Life in Five Senses || Gretchen Rubin

million downloads. As the founder of the Happiness Project, Gretchen has helped create an ecosystem of imaginative products and tools to help people become happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. Her latest book is called Life in Five Senses. In this episode, I talked to Gretchen Rubin about connecting to the world through our five Our fast paced modern world keeps us constantly moving, making us feel disconnected from other

people and our surroundings. Gretchen shares unconventional ways we can re experience the world through seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. She believes that tuning into life's simple pleasures allows us to live each day with more appreciation and vitality. We also touch on the topics of mindfulness, creativity, learning, and individual differences. It's always great fun chatting with the Gretchen.

She's got a lot of charisma and she really brings out a lot of happiness in me whenever I talk to her, and I'm sure she'll bring out the happiness in you as well, so that further ado I bring you Gretchen Ruben. Gretchen Ruben, how are you?

neglected sense, I believe is smell is smell it. Yeah, which surprised me a little bit, but also it made me like energize to think of all the ways that I can really incorporate that more into my life. I think I have such an aversion to bad smells that maybe that sometimes inhibits the potential for there's something deep there, you know, that our version of something can maybe a get the way of us really appreciating the good aspects of it, like great smells. Yeah.

and so so that's great. And see, I'm a big appreciator of the sense of smell, but then again, I'm my most neglected sense of taste, and so maybe you're really into taste.

You know, if we're like, oh, I'm just the person that avoids loud noises, loud and strong smells as opposed to you know, that's called experiential avoidance, as opposed to leaning into some of this, and maybe maybe we're limiting ourselves. Maybe that's highly sensitive people are limiting ourselves sometimes.

you define, if you define me, you confine me. And I think with all these things, we want to make sure that they help us, you know, maybe see ourselves more clearly in spot ways where we could change if we want to change, but we don't want to let them become so just so kind of that we just then handwave a lot of things saying like, oh, well that's just not for me. So I think you're right.

These can be These kinds of frameworks can be very useful and illuminating, but we always want to remember that they're not They're not a box that we can never step out of, or they don't define some kind of you know, artificial limitation that we can't push push ourselves against if we want, if we choose to definitely.

I realize is how much I love aphorisms. I love quotations that I love aphorisms, and so one of the things I collect is aphorisms, but I also collect proverbs, which are kind of folk truths, and so I have huge library of folk truth and that's one of the ones that I came across that is just like you spot it, you got it. You know. That's one of those kinds of yeah.

just gay. I was back in the same gallery I'd been a million times, and I was a little bit bored. And that's often when you have creative ideas, because you sort of your mind is trying to create, is trying to amuse itself, and you have sort of unusual associations or unexpected juxtaphysicians. And I was looking at something and thinking, you know, if something secreted unfailingly makes it more interesting,

and I thought, well, that's a good aphorism. And then it hit me, I can write a book of aphorisms. And I was just skipping around the marble floors because I was so happy with my idea here because of the five senses.

Like I'm okay keeping a mystery. Mm hmm, okay, I'm okay not knowing the precise sequence of causal events that led to that moment, but it's just wonderful that moment happened, right, So right, yeah, yeah, right right, So one of these I don't know if this counts as an aphorism. Tell me if this counts as an aphorism. But you said, the more we know, the more we notice. I love that is that. I think that does as a yes, okay, yeah, it's so true. The more we know, the more we notice.

And like knowledge, when you think of knowledge, you tend to you not think of it as permeating across senses, but it does. It can you know, like there's knowledge in smell, there's knowledge. I feel like this is like a meta knowledge point I'm trying to make is that we can wear knowledge by experiencing things, not just through like verbal the verbal domain. And I think a lot of people thinknowledge. They think, you know, you're learning verbal information right right.

