Life in Five Senses review by Gretchen Rubin [Book Summary & Takeaways]

Life in five senses review by Gretchen Rubin summary> subtitled: How exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world by Gretchen Rubin. A Five Senses Jump-Start—Key Notes Summary.

Life in five senses review by Gretchen Rubin summary> Life in five senses, How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World by Gretchen Rubin book summary pdf — Image courtesy of Goodreads

The more we notice, the more we can enjoy. —Gretchen Rubin, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World

Gretchen Rubin is a New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project, Outer Order, Inner Calm; The Four Tendencies; Better Than before; and just recently, Life in Five-Senses. She also hosts the award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, with her sister, Elizabeth Craft, where they dive into practical solutions for cultivating a happier life. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Rubin now lives in NYC with her husband, a dog, and their two daughters.

Her recent book, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, take us on a journey of self-experimentation, depth and connection. Let’s discover together the mysteries of the five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, with Gretchen Rubin.

Gretchen’s Five-Senses experiment came to be, after a visit to her eye doctor, she realized, she’d been taking her five senses for granted. This led her to explore the mysteries and joys of her five senses, as a way to live a more mindful, and happier life.

The following will give you a glimpse into Gretchen’s discoveries, to help appreciate the five-senses even more. She has put together a comprehensive guide that anyone can use to grow more healthier, happier, and engaging with the difficulties of everyday life.

Please enjoy> Gretchen’s life in five senses— how exploring her senses got her out of her head and into the world; with more vitality, creativity, and love.

Life in Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin. —Key takeaways

Seeing

“See something once—really see it—and it never looks the same again.” ― Gretchen Rubin, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World

Cloud reflected in the water at Central Park’s Lake.
An orange traffic cone
The toothy cow grinning down from the stained-glass window in the Met Museum.

Life in five senses review by Gretchen Rubin summary Gretchen Rubin's Five-Senses Self-Portrait — Panel with the Nativity. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A wall of library shelves crowded with books.
Jamie (her husband) asleep under a heap of covers in early morning light.

Hearing

“Our hearing anchors us in the world; it tells us what’s happening behind us, above us, in the dark, and before we’re born. Sound pumps me up, calms me down, and transforms my moods in just a few seconds.” ― Gretchen Rubin

Eliza and Eleanor (her daughters) laughing at each other’s jokes.
Barnaby’s (the family dog) deep sigh after he curls up on his favorite blanket.
Clicking sound of fingers on a keyboard.

LIFE IN FIVE SENSES REVIEW BY GRETCHEN RUBIN — Finger Pressing Computer Keyboard

Elizabeth (her sister the sage) saying, “Okay, Gretch, it’s time for…” during a Happier recording.
The roar of the #6 subway train as it pulls into the station.

Smelling

Of the five senses, smell is the one with the best memory. —Rebecca McClanahan

Sharpie pens
Nighttime perfume
Black coffee
Coffee roasters on unsplash
The Met’s hand sanitizer
Crushed lavender

Tasting

“Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s important that we give ourselves treats—which may sound self-indulgent or frivolous, but it’s not. When we give more to ourselves, we can ask more from ourselves. Treats help us to stick to challenging goals, resist unhealthy temptations, and shrug off small irritations. When we don’t get any treats, we can begin to feel burned-out, depleted, and resentful.” ―Gretchen Rubin, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World

Winstead’s triple burger (plain, no bun)
WINSTEAD’S STEAKBURGER’S, Kansas City – TripAdvisor
Diet Coke
Eggs in many forms
Almonds
Sugar-free cinnamon mints (she doesn’t eat sugar.)

Touching

A heavy mug warmed by a hot drink.
Plush terry cloth robe (soft, comfortable bathrobes that keep you warmer.)
A “Family love sandwich” hug with Jamie, Eliza, and Eleanor
The almost imperceptible weight of contact lenses
Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash
Light wool fingertip-less gloves

Related post: Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer, PHD

Gretchen Rubin, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World

Try This at Home: A Five-Senses Jump-Start

Consider creating a five-senses portrait of your own; Identifying the sights, touch, smells, tastes, and sounds of all things you experience. Your Life in Five Senses: Get Out of Your Head and Into the World

Seeing

Look for what’s overlooked. (e.g., TV advertisements, logos, drugstore shelves, the houses on your street…what do you notice when you really look closely? (for Gretchen, she’d finally noticed the arrow on Fedex trucks.)
Choose a place for a daily visit. (Gretchen’s place is the Met or The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.)
Indulge in a splurge of color. Find an inexpensive, easy way to add a beautiful spot of color—wear a bright, fun color, paint the walls, buy a set of colored pencils; paint your nails.
Make your smartphone screen less appealing by switching it to “grayscale.” For a day or a week, set your phone to display in black, white, and gray to see how the lack of color affects your usage.
Eliminate an eyesore. Look around your home and office. Can you spot any areas that are cluttered, crowded, or dirty, or otherwise hurt your eyes? Figure out a plan to make improvement.
Find new ways to see. To sharpen your sense of sight. Choose an object and try to see it in many ways: Look at it in the mirror, suint at it, block part of it with your hand, look at it from far away and close up.

Hearing

Make a list of songs you love, for whatever state of mind you’d like to cultivate. Find out whether you’re a song lover or a music lover. Maybe you’d like a playlist that puts you in a happy, high-energy mood; or perhaps you’d like songs that invoke a calm, reflective spirit or a melancholy mood. Find out. Music can be a terrific way to give ourselves a treat.
Download a birdsong-identification app and identify the birds around you.
Pay attention to your listening. Write your own manifesto for listening, to remind yourself of your own listening challenges–and how you might listen better.
Listen to music to create your own personal soundtrack as you move through your day. Notice how music can influence your mood.
Turn down the noise. Just as you might clear clutter, find ways to clear clatter. Protect your ears: Turn off your phone notifications, invest in noise-canceling earbuds or headphones, turn off the TV if you’re not watching it, and avoid noisy places.

Smelling

Explore your sense of smell with some home experiments: —Plug your nose and put a jellybean in your mouth, then unplug your nose and note how the flavor changes. —Try a board game like Follow Your Nose or team up with others to try to identify mystery scents. —Notice how even a strong smell fades out of awareness after a few minutes. —Compare how each nostril registers a slightly different smell.
Sharpen your sense of smell by increasing blood flow to your nose—run up and down stairs or do some jumping jacks.
Go out of your way to have interesting smell experiences. Smell items such as smelling salts, scratch-and-sniffs, and unfamiliar fruits.
Add fragrance. Look for ways to add a beautiful scent to your environment: scented candles, sachets, fresh flowers, perfume, incense sticks. etc.
Eliminate odor. Find ways to fix something smelly. (e.g., the fridge, the space under the kitchen sink, a trash bin, a dank basement, a carpet subjected to lots of pet accidents.) Pay attention to the smells of places you visit. Remember, the familiar is easy to ignore.
To feel more present in a particular place and time, pause to notice all the smells you can detect.

Tasting

Explore your sense of taste with some home experiments: —Use an orange to experience the difference between sour and bitter. The segments taste sour and the rind taste bitter. —Try the miracle fruit that makes sour things taste sweet. —cook with spices you haven’t used before.
Pull out a bottle of ketchup and pay close attention as you put a few drops on your tongue. Notice its taste and also its color and shine, its smell, its texture.
Deprive yourself of a common taste for a day, a week, a month, indefinitely. Deprivation can help remind us of the pleasure that we get from a taste by temporarily giving it up. Deprivation may also show us that we’re happier when we five up a taste altogether.
Educate your tongue. Take a tasting class, in person or online, to learn about some taste that interest you, such as wine, beer, cheese, chocolate, or coffee.
Hold a taste party. Invite people to compare tastes of different brands or varieties of familiar items, such as fruits, vinegars, olives, teas, pickles, and energy bars; to identify mystery tastes, or ingredient that’s taken for granted.
Share taste memories. our sense of taste offers us a great way to connect with others—their childhoods, their cultures, their memories.
Seek an experience that will give you some boredom. Boredom can stimulate our imaginations, because when we’re bored, we reach inward to find stimulation.

Touching

Use your sense of touch to engage with books that have a touch element, such as “touch and feel” books, pop-up books, and lift-the-flap books.
Visit a store where you can touch the merchandise. Feel the plushy folds of bath towels, the smooth surface of glass mixing bowls, the cold weight of carpentry tools.
As you move through your day, touch as many textures as possible and notice how your entire experience changes when you use your hands.
Give a loving touch. Within appropriate bounds, of course, look for opportunities for affectionate hugs, fist bumps, squeezes, hand-holding, or quick touches. Find ways to connect with the people you love through a warm touch.
Pet animals, and really notice the texture of their fur and bodies.
Hold a calming prop, such as a mug, a pen, a clipboard, or a stone. some touch items are specifically designed to help boost calm and focus, so consider trying a weighted blanket, therapy dough, a popping fidget toy, or a fidget spinner.
On a visit to a museum, buy a few postcards of artwork on display, then visit them to compare the actual artwork to the postcard version. Notice how looking at the postcard changes your view of the real piece.

Life in Five Senses review

For more delight, Gretchen advices us: to notice and appreciate your five senses. keep a Five-Senses journal where each day, you note the sense-highlights you experience. Delight others by playing a lighthearted prank or giving a gift that confounds the senses. If you’re not yet twenty-five years old, expose yourself to as many new sensations as possible; if we haven’t had a positive experience with something like a new food or new form of music by that age, we probably won’t embrace it.
For more love Gretchen says: To draw closer to someone you love, create a Five-Senses Portrait, (similar to the one presented above) to push yourself to notice small details of that person’s physical presence. You might also use this exercise to help you remember and celebrate a person who has died, or to hang on to memories of a place, a season of the year, or a particular experience.
For more energy and calm, she writes: Depending on what works for you, turn sensations up or down to refresh your mind.
For more imagination: To give yourself some unstructured time to play, schedule time for recess. Visit a place that sells materials and tools for creative endeavors: a hardware store, department store, gardening center, cooking-supply store, art store, or craft store.
For more memories Gretchen reminds us that: One day, now will be a long time ago, so to sharpen your experience of the present, and to create memories for the future,create an Album of Now by making a photo album of your ordinary life.
For more self-knowledge, Gretchen mentions to: Visit a place that fills you with awe and open your senses to experience it.

For more about Gretchen Rubin, visit her website, gretchenrubin.com, where she posts regularly about her happiness adventures, good habits, and human nature. And as Gretchen would say, “onward and upward.