Life in Five Senses with Gretchen Rubin

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 1: And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger.

00:00:13
Speaker 2: On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to Best of Both Worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 3: This episode is airing in mid April of twenty twenty three. We are doing the introduction a little differently today. Sarah is just back from traveling and is on call this week. But I have a veteran podcaster with me as our guest today, so we are going to go ahead and dive right into the interview. We are so excited to welcome Gretchen Ruben. Gretchen Ruben is the author of the brand new book Life in Five Senses. How Exploring the Senses got Me out of my head and into the world. She was a guest on Best of Both Worlds many years ago and she joins us again today to talk about the Five Senses plus happiness and habits and lots of other listener questions that we had sent in for her. So, Gretchen, welcome to the show.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so happy you'd be back. Thank you, Laura. I always have so much fun getting to talk to you, so this I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, me too.

00:01:26
Speaker 3: It's always great fun to chat with you. Since we've talked a few years ago, and I've no since many of our listeners first came to you with the Happiness Project. Lo these many years ago, you are still in New York City, right, yep? Yeah, but your two daughters are entirely different ages.

00:01:43
Speaker 1: Yes, so I have one who's big and grown in twenty four and then one who's the senior in high school right now, so she's just about to take off.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: Take off, oh my goodness, different stage of life entirely.

00:01:54
Speaker 1: Well, we will get to that because we had some listener questions and that as Wow, I've been thinking about it a lot.

00:02:00
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm sure. Well, a lot of your work has focused on happiness and habits over the years. So how do we get to the five senses from there.

00:02:09
Speaker 1: Well, it was this very shocking moment of my life, though it was sort of a very ordinary moment. I got pink eye. I do sort of get pink eye, and it was pretty stubborn. So I ended up going to the eye doctor and as I was walking out, he said, well, you know, be sure to come back for your regular checkup because, as you know, you're at greater risk for losing your vision. And I was like, wait what. I didn't know that what because he said it very casually, like wear are your sunscreen? And he said, oh, yeah, you're extremely near sighted, and that means you're more at risk of getting a detached retina and if that happens, it can affect your vision, so we would want to catch it right away. And I have a friend who had just lost some of his vision from a detached retna, so that felt very real to me. And then, you know, I walked out of the office and I was just in shock, and you know, of course, in a well, actually I knew that at any moment, like you can lose anything, and I knew that, and I also knew that I could have a rich, meaningful life even if I did lose one or more of my senses. But it just hit me, you know, like I think, oh, my sight is so precious to me. But like, on my way over, I live in New York City, so I walked to the eye doctor. I'm like, I didn't notice a single thing on my way over. I'm taking this all for granted. I'm not appreciating any of it. And in that moment, it was like every knob in my brain got jammed up to eleven and I could see everything with crystal clarity, and I could hear every sound on a separate track, and I could smell every smell and very smell in New York City. The whole way home. I just was experiencing the world in this almost psychedelic clarity. And you know, as you said, I've been studying happiness for a long time, but that walk showed me this was the missing piece. I've been feeling like there was something that I was missing, that there was some peace that I was sort of groping toward but I wasn't really understanding. And just the clarity and transcendence of that moment showed me like I need to connect with the world and other people and myself through the five senses. That was sort of the concrete way that I could really come into that direct contact that I that I realized that I had been.

00:04:18
Speaker 3: Missing excellent well, and hopefully the pink eye got cleared up pretty quickly too, I did.

00:04:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's been back. Yeah. Now, I have very fun feelings about pink Ey. It's always kind of a good reminder, like focus on the senses.

00:04:31
Speaker 3: I think that may possibly be my like least favorite kid medical thing to deal with.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: But you know, it's.

00:04:37
Speaker 3: Highly contagious pages and it goes through everyone.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: Well.

00:04:41
Speaker 3: And as part of writing this book, you did a lot of experiments, and one of those was going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art very frequently because you live pretty close, right, I live within walkingness and such.

00:04:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:04:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean I think a lot of people can see well, obviously that's seeing.

00:04:58
Speaker 1: That must have been her chapter on seeing.

00:05:00
Speaker 3: But differently is more than that, right, you view this as something that was about more senses than that.