object really helps you understand things. And you just think of something as simple as like you have a problem with your eyes and you go to an eye doctor and there's like a plastic model of an eye and the doctor is pointing to it as they're explaining it. It just you can understand the concept better because there's something there that you can actually see, and then if you reach out, you know, you would be able to see the proportions of it, and the and the scale

of it and the relationships. And I think that this idea of kind of trying to embody ideas, even abstract ideas, you know, and I think, you know, in a way, maybe that's why we have so many ways that we turn abstract ideas is into objects like a flag or a judge's robes or you know, a sports team uniform. It's like, these are ways that we like, you could say, okay, well, of course they're playing They're they're playing football. They're gonna

wear jersey, so they can tell each other. Part it's like, okay, but then why do I have a jersey? Why am I wearing a jersey? They don't need to, you know, It's because I want to associate myself with sort of these ideals. So it's very interesting how the human world is, like we're all up in our heads, but then we're all also in our bodies and in the world.

risk for losing your vision. And I was just like, wait, what what are you talking about? I know, I did not know that, and and he's like, oh, yeah, well you know, you're severely nearsighted, so you're at more risk for a detached retina, and if that happens, you can lose some of your sight, so we would want to catch it right away. And as it happened, I had a friend who just had lost some of his vision to a detached retina. So that felt very real to me,

that possibility. So I go out on the street and I'm walking home because I live in New York City, so I live within walking distance of my eye doctor, and it just occurs to me, you know, here, I am in this. And of course I knew it any time it'll actually I knew that at any time I could lose everything, and I knew that I could still have a rich, meaningful life if I lost my sight

or any of my senses. But what I was hitting me was this realization like it's all here, it's all right now, I have it, now I may lose it, and yet I'm taking it all for granted. I didn't look at one single thing on my way to the doctor today. It's just this fog of preoccupation. I just

am letting it all pass me by. And then suddenly, like in this realization, it was like every knob turned up to eleven in my head, and I just had this kind of psychedelic experience walking home where I could see every leaf on the tree, I could hear every sound like picked out, I could smell every New York City smell. There's a lot of smells, scott As you

probably know. Oh yes, yes, you know, and like I could just just like everything was coming to me with this sort of hyper clarity, and it was so beautiful, it was so overwhelming, and I just thought, this is all around me all the time, and I am just missing out. And then I got home and like I saw my family and I was like I don't see them either, Like my daughter's like taller, my husband, Like when was the last time I really looked at that guy? And I just thought, you know, I don't want to

miss all of this. I want to make direct contact. I just felt like I had I was stuck in my head and I had drifted out of contact with with the world and other people and also for myself and so and I, and that that walk showed me the way I could get that kind of invigoration and connection was through my five senses, through the intensity of that kind of that direct link to the physical world.

And so that's when I was like, okay, and you know, and then I realized, and maybe you've had this experience with your own work, is you look back and you realize this was a puzzled piece that I was kind of groping for all along. There was something that I was overlooking. There was a piece that I was kind of touching on but hadn't really quite focused in on that. Now I see, this is what the missing piece is.

And so for me it was very satisfying because I was like, oh, yeah, this is the I'm a feeling like I was missing something big. This is what it is. It's this direct connection to the world.

you do echolocation? Apparently, or like tune into it. But this is something that people don't do, so I have heard some people say that they kind of they sometimes resist people saying like, oh, well you lost this, but it's so great because you've gained all these like sort of superpowers. And it's sort of like, yeah, you don't

get superpowers. You know, you tune into it more. But I have heard from people that it's like it's not always comforting to sort of reassure people that somehow, you know,

you've got all this other these other benefits. But no, but it is fascinating how and it's fascinating to see how technology now there's all kinds of like new new, very innovative, interesting ways to help people navigate the world more easily in ways that you know, we couldn't have done five or ten years ago that are really really interesting to see.

