from the doctor's office, right, So tell me what that was like.

Well, and that wasn't that wasn't voluntary, That wasn't like a mindfulness exercise that I did.

It was It was psychedelic. It was it was like a knob in my.

Brain had been turned all the way up to maximum and it was like I could see everything here, everything, smell everything, I mean, the feel of the wind on my cheeks, or just the sidewalk under my feet, or you know, I just couldn't stop touching things like the lamp post.

You know.

It was like twenty minutes. I live in New York City, so I was walking home from the eye doctor and it was just like I still remember the plants that were in the tree wells and the smell of the

And seeing the power of this ordinary walk that could get so intense when you paid attention. That kind of started you on a new Gretchen project. I think my listeners know. But you're known for kind of, as you said, being a street scientist and turning you know, these things into personal projects.

And so, yeah, I've met Getna pig for myself, yes.

And so what was the new experiment you decided to run on yourself.

Well, we you know, the more you know, the more you notice. We all have experienced that.

So I thought, okay, I need to learn more about my senses because I don't really know much about how they work. I didn't think very much about well, surely I more tapped into some of my senses but not the others. Kind of what is my personal landscape of sense? And then I thought, well, let me figure out ways to explore it, investigate it, indulge it, deprivate, Like what are all the things that I could try in order

And it's what does it smell like?

And so I did it very systematically, and I think for a lot of people that's sort of like, oh, like Gretch and Rubin do all the research and like lay out a framework, so I don't have to do that.

You know, I'll just come in for the fun parts.

But it was just absolutely fascinating to learn more about our senses.

So as you embarked on this new experiment, what were some of the goals that you had for yourself.

Well, one thing is I wanted to learn more because true, I do think that the more you know, the more you notice. So I wanted to understand how my body worked, how the senses work more. I wanted to find ways to deepen appreciation by exploring and investigating. I also though, I wanted to connect with other people more deeply, and I had this sense that I could do that through my senses. I wanted to tap into memories. One of the things that I don't like very much about myself

To evote memory. I wanted to tap into that.

I also wanted to tap into its ability to connect me to the present.

Another thing that the senses are very well known for is.

Like being able to really appreciate this moment right here, right now. I wanted just more delight. I suspected that it would help me spark my creativity. I wasn't sure how, but it just sort of felt like that might happen. I wanted to know how that would happen. I had a sense that it was another way to tap into my body. As you say, I'm very focused on like the physical experience, because our physical experience always colors our

And it turns out that the senses just.

They just add so much to life in all these different areas.

It was sort of overwhelming.

And so you started by attending to site. Why did you pick site to start with as a sense to pay attention to more.

Deeply, Well, for a couple of reasons. One is, you know we're wired for site. Site takes up the biggest part of the real estate and the brain of the senses. And then it's also if you were going to say, like, well,

And so there are lots of things you could pay attention to with the site. You could look at different sheeps, you know, you could kind of like pay attention to all kinds of different lines and things. But one of the things you started with was color. So tell me a little bit about the Scarlet project.

Oh well, I went through even before this, I went through this strange period of being absolutely preoccupied by color. I'm so interested in color and just the enormous richness of color, and so I wanted to pick a color

So I decided scarlet. I love the word scarlet, I love the color scarlet. I loved like that deep rich red.

It's common enough that you find it, it's not so common that like one out of every two things is like, you know, royal blue. And at the same time, I was also doing this thing with my daughter where we would go on these sort of adventures once a week after school, and she was in that teenage phase where you get really into thrist stores. So I thought, well, we'll go and I'll look for something for scarlet for my collection, and that that will give me something to look for while we're together.

So it was a way.

It was something that brought us together and made this like this weekly experience more fun. And it's really interesting about color that if you have just any bunch of you see a lot of art artworks that are created with this in mind, where if you just take a lot of things that are the same color, they just are automatically interesting and kind of harmonious and fascinating. So I thought, well, I'll do that with scarlet, and do that myself, copy some of these artists that I've seen doing.

That, And so what were some of your favorite scarlet things that you found.

I mean they're just they're just like these little objects. Like one the first I got was like a plastic fire truck.

I have a tomato.

