A Fully Sensed Life (Gretchen Rubin)

04.20.2023 - By Elise Loehnen and Audacy Play

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“So one of the things I explored in life in Life in Five Senses was the value of boredom. Because when you're bored and when your mind is just kind of running free and trying to amuse itself, you'll often have insight. And that's why people have ideas in the shower, when they're walking the dog or something. When there's nothing occupying them, that's when our brain can come up with these new insights. So I was walking through the Met, I was in a very familiar place, so I was a little bored. And that's when I realized, the way I thought of it was that the beautiful often requires a little bit of ugly. And being systematic, I’m like, you say that, but how do you back that up? And I could think of one for each sense because it does turn out that often the beautiful does require a little bit of what might be considered ugly. And that is part of, as you say, the complete picture. When I took a perfume class as part of my sense of smell study, our professor had said that often a beautiful perfume will have some bad, you'll smell it and you would be like, Ooh, that smells bad. And yet it makes the perfume more beautiful.”

Gretchen Rubin is an author, podcast host, and self-improvement expert, who has written many New York Times bestellers, including one that hit #1: The Happiness Project, where Gretchen performed what she has now perfected—using herself as a lab through which to study how principles from throughout time act on us, and inform our understanding of the world. She extends this point-of-view into her podcast, The Happiness Project with Gretchen Rubin, where she offers actionable daily strategies for cultivating joy and well-being, along with her sister.

Today, we discuss her newest book, Life in Five Senses, which explores the powerful impact of embracing the world through sensing the world, rather than thinking about the world. It’s a book about experiencing: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Through her extensive research and personal insights, Gretchen found that tuning into these senses provides relief from internal chaos while fostering our connection with the external world.