the same. And what I realized is is it isn't. Brains are not objective reporters. They tell Gretchen what my brain thinks that Gretchen needs to know and is interested in, and it's constantly bringing certain things up to the forefront and letting other things fade into the background. And one of my favorite examples of this is I was doing an interview in my apartment and all of a sudden, the interviewer was like, oh, can we stop? And I was like, why are we stopping? And she said, because

of the siren. Don't you hear the siren? And then, of course then I heard that there was a siren going right down the street in front of my apartment, and I hadn't heard it because my brain is like, oh, Gretchen, we got sirens all the time. This is not a big deal. Just don't pay any attention to this. And she said, yeah, if you're in LA, it's helicopters. People

don't hear helicopters. But of course somebody thinking about audio quality is going to be very tuned into like, oh, is there some kind of noise intruding into this recording. So her brain told her right away. Brain didn't tell me. And again, it's like we were both sitting in exactly the same room, and it wasn't that I couldn't physically hear it, because when she called my attention to it,

well then I did hear it. But then there are situations where you can't you can't experience, like like back to smell, we said, smell smell. The smell is complicated. So let's say let's say you've been using a really strong air freshener in your house for months, Well you might get to the point where you don't even smell it. You're thinking, does this air freshener even work anymore? So you put out another air freshener, thinking I don't even

know if these things have any strength at all. And I walk into your house and I'm like, oh my goodness, what is going on in here? Like the pine is overwhelming because we can't smell our home the way a guess would smell it, because our brain is like, oh, this is so familiar, this is such a this is such a known quantity. We don't need to bring this to the attention, but to a new person, they are

experiencing that. But if you went away on vacation for two weeks and then you came back, well, then you might you would experience that air freshener again. But it's just fascinating because with the hearing, I could, I could hear it once I paid attention to it. But with smell, it's like if you're used to it, you have that odor fatigue and you can't smell it.

is changing drammatically over time. But you're exactly right, even with individual paintings, like one thing is like as I go over months and months and years and years, like different paintings come into my or sculptures or whatever come into my attention in a new way. So I read the novel Memoirs of Hadrian and I'm like, oh, let me go see if there are any sculptures of antinous in the mets. So then I go look at them,

or it's President's Dan. I'm like, why didn't I go see if I could see some paintings of American presidents in that, just you know, just something to keep it fun. And then from then on, whenever I walk by it, I'm like, oh, I noticed it more because they know

some way it's become special to me. And I really looked at it closely because I'm like, oh, this is antinuous, or oh this is this is a statue of Abraham Lincoln let me really really look at it, and so slowly the whole met is kind of becoming more and more dense, or like I just went there today with a friend and he was like, well, this is one of my favorite things. Well every time I see it now, I'd be like, oh, this is one of his favorite things.

And so it does change over time because I bring more to it, I get more from it.

So I'm just I just thought of that because that is something that's assigned to me as part of my meditation exercise. But you talk in your book about how this is in some ways the opposite of meditation, right, Yeah.

I want, I think about whatever I want. I don't have an assignment, there's no checklist, there's nothing that I'm trying to do. So for me, it's much more like recess, you know. It's like I'm, if anything, I have like an overdisciplined mind. And so what I needed was not an exercise to discipline the mind, but to let the mind off the leash. And so for me, I'm really

just like letting it all come. If I felt like looking at something for half an hour, I would I have to say, that's not the kind of thing that appeals to me. I'm not haven't done it, though a lot of people have said that I should. I was like, I never really feel like doing that. I feel like doing something else when I'm there, and maybe one day I will. And sometimes people I know a lot of people who love meditation, and they kind of want to

claim everything for meditation. But it does seem to me that at the heart of it, meditation is some attempt to discipline the mind and to do certain things with your mind and not others. Whereas I'm just like, I can do whatever I want. I have no attempt to do to be I am trying to be. It's the discipline of undisciplined, you know, Oh my god.

oh my gosh, I am so lucky. How did I get this? Lucky. But the fact is I lived that close to the MET for years and I hadn't gone every day, you know, I hardly went at all. And that's one of the reasons. I thought, again, just as I'm going to regret my site if I lost my set, I'm going to regret the Met. If I move away from the Met, I'll think why didn't I go? And I had the chance? And so it's just it's huge, huge, but it's contained. It's full of interesting things, but it

doesn't really change that. It changes enough, but not that much. It's just sort of the perfect you can walk and of course, as you know, walking itself is great for creativity, going outside and the light is great for creativity. So there's so many things built into it that really like we're nourishing my mind. And I just love them Met so much. I love it more than when I started, for sure.