I have a sort of a Ryanstone heart. It's it's thrift store stuff. So a lot of times it's that's kind of what's funny about it. It's a little bit random. I love fake food. I've always loved fake food for some reason. I have like a fake little dessert cake. And the scarlet bird that's like the kind of thing that you would wire I guess into sort of like a Christmas wreath or something like that.

But what I love most about this list is that, like, you're finding things that we might think of is not very interesting in the objective, right, you know, maybe garbage, maybe garbage. But what you're doing is, yeah, you're turning even these mundane, boring, garbagey objects into kind of like their own museum, their own kind of art piece. And that's the power of just noticing color that you found, right.

Yes, absolutely, And it's so fun because it's the kind of thing where you're like, why would anybody even bother to like sell.

This or even manufacture it, like what is the point of this?

And then but to me, I'm like, you know, it's like perfect, and I get very excited.

So it really does. It enlivened the world and lets me see these.

Kind of creative possibilities in it in a way that I never did before. So it is it's really exciting in that way.

Another exciting part of paying attention to color was that you started noticing your judgments of color. Right when you walk through the world and you're not paying attention. You know, they're oranges and blues and yellows, but all of a sudden you start noticing that some are better than others. So talk about collecting these examples of which colors were, you know, pristinely good in their own sense.

Yeah, it's interesting about color, because are some colors better than other colors? This is like a zen color, I think, But yes, just looking out for color combinations or I did this really fun thing where you know, Pantone has its color of the Year, which I'm always you know,

I don't know. Maybe it's more of a medieval color. I'll have to go see.

I think the best orange is like a pumpkin orange, like a good sugar pumpkin.

Uh huh.

So the color of Luke Skywalker's X Wing Fighter uniform and the original Star Wars, it's like he's got this orange home, and that's that's like the perfect pristine orange.

Yes, No, and that I love this example of you and your friends like trading back good good oranges and bad oranges.

No, it turns out this is a really really good way to connect with other people.

And in fact, a hack that I learned is that if like, let's say you're in a situation where you don't know anybody and you're sort of desperately trying to think of something to say to somebody who you do not know, a really good thing to do is to comment on a sensation that both of you are experiencing at the same time.

So what do you think of this music? Or have you tried the food?

Or I love the I love the art on the walls of this apartment, or whatever it might be, Because that is something that's just like you're both experiencing and at the same time, it's it's and it is a really good way to be.

Social, but I did.

Over and over, I found that I was able to connect with other people more deeply through senses.

Now, sometimes this was as obvious as.

Like my daughters and I tested each other on smells, and that was just sort of silly and fun we made We made a non Newtonian fluid out of quicksand like, that's also super fun. But then I also thought, well, I'll use my sense of taste to connect with my mother in law. And we went on a walk on

On a tour with her and have her tell us.

First it was just going to be me, but then when my daughter's heard about it, they wanted to come too and hear about her memories. And this was something where you know, I've known my mother in law for decades. I feel like I know her quite well, but we'd never really talked through it, and I got a much deeper sense of like what her life was like on it just sort of like a very day to day level, and even of her family members, just talking about her grandmother's cooking, what her father.

Would do on Friday nights, things like that.

It was a super fun adventure and it was kind of more active than just me quizzing her about her childhood, which I don't know that I ever would have done otherwise, But this gave us a reason to reflect on those memories. And it was also very very memorable as like a thing that we did. There was the day that we went we all went to the Lower East Side together, and you know, I'll remember that forever.

Another way that you use site to connect socially was just to start paying close attention to the visual input you're getting from the people you loved. You know, talk about how you did this with your husband Jamie.

Oh, I mean I realized that I was looking, you know, I looked at Jamie without seeing him, and there were all kinds of things.

That I started to notice.

And one of the things you see is when you see the outer person, you also get insight into the inner person. Because there were clues to what was going on inside Jamie from things that were happening right in front of my eyes. I mean, like a good thing was I realized, like Jamie sort of bought himself some new shirts that kind of had a little bit of a boulder pattern.

And we're a little more fitted.

I was like, oh, you know, Jamie is like he's kicking it up and not you know, he's busting out a little bit. But then there was other things where Jamie I realized that I had been. When I came down in the morning, I would see a peanut butter encrusted spoon on the counter. Why people in my family just do not rinse their peanut butter spoon, I do

But it was like there.

Was this visual clue that I had been overlooking. But then once I really sort of registered what I saw, then I could be more attentive, you know, and tune into his inner landscape by viewing the outer landscape.