00:05:07
Speaker 1: Right. I've always been very interested in repetition and how things change with familiarity, and so the idea of going to the same place every day really appealed to me. And as you say, it's like it was for sight, but I was also wanting to know, but if I used all my senses, how would that deepen the experience or change the experience over time? And Laura, I know from you like your nature. You like to do things every day too, Like for some people, that's just a very sort of appealing. And since I've talked about it, I realized I thought that was pretty idiosyncratic. But a lot of people like to repeat the same thing over and over, Like people who are into forest bathing have sit spots, and people often take like the very same walk through their neighborhood. Because there is something special about changing something. Watching something change over time, you can go deeper. So for instance, like one of the things about the mass that's really great is they have nine water features, fountains and pools, and it's just remarkable how your experience, even if you're in a gallery that has no natural light, how it feels so much more natural and so much more vital when there's just this slight sound of water. And what I realized is like it wouldn't be the same to just play a recording of running water. That might be pleasant, but it wouldn't be the same feeling of life. And I really noticed that we're like one bonkers thing about the Met is it has an actual garden on the second floor. And this is just the if I bring someone to the Met for the person, I always take them there because they are so astonished. It has plants, it has a pond, it has coyfish swimming around, and you walk in there and you're like, it's just so different. And that's the sense of smell and the sense of you know, you can't touch the plants, but it's just like it just feels like so much more, like you just feel the five sensus stimulation of nature being in this, you know highly, you know this place that feels sort of very human, very formal, just to see the little wildness of a garden. So yes, and then this smells. It's funny, like there's a lot of smells in the museum. It has a very distinctive hand sanitizer, which will always remind me of the me. I almost wish I could get like a bottle of Metropolitan Museum hand sanitizer because it is such a proos Madeline cookie for me. Now you'll smell people's cologne or perfume. It smells different on a rainy day than a hot day. It's it's a lot of your senses all the time.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: And what would you do like as you went there, I mean, did you have a sort of methodology of working through room by room or how the fancy strikes you?

00:07:51
Speaker 1: I mean, right, what's interesting because that was one of the questions, like what are the rules, like if there are any rules. So the rule is there are no rules. I really wanted to this is recess. I'm kind of like overly disciplined. I can tend to be rigid and overly focused. So I really wanted to schedule time to wander and really use this as recess where I could just wander ound. So sometimes people will say to me, like, well, I think you were doing a meditation, and I'm like, one hundred percent I am not doing meditation, because if meditation is anything, it is some kind of attempt to discipline the mind. And I was trying to undiscipline my mind and just kind of let myself off the leash. So I would go short or long. I would like sometimes I would just at the beginning, I did go from room to room just so I could kind of map the whole building, which is gigantic in my mind, and have a sense of where I was, and I would read every sign, but I would go wherever I felt like. And then once I sometimes I'll give myself a little quest, like it's President's Day, let me go look at all the pictures of presidents, or Pantone has just released its color of the year, let me go see if I can find all the examples of the Pantone Magenta. But sometimes I just walk around. So there's new exhibits, I'll look at those. I have my favorite places, I'll go to those. Sometimes I'm like, I want quiet, so I go to places that I know are going to be quiet. I have my favorites that i'll go visit. So yeah, it can be long shorts. It's whatever I want it to be. And that makes it very fun for me and feel very free, even though I go every day. Well, what is your favorite section?

00:09:26
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess if it's Somebody's going to go visit Gretchen's favorite section on their their trip to the met.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that I have a favorite set. Well, I do love visible storage, okay, which if you haven't a lot of people never visit Visible Storage, which is like the walk in closet of the MET. I love that, probably not for everyone. And then I don't have any maybe my American Wing. I do love them, I love, but I love I love all of them. With repetition. I really developed a taste for a lot of things that at the beginning I wasn't that interested in. And then I have my favorite pieces, like my favorite, if I had to pick my favorite piece, it's probably a statue called God Horrors protecting King Nektanabo the second. Okay, but there's Yeah, I have my life highlight reel. Yeah, what is that that? It's like a Syrian art or something.

00:10:18
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like EGYPTI gotcha, Yeah, gotcha. Okay, Well, but there's a giant wing of Egyptian art, So yes, go see your pyramids.

00:10:26
Speaker 1: It's probably the most popular, it's certainly one of the most crowded. Definitely definitely.

00:10:31
Speaker 3: Well, so, well, let's pivot from the met here, because you did a lot of different experiments and one of your suggestions is coming up with an audio apothecary. Yes, so let's let's talk about the audio apothecary and what this is and why this makes you happier wells.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: As research shows that, I think I think everybody knows. Music has a huge influence on our mood, our health, emotionally and physically. It can boost our enter it can boast, boost our energury, and calm us down. It can help us to focus and help us come into rhythm with other people. It's kind of interesting about music because it is universally present in human culture. All human cultures have music, but they don't really know why. There's a lot of different things about why that is. But it's not exactly clear why it is so universal, but it's definitely something that we can all tap into. So I decided to create an auto apothecary to cure the blues for me. So because a lot I don't listen to music that much. That's one of the things I was really working on with Life and Five Senses was to really figure out how to embrace my own way of listening to music, which is not I think the prevailing way of loving music. And I thought, okay, well, but and I have a lot of songs that I like that put me in kind of a melancholy or meditative mode, but this one is just pure fun, like pure cheering me up. And it was so much fun to create that. And now whenever I'm feeling kind of listless or lo I can listen to it and I immediately get a lift. And I think a lot of people do this, but I never had. And you can listen to it on Spotify if you want to listen to my audio. I've already started getting people making suggestions of like, I can't believe you don't have Obla dah on your last You got to put it on. So that's been fun too to see what other people suggest. Awesome.