overwhelming and underwhelming. So I'm eating food that's been engineered to hit every bliss point, but I'm not. I'm just bringing takeout into my apartment, so I don't have the smells of baking and grilling and caramelizing that would really tantalize me and bring all this like greater enjoyment and appreciation the flavor to me. Or I go to a movie and there's so many images and all this beautiful soundtrack, and yet there's no air in my face, there's no smell,

there's no texture to it. And so I think that this is making us have this craving for direct contact, like wanting to feel like this is like I'm like experiencing it like full body. People like about the metaverse, but we're just like give me the universe. I want to I want to connect with that. So I think it's both of these things combining. But that put us in the same the same place of craving that immersiveness.

you can really remember songs and rhyme much better. And if it's like, I'm surprised there aren't like album like songs after songs, after songs after songs to help people, because I think you're right, like, if you tap into these other senses a lot of times, it makes it learning and other cognitive tasks easier.

much more aware of the importance of smell. I never lost my sense of some but I have a couple of friends who did temporarily. And then I have one friend who very significantly lost your sense of smell, and she's part of a study because she still has not regained her sense. She's like a twenty four percent.

But then also just like a sense of where we are. Like a friend of mine who lost your sense of smell temporarily said how claustrophobic she felt she felt like everything was stale. She was like I couldn't get air in my like I couldn't feel like I was really in a place. I just felt like I was trapped in a box. And then feeling yes, absolutely fortunately many people,

from many people, it comes back. And then this sense of touch, I mean this of course people were talking about it all the time, like not being able to hug, not being able to shake hands, not being you know, having to like physically stay away from people. How dramatically that affected people's sense of well being and sense of connection. And I mean, I don't know about you, but like

it was just almost impossible. Like I used to at the beginning of COVID, I would try to like go for a walk with like in that period where we were like okay, no, it's okay if you're outside. I would try to go for a walk with a friend, but to stay separate. And finally I'm like, let's not do that. Let's just talk on the phone, because I literally cannot. I cannot stay that far away from you if I'm with you and not be closer to you, Like I just can't. We just can't sustain that. It

just felt too hard. And weird. But if I'm talking to you on the phone, I feel like you're right there in my ear. I feel like you're standing right next to me. And so I think I think that being I mean sadly, often the way that we really understand something and learn to value something is when we're deprived of it. And I think going through that period made people understand just like the human touch, the human

connection is so important to us. And you know, as you say, it hasn't really come back, like we're not where we were. Things feel very different. There are things I think that like, for instance, in a previous book tour for fun, I had little vials I was talking

about smell back then, because I love smell. I had these little vials of smell that I would pass in the audience when I gave a book talk, just like these sort of like really unusual smells, and people loved it and they were laughing, and it was always like a big hit with people. But then I was thinking,

I don't know that I would do that now. I don't think people would be comfortable with passing a vial of smell and everybody smelling it, passing it through an audience and then somebody's like, oh, well you could have hand sanitizer. I'm like, well, then we would just smell the hand sanitizer. That would be no fun. I mean that who wants to sit around smelling like a thousand

Yeah and so. But it's but it's interesting because something that at one time seemed totally culturally permissible now feels like something that people would not be comfortable with.

you really taste ketchup. I really encourage people just go have a taste of it, and you will realize how sophisticate and complicated it is. It's so there are five basic tastes. I mean, there are arguably more, but there's a lot of disagreement. Fattiness, calcium, there are all these ones that are people are arguing about whether or not they are true taste, but they're five. Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and new Mommy are kind of the classic five, and

ketchup hits all five. That's really hard to do. I tried to come up with a list of others, and I could only come up with things that have four, Like the marga has four, but it doesn't have umami. It's hard to get all of them in there, and Ketchup does and I think that's one of the reasons why it's just so powerful, because it is. And so I had this party. I did a taste test party where I had a bunch of I had friends come

over and we did like taste tests. I'd love taste us, so, like, we tried four varieties at apples and like talked about what they tasted like and how they were different. It's a super fun, it's a super fun thing to do with friends. But I gave everybody like just like a little spoonful of ketchup, and people were just dumbfounded that if you really pay attention, just how complex and sophisticated

it is. And a friend of mine even said, she's like, if I didn't know this was Ketchup, I would have thought it was like this exotic, super expensive, rare ingredient because it just tastes so like sophisticated. And I thought, well, the next time I do a taste party, I'm gonna turn the lights out and have people taste ketchup and maybe they won't even realize it's ketchup because we just don't pay it. This is the whole thing. We don't pay attention to the very familiar things in our lives.

It's very easy for familiar things to fade away into wallpaper, Worcester your sauce. Try Worcesters your sauce. That is blonkers. There's a lot going on in Wcester shre sauce. And there's a lot of things like that where you know, like apple pie with cheese or you know, like, oh wow, that's just lots of taste happening. But so ketchup is so I do. I really was delighted to learn that ketchup is so kind of undersung for all of its merits.

to creaminess. It's like it's just it just makes things taste better again, kind of kind of a magical substance. It's the only rock we eat also, fun fact, and we have to have it to survive, So it makes sense that it's one of the five tastes that we're hardwired to appreciate.

you can have a taste party. And that's just like a different way to have fun with your sense of taste. I have this book this board game called Follow Your Nose, and it's basically it's a bingo game, but you have to match sense to like the card, like the identifier, and it is just so fun, Like it's harder to do than you think, and it's really fun and it's just different, you know, It's just like doing something different.

smell in sort of an unconventional way. It's interesting. But then I did some things like I'd always wondered what smelling salts were, Like, you know, like you read about smelling salts, it's like, what is that. Well, it turns out you can. You can get them. Their ammonia Inhalen's today is what they're called. So I finally like satisfied my lifelong curiosity with smelling cells. And they're very weird. It's a very weird. Have you ever smelled smelling salts? No?

gave me a chance to really think about silence. It turns out there's this huge literature of people sort of in search of silence. People talk a lot about their desire to be quiet. Yeah, and it's interesting. So yeah, and it's very restorative, I think as well. Silence.

find it exhausting. I don't know, that would just be what it would be really interesting to see like how those how that plays out with large numbers of people. I'm an ambrovert myself, so I sort of tap into both of those. But I did find that, like I gave myself sort of a weekend of silence by sending my whole family away and just like having a silent meditation, a silent retreat at home, and it was very very interesting.

But I realized that that was more of what I wanted, is I just didn't want to be talking or listening to other people, even like a podcast. I just wanted like no no talking, but just having and I didn't want cacophony. But that was that was less I realized of what I was seeking. So I think maybe there's

a distinction there. There's different kinds of silence perhaps, and then there's you know, some people when they want silence, they actually want white noise or brown noise or pink noise, so they want some kind of They don't want pure silence because it again and as with with when it's very quiet, any noise really distracts you, so you sort

of want that muffling effect. So it's this is one of these things where I think it really it really behooves people to think about, well, what is the environment that I like? What's my ideal sensory surroundings? And maybe you can't always get it because we don't always have perfect control obviously, but maybe they're maybe there are things you can do, and it may be that if you haven't thought about it, you're trying to jam yourself into

someone else's IX figure. Like so here's Scott, here's a question for you when you're trying to focus deeply, Like let's say you're working on an original piece of writing, which to me is like the most demanding. What sound environment do you like? Do you like music with words, music with no words, silence, busy home, like in a coffee shop, Like what helps you like write and focus?

able to focus. Well, no, it may be people are very different, or like maybe I'm a parent and I'm telling a child, oh, you shouldn't listen to music while you're studying. But if that child is doing well, and they're saying that they do better with music, Well, maybe I need to think about that child's experience, because just because it's not what I would choose, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be the right choice for someone else.

So I think we, on the one hand, we want to show consideration for others and realize that their sensory environments are not what we would necessarily choose for ourselves, but then also just pay attention to our own likes and dislikes. Because I was just astonished by how little I knew about my own preferences. You almost might think like, how could you not know? You're just hanging around in your own body all day long? How do you not know?

But I realized I just didn't notice. I wasn't paying attention to things like what kind of environments helped me to focus, what kind of environments helped me relax? What do I do when I'm trying? Like one thing I realized about myself and a lot of people do this is that they use touch to calm themselves, just like little children will have like a toy, like a little

lovey toy that they'll hold on to comfort themselves. Adults do this too, So sometimes it's like a fidget toy or a fidget spin or something that's expressly like that. But like I realized, I hold a pen if I'm like going to a cocktail party where I don't know anybody, or I'm like backstage before I'm giving a big talk, I'll hold onto a pen. That just helps me. And I didn't even realize that I did it until I

started thinking, why do I do that. I'm not going to take a note, there's no paper, right, why do I do this? And then I asked around and like people said, yeah, like I hold a clipboard, or I hold a water bottle full of ice water, so it makes me feel grounded in my body. Or a teacher said that during COVID, when she was anxious about teaching on video for the first time, she would move a rock from one hand to the other and she had

to have that for teaching. Other people told him, mug, like, there's something about having something in her hands and so, But this was something I hadn't even noticed about myself. This was a pattern that I had followed for a long time. I don't even know when I started. And yet not only did I not understand why I did it. I literally hadn't even really noticed that it was a pattern in my behavior. But now I can do it deliberately.

Now I'm like, oh, I'm going to be nervous. Let me make sure I have I don't want to go in there without my pen. Let me make sure I have a good one so I can hang on to it while while I'm going through this experience.

Like you know that that can work to something like a sound bath can help you become more attuned to your sense of sound just because it's just a very intense, very specific experience, and then that kind of helps you dial into that that sense more kind of afterward as well.

But it was interesting to me because like one is extremely touch centric sensory and one is more hearing centric, and so that's also true, and that maybe these experiences because I think sometimes people feel like there's something wrong with them if they don't have the same response as somebody else, Like, what's wrong with me that I don't love a sound bath the way Scott loves a sound bath. And it's like, nothing wrong, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you.

It's like it's good to give things to try because you never know, and maybe you want to try it more than once, because often we don't like things the first time when they're really unfamiliar. The brain is like working so hard to understand what's going on. It's like sometimes a little bit of repetition helps us to enjoy something. But you know, but like every you know, no tool fits every hand. And that's okay, totally okay.

floor disinfectant. Like there's so much happening, and it's just not the same as like popping in a sound bath meditation on YouTube and putting on your headphones and listening to it. Like not that there's anything wrong with that, but I do feel like there's something about with the senses. Just like you can't bookmarket, you can't save it, you can't binge it. You have to do it right here, right now, and then it's gone and you could do it again, but that'll be different. And like it's all

just like it's right here, it's right now. This is how you have to experience it, and it's not something that we can put off or just like constantly replicate. And and I think that's part of the intense value of it, you know, is that you have to experience it in the body, in the present.

background all the time. And I had this thing which in my mind I called indirect directions, which were these sort of short phrases that were meant to spark create like if I if I felt like stuck, that they were supposed to kind of help me loosen up my thinking because every because often I would come across one of these sort of like in the wild when I was feeling stuck, and it would solve a problem for me.

So I started writing them down, thinking like, well, I don't want to just count on the fact that I will just coincidentally hear them or like when the student is ready to teach or appears type thing. But I want to just like make a list of them. So, for instance, when I was working on my book about Winston Churchill, I was just so overwhelmed with information, just like such a vast amount of information, and I wanted to write a short, accessible book and I couldn't figure

out how. And then a friend of mine said that when she was writing her pH d thesis, she had a sticky note that said down with boredom, and she was writing about if she was an anthropology person, and she just if she came to a boring part of her thesis, she would just figure out a way to write around it. And this just like was the biggest revelation of all time to me. And so one of my indirect directions is skip the boring parts, which is

something that I think about all the time. Just skip the boring parts, and nobody ever complains, So skip the work. So I had dozens and dozens of these indirect directions. I was collecting them all the time, but they were just it was just a document in my computer, and I thought, you know, this thing is just going to crash or I'll just forget that I'm working on it, which happens, I'll I'll write hundreds of pages and then just kind of forget about it and move on. And

I did want that to happen. So then I thought, let me make this into an object. Let me make this something that I can use in my hands, and that will even be better for creativity because they'll be this tangible quality, concrete quality. So I had recently seen my father's ancient Rolodex, which is just like the most satisfying object of all time. I begged my parents to give it to me so they could like have it

just as an object. And so I bought a new Rolodex and wrote my indirect directions on the on the cards. And so now like if I'm stuck and I or want a little flash of inspiration, I can just spin it and I pick one at random. Love picking things at random, right, It makes you feel like the universe is telling you something. Yeah, yeah, and then you and then I would just ponder it and a lot of

times the answer doesn't become clear right away. And the funny thing that happened was my first thing was what should I call this thing? Because I was calling it indirect directions, but I didn't like that. I thought that was boring. And then I was like, well, I could call it the Rolodex of Ideas, but I thought that was pretty boring too. It's like, okay, what do I do? So I spun the Rolodex around and I picked a

card and the card said choose a fresh metaphor. I was like, okay, I don't okay, I don't even have at I don't even have one metaphor, but I'll choose it fresh metaphor. Put it on my bulletin board. So I saw it from time to time and would sort of think about it. And then when I was in the met I was looking at this object, one of my favorite objects, which which is this inkstand from I

don't know, the fifteenth century. It's a very elaborate inkstand with all kinds of drawers and cubbies, and it's covered with the god Apollo and the muses and some like famous poets. And I looked at it and I was like, well, That's the perfect thing for a writer, right, that's what you need. You need the inkstand like with all the muses on top of it for you. And then I thought, that's what I'll call my rolodex. I'll call it a muse machine, because now I have I could just evoke

my muse whenever I want, so ammuse machine. And I mean, I was so thrilled when I had that spark of a creative solution. And I'm sure that it's because I just had this thing running in my mind and I'd seen the card, and I'd held the card, and I'd chosen the card, and it just had a lot more power than if I had like looked in a document or like hit some link where it just like randomly

spit up a direction. There was sort of more power to it, and I think it worked more effectively for me creatively that way.

You don't really understand how to do math. And I was like, I don't understand what you mean about how to do math other than to apply their rules. What are you even talking about. I'm wondering, like, do I have some sort of deep math sense that other people have that I just don't have it? And like you say, says I don't have it, I don't miss it, I

don't know it. But every once in a while, I'll come across something I'll be like, that's interesting because that I don't think that way, or like like my daughter has a very bad sense of direction, and I'm like, maybe she really like there's something that she just doesn't have, and so she's learned to compensate and we hardly notice it. But every once in a while, you're like, she'll just be disoriented in a way where I'm like, huh, that's interesting.

So again, I think we just want to show a lot more consideration for each other and just say like okay, like let's figure this out so we can all thrive, and maybe we need to think outside the box a little bit to make this work.

wired more differently. I mean, one thing that's just sort of burst onto the scene is ASMR, which is kind of it hasn't been studied that much because it's only sort of recently been identified. But I definitely know people that are like, oh, one hundred percent I have ASMR and I never knew what it was. I didn't know that other people had it. I remember being seven years old and realizing what this was whatever, and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, I just don't get it.

the senses to cultivate it. Even if we don't have the knack for it, you know, you can still we can still develop some of these things. Hopefully all these all these things to us degree. Gretchen, thank you so much for being on the Psychology Podcast. Eight years later, I want.

so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.