Over our apartment.

And this kind of registering allowed you to make some changes to your own inner landscape. I think one of the things we forget we can do with our senses is that we can curate them, y you know, And so I know you did this. You kind of had this inspiration from a vase of flowers that you saw, you know, So talk about the kind of insight that you got about we can change our own inner landscape by just changing what's in our visual meal you well, And this.

Is true of all of our senses. It's really interesting, I think to a very great degree. And Marie, maybe you see this with happiness too.

I think for some people they feel like almost like happiness is something that either does or does not wash over them, and they're not that focused on like, well, what could I do that might raise or lower my happiness level? Like what is within my conscious control. Not everything's within my conscious control, but some things are. And this is absolutely true with sensation. I realized I was very passive. I was just like, well, it.

Is what it is. What are you gonna do?

You know, and instead of realizing like, there's a lot you can do to affect and again, not everything, not everything's within our control, and people certainly have different responses, but there are things that we can do and even to realize, like, other people are fine with this, but this is really bothering me, and I need to take

White and gray.

And I will tell you it is much less fun and it's much more just difficult to use a phone that's in black, white and gray. It's just it's not designed to be used that way, and so it's just it's arduous, and it's just it's just like a lot less compelling because it's like watching your grandparents old black

You know.

I don't have phone notification sounds because I don't like that constant interruption. I'm very jumpy, so it really it really jumps me and I don't like having a train of thought interrupted, and when I'm talking to somebody, I get very distracted by it.

So I don't have notifications.

And some people are like, well, how can you not have notifications? And I'm like, very easily just start them off. And again it's not what everybody would choose. But realizing you know that it is something that you can't choose to address another thing, I realized I really don't like noisy restaurants, and I'm not alone. This is like the one of the number one complaints about restaurants are too noisy. And now I just I really will say, like I don't want to go to that restaurant ever again. I

Of course, Gretchen's new relationship with sound didn't end with her avoiding harsh and unpleasant noises. She set out to hear things in a totally new way. She committed to listening purposefully to our surroundings, to music, and most importantly, to the people she loved. Well hear how all that went when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.

Music is this universal human custom, It's in all human cultures.

It's ancient technology has revolutionized our relationship with music. Were the first generation of humans to be able to access virtually any song ever composed and listen to it anywhere we want, in our cars, on the bus, or even while we jog.

There's a lot of debate about why we all do appreciate music. There's a lot of theories about it because it's not evolutionarily necessary.

But until she started on her new quest, Podcaster and Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin felt her listening habits were embarrassingly out of step with the rest of humankind.

I always felt bad about my relationship with music because I felt like I didn't really appreciate it the way other people did. I saw people around me who like listen to music all the time. They went to concerts, they liked finding new kinds of music, new artists, they like to talk about it, and I was like, Eh, not really likes so into music, And it always felt like a flaw or a limitation and being who I am.

But I never felt like.

Doing that right because I wanted to spend time doing the things I already liked. But then, when I was thinking about this, I sort of set off handedly to my producer of my podcast, who's a really really huge music person. I said to him, well, you know, I'm just not that into music, and he said, oh, I think you are into music, but just in your own way. And this was a huge epiphany for me and in all my work, all I say is there's no magic, one size fits all solution.

What works for me may not work for you. So I deeply knew that.

But even here again I had this spot that I was overlooking where I thought, well, there's just something wrong with my approach, instead of saying, well, how am I different from other people? Or maybe I'm not as different from everyone. Maybe there are other people like me, but we just sort of haven't seen ourselves as kind of a different way, an alternative way.

And I realized, like I really like a song.

Some people like music like they want to listen to music all day, they want to listen to new music, they want to listen to country music. And I like the one song and I will love that song and I will have a deep emotional response to that song. And I love it when I find a new song that I love, but I just want the one song, which that explains like why I don't.

Go to concerts.

Why would I go to a concert when I just want to hear the one song? And it was just it was it opened up this whole new way for me to think about how I could engage with my sense of hearing in a way that I love because instead of trying to jam myself into this model of what I thought was the right way, I accepted myself to say, well, this is my way. How can I lean into that? It's happened in my way of loving music?