00:12:23
Speaker 3: Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and we will be right back talking more about life in five senses. Well, I am back with Gretchen Rubin. We were talking life and five senses. He just went through the audio apothecary and a song list of happy songs I have like ecstatic classical music and mine. I you know, like the choral section of Beethoven's Ninth where the rodeo parts.

00:12:58
Speaker 1: Of you know, Aaron Copla and anyway, Yeah, no, I mean it's I mean, that's a great example of how there's no one way to do there's no right way to do this. There's no best of lists that you can download. Part of the fun is creating it for yourself and having it really reflect your own taste. Like I don't listen to classical musics, but now I'm super curious to listen to your selection. Yeah.

00:13:22
Speaker 3: Now, well you're in the carpool line and all of a sudden they're singing the Joy Joy Joy, and the Bethoves.

00:13:27
Speaker 1: Pretty moving experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, transcendent.

00:13:32
Speaker 3: You said that, Yeah, this song takes you with memory very well. And I think you mentioned earlier the Proost Madeline, Scent and Taste, so you know, songs take us back to a moment in time, but since really do that as well? I mean you said that you could instantly smell that hand sanitizer and you're in the Yeah, you have like some weird like cheap honeysuckle perfume that I'm like right back in high school or something. Yeah, what is that connection? Like what's going on in the brain that brings us back?

00:14:01
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've got to say, like there's a lot of arguments about why scent is special because of the way the brain processes it, and I have to say, kind of whatever because sometimes people they present smell as having a particular power. But I'm thinking, well, I think sight has that power, I think sound has that power. I think taste has that power. I think touch has that power. And so why do people kind of think that smell has a special power, Because it seems to me it's no less powerful, but it's no really more powerful despite all these kind of claims about how it works in the brain circuitry. So I didn't really to me, that's felt fairly unconvincing. I wonder if the reason people think of smell as having a special power is that it often takes us unawares. So if I hand you a cinnamon pop tart and I say this is going to remind you of our childhood, then you sort of see that coming. Or if I say, oh, okay, now I'm going to play you the song that was like your favorite song in high school, you kind of are aware that a memory is being evoked. But a smell. You could be walking down the street and all of a sudden you smell somebody wearing that honeysuckle perfume, and it takes you back invisibly and instantly, And so it feels like it has special power because it's so unexpected, it's so surprising, it's so instantaneous, And I will say, you're right. People do argue that there is something special about the mechanism within the brain. But in my work, I'm not that interested in like how things work in the brain. I'm very interested in what we can do with our conscious thoughts and actions. And so it's more like dial in, Like buy a bottle of your favorite perfume from the past and use it to evoke memory is better than like, let's think about how it's traveling through the brain circuitry. I don't know that's right to the brain. I guess people are like, oh, this well stimulated dopamine. I'm like, well, I can't consciously stimulate dopamine, but I can listen to one of my favorite upbeat songs. Yeah. So I always focus on what we can consciously do and focus less on sort of what is the mechanism within the brain that is causing their reaction.

00:16:10
Speaker 3: Well, I wonder if it's also that maybe sense is more of people's like neglected sense or something that it's when they're not.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Used to cultivating. Yes, I think that's an excellent point. Yes, that it feels more surprising and unexpected because it's less tapped. Yeah, I think that's a very I think that's I hadn't thought of that, but I think that that really rings true to me.

00:16:32
Speaker 3: Well, and you have a quiz about the neglected sense. I'm very curious what you're discovering through that or what your neglected sense turns out to be.

00:16:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people want to take this quiz. It's fun, it's free. Go to gretchenmuvement dot com slash quiz and it will tell you you're a neglected sense. So your neglected sense is a sense that you tend to overlook. So you probably don't tap into it for fun. You probably are not that curious about it or interested in learn any more about it. You probably don't use it for a sort of pleasure or comfort or energy. And the reason that this is a useful thing to know about ourselves is it's the low hanging fruit. Because if you don't tap into a sense, well, then there's probably a lot of opportunity for you to try things that might really bring enrich your life and bring you like a lot of pleasure or comfort or energy. Whereas if it's something that you're already tapped into. I mean, you're probably already tapped into it, Like you don't really need help if you're very engaged with a sense already. So my neglected sense, which is of no surprise to anybody who knows me. And it's interesting. My sister Elizabeth, who's the co host of the Happier with Gretchen movement podcast, we have the same neglected sense, which is taste. And you might say to yourself, oh, but taste is such a popular sense, but you think all the senses are very popular. But that's my neglected sense. Now, Laura, did you take it? Do you know you're a neglected sense? So mine's touching. I hear that from a lot of people. Interesting. I don't know, I don't know what that means.

00:18:01
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I'm not prone to like petting animals or wearing clothes with certain textures or anything like that.

00:18:07
Speaker 1: So it could be. But it's the kind of thing that you might find it fun, like with your kids, like let's get kinetic sand. Let's make a non newtonium kinetic sand. Oh I loveetics.

00:18:20
Speaker 3: Not in the house, okay, outside outside, yeah, Okay, it's messy.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: Though, well, it manages to be messy. Okay, okay, I have advanced children on making messes. They can find them, but they can find them. The potential non Newtonian corn fluid with corn starch, that's amazing. Making things out of modeling clay like anything. You just you might find that. It's that there's more fun there than once you sort of start thinking about it.

00:18:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, let's get to your neglected sense here of taste, because one of our listeners questions that they wanted me to ask you is that you famously do not eat sugar. Yeah, and so how did this play in your exploration of taste?

00:19:03
Speaker 1: Yeah? So, for people who don't know, the reason that I don't in sugar is I have such a blonker sweet tooth and it was very hard to manage it. It was just so draining and so boring because I'd be like, now, later I went a little bit more, does this count? Just half a piece? Blah blah blah. It was just really boring. And then finally I realized it's easier for me to have none than to have a little bit, and let me just give it up altogether. And I'm not saying that would work for everyone. In my book better than before, I talk about the strategy of abstaining and why that has particular appeal to a certain kind of person. So I'm not saying everybody should give up sugar. I'm just saying that for me, that was absolutely the right choice and just made my made my life so much sweeter without sugar. But so I had done that years and I gave up sugar years ago. But what was fascinating to me is studying the five senses revealed to me the answer of something that had puzzled me four years, which is people would say to me, Gretchen, how was it possible to because I gave up sugar very easily. It was not that hard, not nearly as hard as I would have thought. And they're like, but there are all these cues that were surrounded by all the time to indulge temptations, reminders like how do you deal with all these food cues? And I thought, well, that's how do I deal with all these food cues? Because I don't have this feeling that I'm resisting food cues all the time. I don't feel tempted by sights and smells and sounds and opportunity. I just I just didn't really notice it. And why was that Because at one time, of course I had this incredibly strong sweet too, so I knew what that felt like, and then my research revealed it to me. So every brain is specially curating our environment for us. So Laura's brain is telling Laura what Laura needs and wants to know, and Gretchen's brain is telling Gretchen what Gretchen needs and wants to know. And that means that our sensory environments are very very different. Even if we're in the same room, we could be experiencing it very very differently. Brain pretty quickly decided, oh, this is not interesting to us, This is not useful information. Nobody around here needs to notice that those gleaming rows of pastries in the shop window. Nobody here really needs to be notified about the smell of baking chocolate chip cookies coming out of the kitchen. It's not useful, it's not interesting, this isn't something that we would act on. It's not a change that's important. Move on. And so I think once I did quit sugar, all those cues just faded away. If I pay attention, of course, I can dial into them. It's not that I can't perceive them, It's just that they're kind of grayed out and faded into the background, Whereas when I was like really eager for sugar, those felt very highlighted. And so this was just something that always puzzled me. Why didn't I constantly experience the temptations of food cues? Was because of my brain. My brain had just just dialed down that information without me realizing it.

00:22:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, you also said something earlier that taps into another listener question. You said, when you went to the met and the fountains, like the real water had a different feeling than it would have a recording or something else.

00:22:14
Speaker 1: Right, And this.

00:22:15
Speaker 3: Listener asked me, are perfumes and candles cheating or is lighting a rose scented candle as legitimate a pleasure as planting a rose garden. So when we get to things like scent, what's the difference between the artificial and the real?

00:22:30
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, first of all, like I kind of reject the false choice, okay, because they're both real, they're both valid, they're different. A rose and a rose garden is different from a rose candle. Now, some people will say, hey, this perfume that you bought is just all chemicals. But hey, guess what water is chemicals? Everything is chemicals. I say bring it on. I know that some people don't like it. So if you're allergic to it, if it bothers you, if you do not like it, then I would say, well then that's not for you, and maybe you would find another way to tap into your sense of smell. But I feel like it's just as legitimate and it's something that you can tap into. You can smell a rose candle when you would not be able to smell a rose garden, and one doesn't push out the other. Now, if you feel like, oh, I spend all my time, if it crowds out things that you want to do, like oh, now that I can smell all my perfumes, I don't go to the botanical garden and I love to go to the botanical garden, Well, then you want to make sure that you still make room for that activity in your life. But I think I say bring it on. The more the better, as long as it's a healthy treat and not an unhealthy treat. You know, sometimes people will say, well, you know this food has been so ultraprocessed to hit every bliss point. It can't possibly be a like a fruit could never be as incredibly intense as some kind of you know, very hyper processed thing. Would want to be aware if you're sort of if the unhealthy is driving out the healthy. But I would say, for my own view, I would embrace both. All right.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of embracing boths, so we had a question about the four tendencies which long time readers listeners of Gretchen know. She has a rubric of four different tendencies of how we respond to internal and external expectations.

00:24:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gretchen and I are both upholders. Yes, a small group of people the view Sarah as well. If she were here, she would tell us that too.

00:24:37
Speaker 3: Which is why there has been an episode of Best of Both Worlds every Tuesday for six years. And you know, yes, you you have done with your podcast as well.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this listener asked.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: Can I be a different tendency in different areas of life? She wonders why sometimes she seems to respond readily to internal expectations and sometimes she just doesn't. The short answer is okay, from my observation, And again, if people don't know what we're talking about. This divides people into a polders, questioners, obligers, and rebels. You can take the quiz at gretchenmreeuben dot com slash quiz and it will tell you what you are and give you like a little report that explains the framework and how you can use it to yourself. But assuming that people know what we're talking about, so I would say when, So the short answer is no, I really believe that people are hardwired with a tendency. You bring it into the world with you, and you are not one at work and one at home. You are not one at age twenty and one in age forty. But with time and experience and wisdom, you learn how to use your tendency differently. So from what this person said, I could say I can make I think no, that they are solidly one tendency, and if I can ask a few questions, I would be able to tell what they are. What they might be is an obliger who has unconsciously figured out how to create out our accountability, even for things that are considered an inner expectation.

00:25:58
Speaker 1: So when I would talk to this person and be like, yeah, you read more bites, you join a book group, and yeah, you exercise regularly, but you're you're considering yourself a role model for other people in your life or whatever. There's the built in forms of outer accountability, so it isn't that they're one in one situation and one in the other. If you're an obliger who's like, oh yeah, but then my husband or my wife tells me to do something and I ignore it perfectly, freely, I say yes. Because sweethearts don't make good outer accountability partners. It's very easy for obligers to ignore the outer accountability of a sweetheart because that counts as inner. It's very romantic. You're so close to me, you're like me, so I'm going to ignore you just the way I would ignore me. Sometimes this is questioners. Questioners are like, I'll do something sometimes and not others, and I'm like, yeah, because you're doing something, would it makes sense to you. So that's explained the pattern. And then rebels, you know, rebels do whatever they want, and so sometimes they meet inner expectations because they want to, and sometimes they don't because they don't want to for their own reasons and their own time. But almost always, when somebody is saying this to me. They're either an obliger who doesn't understand how outer accountability has been plugged into their life. Like they'll say, well, I'm an upholder at work, but I'm an obliger at home. I'm like, now, because work you have all the outer expectations that you meet, you meet them effortlessly, so you feel like an a polder. Or they're questioners because questioners will sometimes say, well, I'm one of all four tendencies. I'm all four of them, because they're like, I'll do it if it makes it makes sense, like an upholder, but if it doesn't, if it doesn't make sense, I won't do it like a rebel. And I'm like, yeah, you're doing something if it makes sense. And that is what questioners do. They think everybody acts that way, but they don't, as we all know. So no, I don't think that you're one in one circumstance and one and the other. I think there are aspects of the situation that are evoking different responses. Although I think on your rubric you could have people it's like, I don't know what.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: They do with the horoscope of like the momentizing, and so it's like I'm upholder.

00:27:58
Speaker 1: With the question arise something like that, and that's exactly right, and that is my tendency. I think it's your tendency too, is we're upholder's who tip to questioner, And yeah, that will very much flavor your tendency. Like an upholder who tips to questioner is very different from an older who tips to obliger. A questioner who tips to upholder is very different from a questioner who tips to rebel. So they definitely it's not like they're all the same. And of course every other aspect of their personality is different. Are they extroverted or introverted? Are they analytical? Are they curious? Are they adventurous? All these things are different. All this tells you is if somebody says to you, hey do this for me, what do you you know? Or hey, to myself, hey I should do this, how do I respond? So it's narrow, but it's very significant, But it's a really useful thing to know about yourself because you know it and you're like trying to do something like change I have it, or understand why you're having conflict with someone else. A lot of times the tendencies makes up very very clear exactly. So folks have read you know, Happiness Project. Can't your daughters as little girls?

00:29:02
Speaker 3: And as I mentioned earlier, yeah, they are almost completely out of the house. Now you're on the last last five six months of kids in the house.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: I guess.

00:29:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, how's that changing your life, your work, how you spend your time.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: Well, it's really interesting and I love if people have ideas, like send them a way, because I definitely want to embrace this as like a new stage and really think about it. And I've asked a lot of people how they've thought about it. And one thing that many many people have said, and as somebody who travels a lot for work, I really want to do this is you know when you have kids at home, you like leave at the last possible minute and you come home at the lost possible minute. And people were like, remember, like you could stay in Boston for a couple of days and sealed friends, or like plan to do something that you've always wanted to do, Like you can like take more time, or like travel with your husband, Like you could go visit friends for a weekend, and it's just not such. Of course, we have a dog, so now we have to think about the dog too. But so that's one thing I'm really thinking about that I really do want to embrace this as a new phase and think it through and not just sort of have it roll over me in kind of a makeshift way. One thing I've been wanting to do is because I live in New York City, I like, maybe next fall, I want to do thirty Days of Culture, where I go out for thirty days in a row and do something cultural in New York City, just to like get myself back, you know. I think a lot of us we haven't really gotten back out there to the degree that we were maybe before COVID and then having kids, like you just want to be home quite a bit. Like I want to like get out there and remind myself like I can, like all of New York City is here, I can take advantage of it. So that's a few of the things that I'm thinking about. My older daughter lives in New York City, and so I feel really lucky because like she comes over every Sunday. We see her for holidays, you know, like it was Easter, so like she came over to die eggs and we had an Easter egg hunt. Even though she's twenty four years old. You know, I still want to do that stuff, so we do so in that way, I feel very fortunate in that we can have this kind of more casual you know, repeated but you know, she could move at any any day, so I'm just trying to also enjoy that while last a transitional empty nest. I guess how transitional. Yeah, she's definitely like not sleeping. She's out, but she's not far, which is different from like, my parents live in Kansas City and I never did move back to Kansas you know, I was never in Kansas City after I went away for college. And that's just a different way of organizing your time with your family. Awesome.

00:31:43
Speaker 3: So we had a couple of questions about writing and publishing as well, so one of your favorite subjects as well.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, I know it is.

00:31:53
Speaker 3: Well, but you came to this as kind of a second career because you had a career in the legal world prior to going to writing, So you know, as somebody who switched careers, I mean, what writing advice did you find helpful as you were starting out that you know you might be able to share with people.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I mean I was one of these people, and this is not uncommon among writers, and it's actually not uncommon among a lot of professions. I think there was almost like a compulsion to it. So here I was clerking for Justice Sandreday O'Connor. I had excellent legal credentials, if I do say so myself, but I had I'm at a law.

00:32:31
Speaker 3: School, right, and yeah, it's not a you know, fly by night kind of place, and I just I couldn't think of what I wanted to do in law.

00:32:41
Speaker 1: I just wasn't sure, you know. I remember reading alum magazines and when I saw people who had cool law jobs, I felt the kind of mild interest. And when I looked at people who had cool writing jobs, I felt sort of sick with envy. But while I was clerking for Justice O'Connor, I had this epiphany where I was, we'll like, walking around during my lunch hour, and I just idly asked myself the question, what am I interested in that, like everybody in the world is interested, Like, what's the most interesting subject? And I thought, well, power, money, fame, sex, of like power, money, fame, sex, And I instantly started researching this, which is something that I often do, like I'll become become intensely interested in something and do a lot of research and note taking. And that's something I've done ever since I was young, so that was very familiar. But this just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then finally I thought, well, this is the kind of thing a person would do if they were going to write a book. And then I thought, well, then I could write that book. And I just got a book called how to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction Book Proposal and follow the directions. So I think for me it was almost easy because I felt such a tremendous pull not only to write, but to write a particular book. It was like, this is the book that I want to write, and it just at a certain point, I was like, I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. I just I want to take my shot. And there was a clarity that came from that where I was just like, I'm going to see this thing through in a way that almost it felt almost like I wasn't even making a choice. It just felt like a necessity.

00:34:16
Speaker 3: Well, and that'said that book idea came to you like that, yep, And over the years You've had a lot of book ideas that.

00:34:23
Speaker 1: Howimes you keep coming up with there is but how do you know that.

00:34:25
Speaker 3: Something is a book idea as opposed like something that's going to sustain for a couple of years and that other people will be interested in too, versus like, yeah, I should do three blog posts.

00:34:37
Speaker 1: On that and move on. I just know instantly interesting, I know instantly. The only thing that I'm kind of puzzling about is I have done a huge amount of work on a little hooky book called My Color Pilgrimage, which is a very odd little artifact, but I love it, and I was so interested in color. But I did it kind of fed into life, in my sense, and so I put it to the side. But I have been thinking like that's the only thing because I treated it like a book. It is very I mean, it's obviously no editor has seen it, so I don't know if anybody else would be interested in it. But to me, it's I put a ton of work into it. But it is odd. It's not a traditional narrative. But with everything else, I was instantly and it's almost like in the moment, like I can tell you exactly when and where I was when I had my idea to write my book Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill. I can tell you exactly when and where I was when I had my idea to write my book better than before about how to change I mean life in five cents. It's like it is funny the Happiness Project. I mean, I know exactly where I was exactly. I mean I could probably find it in my date book down to them almost like within the minute, because they do hit me, which is a little bit scary because you're always like, well, am I going to have another epiphany coming?

00:35:52
Speaker 3: I know, I don't feel like I get that many epiphanies. I want more epiphanies.

00:35:57
Speaker 1: I love it. That's my favorite thing about myself. Like my next project, I want to write a book of aphorisms again. Will anybody be interested in that? I don't know, but I feel like almost I feel a compulsion. I've already written like a thousand and I can tell you exactly when and where I was in the met. It was like it had hit me at the Met. I was like I should have write a book of aphorisms. Yeah. So that's so it's kind of idiosyncratic. It's not necessarily a replicable just.

00:36:21
Speaker 3: Say, everyone else needs to wait for lightning to strike as well. It's like, yeah, the Happiness Project will come to you, and I know.

00:36:27
Speaker 1: I mean, it is funny. And that was the title that rarely do do titles come as easily that That was just what I was like, I should do a Happiness Project. And many people told me that was a terrible title, but I was like, I don't even that's just what it is. I don't like it doesn't But Life in Five Senses was very very hard title. It seems like a very obvious title, but oh my gosh, it was very hard to title. You know.

00:36:48
Speaker 3: It was the five senses. It was like, well, how do I get out? I mean, it could have been like site.

00:36:53
Speaker 1: See what your ear here? I don't know. When somebody suggested, They were like, what don't you call it see here, smell, Taste Touch, and I was just like, well thanks for that, because when they were taking along the power, Money, Sex fame, you know line right, yeah, I mean well, and then I had Taste Touch Go, which I really like, which was started at as Taste Touch Listen Go, and then I thought three was more powerful than four, so Taste, Touch, Go, which I loved a lot of the titles that I came up with, Well, Laura, I know you've you've battled with titles to their heart, a lot of them. Some people love them, and some people were like, this is the worst title I've ever heard, absolute one hundred percent, do not do it. Like I love the title licking the Universe, and so many people are like, you absolutely cannot do it, and like, but it's so good, it's so memorable, Like even if people hate it, they'll remember it. They will remember it. And then my sister Elizabeth, the co host of Halfier, she liked the Magic of Ketchup. She was like, everybody loves like everybody's like, why is ketchup magic? But then other people said, no, that might make you think it's a food book. It might seem too limiting. So all of them had like and so life in five centses. I just decided, let me just go on the nose, yeah, and just like have you because with a not especially to the nonfiction book, there's a lot to be said for people just understanding what is this book about.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had that experience that if people don't know what it's about you've got an uphill battle.

00:38:24
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I think. That's what happened with better than before my book about habits. My mother said to me, why don't you call it the habit of habits? And I wish that I had, because I think that was a great talent. It was almost came to me too easily. I'm like, I can't just like have my mom tell me the best, you know, I like I overthought it. Yeah, but again I was like I kind of learned from that that it is really a help for readers if they instantly know, Okay, like what are we going to be talking about? Yeah, exactly.

00:38:49
Speaker 2: Well.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: One more listener question we had is that if some you know, writers, content creators, where should they be focusing their energy to make the biggest impact. I think this listener is, you know, looking at all the ops. Obviously you can do blogs, you can do podcast.

00:39:02
Speaker 1: Newsletters, social media in the various forms, where do you think is the smartest place to be? You know, that is a really really hard question, and I don't think there's a magic answer, and I also think it's changing all the time, and it depends on you and what you're interested in and your audience and what appeals to them, and so you want to think about if you're thinking about like reach and an audience, you want to go where the audience is because you want to make it easy for them to find what you're writing about. And I really do feel so fortunate because when I started using all these tools, I started as just as they were starting to kind of come into existence, and so I could add them gradually. And I'm sure to somebody who's starting out now they feel like, oh my gosh, there's like fifteen things I should be doing. Once they're up and running, they're not that hard to keep going, but they are very arduous to get up and running, especially when no one's really paying attention, and so that's sort of that's sort of discouraging. But I will say if there's any one piece of advice that I would ever give to anybody related to writing, and I give myself this advice all the time, which is have something to say, and that if you're struggling, often it's because you're like just trying to put something in. You're like, oh, I need to have something in my Instagram feed. Let me just throw something up there, instead of having something to say, And the more you have something to say where you're like, I really want to say this, then writing becomes so much easier, and wanting to communicate becomes much easier and clearer because you're like, I cannot even express how excited I am to talk about the five senses. I could talk about it all day long. I could talk about this, I could talk about like any one of the senses all day long. So the opportunity for somebody's like, hey, why don't you do something on Instagram, I'm like that sounds great because I have so much to say. But sometimes we're sort of like we're kind of scrape in the bottom of the barrel. We don't really have anything to say. And then I say, stop, think, figure out what you want to say, and then all the other things become clearer. Not to say that it's still not a lot of work.

00:41:15
Speaker 3: I would say, right now, I'm trying to write a monthly newsletter and have kept restarting and starting. I'm like, maybe this is a really bad topic and I should switch write about something else. Because because when you have something to say, it like it comes a lot easier.

00:41:28
Speaker 1: It's so much easier. I mean, you can even write about I have nothing to write about? Or what do I do when I have nothing to write about? I mean, sometimes you just like shine a spotlight on whatever you're going through, you know, like, oh, just having had a book come out, I feel sort of drained and dry and scraped or whatever. I don't know, but I remember with my speaking of children, with my daughters, both of my daughters with their college admission essets, which is, you know, this huge milestone in people's lives is they said, figure out, like, what do you have to say? Don't just feel like you need to concoct something to like check the checklist of what they're telling you. It should be. Really think of something that you're excited to talk about, that you're interested in, And then the writing is so much easier and it tends to be a lot more interesting too, even if the quality maybe isn't as good, there's you're like, there's more engagement from the writer. Absolutely, all right, Well, Gretchen, we always end with a love of the week.

00:42:24
Speaker 3: So something I've obviously been talking about lots of things with the senses that one one could love, I will go first with one that taps at least a couple We have two really gorgeous cherry blossom cherry trees in the yard right now, which is I.

00:42:39
Speaker 1: Was just thinking about lowering blossom. But we are at the perfect time of year.

00:42:43
Speaker 3: It's like in the Northeast where the Northeast like pink, pink and white.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous everywhere where.

00:42:49
Speaker 3: The Northeast like apologizes for winter for a couple of weeks in April every year, and you're like, okay, I love you again.

00:42:55
Speaker 1: Yes, it's right now up here.

00:42:57
Speaker 3: The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, like little puffs of white on these branches. So I go out and just like stand under these two trees, gock up at the sky, smell it, let the petals rain down around me for a while, and I'm very happy. So that's my love of the week for this week. They'll be gone next week, but they're great right now.

00:43:19
Speaker 1: What is I was just seeing the same thing because the flowering branches are just so striking, the Forcynthia, the magnolienges, and we haven't had that much rain, so every pedal is still on. My love of the week is I think Perfume. I really do love for him. My mother and father in law just had their sixtieth wedding anniversary, and as part of the celebration, one of the things I write about in Life and Five Censes is creating a five centses portrait of someone. It's a super fun exercise. And so for as part of like a Toast, I wrote a five cents's portrait of my mother in law and my father in law. And I realized that in kind of trying to think of like and I wrote, so, I came up with like five memories or associations I had for them for each of the five senses, so twenty five things altogether. And I realized for my mother in law, I really associated her with the signature perfume that she wore all the time when I first met her, which is First. And the funny thing, she doesn't even really wear First anymore, and she kind of had forgotten that she went through this period where it was her signature perfume. But for me, because I was like, oh, this is my mother in law, it made a huge impression. And I thought, you know what, I am just going to splurge and I'm going to buy myself a bottle of First perfume because I had not realized until I had done that portrait what a strong association it was for me with her, even more than she had it for herself, which is kind of interesting. And then jet, just a visit to the perfume counter just made me realize. And by the way, I don't wear perfume during the day because I know so many people don't like it. People wear perfume, but I wear perfume at night and when I'm at home all day because I love it. And so you know, just even if out of consideration, you don't wear it for other people, if you like it, you can still wear it, wear it yourself. So I love that way to tap into the memory of somebody who my memories of someone who is so important to me, absolutely.

00:45:21
Speaker 3: And particularly if it's the time when you were first getting to know her, it's early in your relationship, right, It all, yes, brings you because it's funny, like an imprinted on my brain.

00:45:28
Speaker 1: Also, there's something called the reminiscence bump, which is that most adults remember most vividly the period between fifteen and twenty five. And I wasn't twenty five when I met her. I was a little bit older, but I wasn't that much older, so maybe I was still kind of in that reminiscence bump Era, So it really made a big impression on me. Yeah, because it's like she loomed very large about she still lives very large in my life, but particularly then Yes, then.

00:45:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, awesome. Well, Gretchen, this has been awesome. Thank you so much much for joining.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I so enjoyed the chance to have the opportunity to talk to you.

00:46:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, so everybody please go check out Gretchen Ruben's brand new book, Life in Five Senses, And we've also talked about her website where you can get the various quizzes Gretchenruben dot com slash quiz so you can learn your four tendencies, which are the four tendencies you are, and you can also learn your neglected sense all sorts of other useful information.

00:46:23
Speaker 1: So thank you, Gretchen.

00:46:24
Speaker 3: And since we're just ending this without Sarah, just go ahead and the episode. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:46:34
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.

00:46:35
Speaker 2: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and You can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.