And that epiphany also led you to really be Gretchen through another practice that you came up with, which is this idea of the audio apothecary. You know what what is that? And what was in your audio apothecary?

Well, as you know, there's so much research about how quick upbeat song is one of the quickest ways that we can intervene in our mood. You know, it helps us deal with pain, it helps us.

Get energy, it makes workouts seem easier.

This is why you know you go to the gym and always playing music. And so I knew this, but I realized when I thought about the songs that I love, because now that I knew I was a song lover, I thought, well, what are what kind of mood do most of the songs that I love put me in, and most of them are kind of like melancholy, reflective songs that put me in sort of kind of a meditative state and maybe a little bit not sad, but you know, bittersweet. And then I thought, but sometimes you

So I made my own playlist.

And this gets to, I think another benefit that you realize by paying attention to your senses, right, which is that we can really use sensory experiences for emotion regulation. Yes, right, when I think in my own personal life, i'm dragging, like you know, I'm feeling a look like a low energy day. My instinct, you know, unlike you and your

Absolutely, And this is one of the kind of hacks that I stumbled upon which I hadn't been expecting, which is I think a lot of times when we want to get a boost, like we do, we want to kind of jolt ourselves to our senses. And as you say, eating something or is often kind of the most obvious thing to do, most familiar thing to do. But what I found is that any kind of intense sensory experience tended to give me that lift and that energy and

Wouldn't work for me.

Because, like I say, I don't want to listen to a new song. I like the songs I already like but for him that was sort of an exciting adventure and overwhelmed his senses in a very pleasant way.

And so we can use hearing in our other senses to kind of do this emotion regulation, whether it's kind of like you know, moving our energy up a little bit, or putting ourselves in a good move, even maybe being contemplative like the kinds of songs. Yeah, you tend to gravitate towards but you also had this realization, particularly for hearing, that you know, yeah, we can do all this stuff, but like many happiness practices, it actually takes a little

Absolutely listening is arduous, and I noticed and I thought, oh my gosh, maybe I'm the first person to realize that the word listen is just the word silent with the letters rearranged. Turns out I'm not the first one to notice that, unfortunately, but no, and I realized that I wanted to do a better job of listening, and so I wrote, and but I need to crystallize my ideas. I often will write a manifesto or something like that,

And you know, there were things that for me were really hard.

One was I realized that, like unconsciously, almost before I know that I'm doing it, I will often redirect a conversation away from something where it feels very vulnerable. And I've really tried to do a better job of that. I mean to the point where some of I have to go back to somebody and say, I feel like you were trying to talk about something and I interrupted and read.

Directed the conversation. Let's go back.

I'm trying to, you know, get there faster, and just being aware of that as I'm listening, you know, don't try to steer it away from something that feels vulnerable.

Me, and that active listening better also led to I think, really important new social connections for you, even within your family. Right, I know, just as a parent, this active listening sort of transformed for you as you engage with this practice more.

Yeah, I mean with my daughters and my husband too.

You just realize that instead of constantly trying to figure out, well what am I going to say and how am I going to respond and what's my advice?

I can just listen.

And I realized, especially with my younger daughter, she will talk herself out of a bad mood. She will talk herself into a solution if I just stay with her and let her keep talking and let silence fall and let her keep talking. And in fact, research shows that we do generate better solutions and answers when we have, you know, a listener who's.

Attending to us.

And so rather than thinking well what am I going to say, it's more about well how am I going to listen? And that proved to be much more effective. But it's not, as you said earlier, it's not effortless. It's not like you're just sitting there. What's that whole thing don't just do something.

Sit there.

It's kind of that, so I think it's it's sometimes it's hard. It's hard to just say like wow, that sound that sounds really hard, or like wow, it's not you must have been it sounds like you must have been really frustrated, and just not rush in with solutions or questions and just listen.

Yeah, I'm glad you're not the only family member who's a happiness bully. I feel like I have to have to work on this myself. Yes, so that's how you can get more intentional about the audio and visual domain. But there's still so much more to embracing all five senses. Gretchen and I still have to talk smell, it's amazing that garbage days smells so bad, like why does it smell so bad? And taste your e sides, creak, salad, the chunks of cheese like, and of course touch.

I always thought of skin as like packed and jing, but you know that's where we get our sensations.

So be sure to come back for part two of our journey into better savoring through your senses next time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos