Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World
Gretchen Rubin
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, and love: by tuning in to the five senses. For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she’d been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. more
272 pages, Hardcover
First published Crown
3.74
Rating
5551
Ratings
825
Reviews
Gretchen Rubin
32 books 109643 followers
Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature.Her previous books include the #1 New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project, as well as the bestselling books Better Than Before, Happier at Home, The Four Tendencies, and Outer Order, Inner Calm. Her latest book is Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World.
She’s the host of the popular, award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where she and her co-host (and sister) Elizabeth Craft explore strategies and insights about how to make life happier. As the founder of The Happiness Project, she has helped create imaginative products for people to use in their own happiness projects.
She has been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work reported on in a medical journal, been written up in the New Yorker, and been an answer on Jeopardy!
Gretchen Rubin started her career in law, and she realized she wanted to be a writer while she was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her family.
Community reviews
I've read--and enjoyed--nearly all of Gretchen Rubin's books, but this was a letdown. For me, this book failed to deliver on its two-fold promise: informative look at the five senses and examination of personal experience. The information presented is extremely superficial, relaying facts most people already know or the results of top-of-the-line Google searches. It never goes deeper than first-thought analysis and reads like a high school research paper. On the second part, Rubin's sensory experiments are woefully pedestrian: visit a museum, compare different foods, discover what kind of music you like. more
Loved this one and included it on my summer reading guide https://everyday-reading. com/2023-sum. more
In Life in Five Senses, a trip to the eye doctor prompts Gretchen Rubin to delve deeper into her five senses, “getting out of her head and into the world. ” I found this book really interesting and think many of us, at least from time to time, take our senses for granted. I am a very visual person so the presence of sight in my day to day life has probably been the most obvious sense to me. A picture may not do a landscape justice but to be able to see it can still be powerful. I think I found taste to be the most interesting of the 5 chapters focused on senses and in particular, the connection between smell and taste, and how these two, (though not unlike sound), can transport us back to a specific memory. more
I’d been trying to figure out what was missing from my life, and that unforgettable walk home from the eye doctor revealed the answer: I needed to connect with my five senses. I’d been treating my body like the car my brain was driving around town, but my body wasn’t some vehicle of my soul, to be overlooked when it wasn’t breaking down. My body — through my senses — was my essential connection to the world and to other people. I agreed to join my daughter in the 75 Hard challenge, and among other “critical tasks”, I am committed to reading ten pages of a self-help book every day for seventy-five days — so although I had not read Gretchen Rubin before, Life in Five Senses was the first book I selected for the challenge; and I’m glad I did. As humans we are wired to filter out the stimuli that we're accustomed to, so it’s normal to waft through our lives without really sensing those things that we encounter every day. more
while this was a good reminder to use all senses to practice mindfulness, the only thing I learned was what it's like being a rich white person living in New York. more
In which an intense type A person attempts to become observant. With bonus glimpses of disordered eating. As an observant person who is often overwhelmed by my senses, it was interesting to hear someone completely different from me attempt to notice everything in her daily life by taking classes and researching the five senses. . more
It sounds melodramatic to say this book changed my life… but I think it literally did. Reading it on the airplane on my way to a DC-NYC vacation made me incredibly aware of all the sights/sounds/feelings around me. And I hopped in delight to find the bowl with feet in the Met. 😍. more
Ugh, I'm torn. This book was much better than her disaster of a self-help book, but wasn't as good as The Happiness Project. Basically, Gretchen tries to enhance her life by invoking each of her senses (sight hearing smell taste touch). She goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day to look at various works, to smell the scents and listen to the sounds around her. Outside of the museum, she takes her mother-in-law on a culinary tour of the Jewish part of the lower East Side to try and dredge up childhood memories, and she experiments with sensory deprivation tanks and different tactile experiences. more
Life of a Rich Woman in Manhattan: How Going to the Met Every Day Made Me Appreciate Ketchup is a smug guide (. ) to the obvious: stop staring at your phone in order to see the beauty of nature, don't blast music in order to hear the sound of the fridge, inhale the smell of traffic or sweat (whichever one you wish to torture yourself with), eat slowly in order to savor every bite and notice the texture of the objects you touch. This could have easily been: a podcast, a blog post, an article, a TED talk, a pamphlet or a magazine story. I admit to not having read every single word because the cringy writing style made me writhe in discomfort: I couldn't get past the superficiality and triteness of it all, from shallow biological notions of our senses to trivial conversations with her family and friends. Also, what kind of person refers to a playlist as an "Auditory Apothecary". more
I was so intrigued by this topic but I feel like this could have been shared as a blog or a podcast. I appreciate Rubin’s self quest in exploring her senses but as someone who is already very sensitive and aware of their surrounding, I didn’t learn much. I felt that many of her experiences in being more mindful hardly scratched the surface of the sensory world: discovering the beauty of a museum, paying more attention to what her loved ones do, exploring different food spots in NY, doing taste tests with friends, creating a playlist with her favorite songs. I was really hoping for this book to provide deeper research on the topic. I also had a hard time relating to the author. more
Reading this had me sniffing the air and celebrating fresh flowers. I loved it. more
I almost abandoned this one a few times. Another reviewer said “It never goes deeper than first thought analysis, and reads like a high school research paper”- I couldn’t agree more. There were no nuggets in here for me that made me think or want to act differently. The author seems largely unaware of many things in everyday life that are obvious to me. Maybe I’m more observant and use my sense more deeply than most. more
Gretchen Rubin is a bestselling author and researcher of books on happiness. In this volume, she underscores the importance of savoring and relishing sensations of sight, sound, taste, smell and texture. By sharpening our focus and attention on everyday experiences, the book says, we are able to maximize the delight acquired from transient and evanescent moments in life. The author also shares her attempts to try out new experiences in sensation, such as a daily visit to the Met Museum to inspect and notice details in art, a sound bath, a course in perfumery, and a blindfolded 'dinner in the dark'. The author emphasizes that a novel environment or adrenaline-spiking experiences are not necessary for this project; rather, we experience a plethora of sights, sounds, and sensations everyday, and intentional awareness of trivial stimuli such as the sight of leaves or the soundscape of flowing water can elicit joy. more
This book details the author’s quest to pay attention to her surroundings using all five senses. One of her activities is going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day—wow, what privilege. —and visiting the many niche grocery stores NYC has to offer. I think I would have loved this book if it was less a personal experiment and more of a how-to on appreciating sensory experiences. There was a little bit of that but not enough. more
I’m a fan of Gretchen Rubin’s previous books and podcast so I was very grateful to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the advance read. Gretchen’s experience at the eye doctor sends her on a quest to find more meaning and joy in the five senses. Let this book be your wake up call to stop and notice the “little” things that you take for granted everyday. Even though this is a nonfiction book, Gretchen has woven stories of her family and friends into the experiences that make you feel like you are a part of the journey. A thought provoking read that will hopefully have readers searching for ways to slow down and connect with our senses. more
I think I’ve read all of Gretchen Rubin’s books, and I’m a fan. I listen to her podcast as well. One of my favorite things about this one is that she seems a bit more vulnerable. She describes herself as ‘rigid’, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this book she talks about eating sugar, carbs (which she gave up in 2012), going with the flow, learning to listen more instead of trying to immediately give advice and fix things, and more. I always learn something when I read her books. more
Ultimately too N=1 for me, though I can appreciate that those whose inclinations lean more towards the biography than the science or philosophy would get much more from the work than I did. more
Sorry not sorry als ik nu iedereen ga dwingen de neglected sense-quiz te doen of ga vragen om een vijf-zintuigen-portret met me te maken. Echt een fascinerend boek - veel 'aha-momenten' (oh daarom hou ik zo van dat ene hempje dat precies de goede lengte heeft en daarom vind ik het irritant als Juud hardop podcasts luistert), maar meer nog stimuleert Life in five senses opmerkzaamheid en creativiteit. 10/10. more
This latest book by G. Rubin focuses on our five senses. Starting with a little psychology of perception and enriching it with the Mindfulness that never goes out of fashion, the author churns out another book that is perfect for being mildly interesting without becoming difficult. Clearly this is my opinion and is based on the fact that, personally, I was already doing several things suggested by the author, for different reasons though. For example she leads us to be attentive to colors, sensations, smells, sounds etc. more
Genres: Nonfiction/Personal DevelopmentThis is the 5th book by this author that I've read. I loved the way this one started. It felt like it was going to have real substance to chew on. I'm not entirely sure this was successful though. I liked this one but I was expecting to love it. more
Perhaps a string glowing reviews that described Rubin’s work as a life-changing book set my expectations too high. Don’t get me wrong. The book has nudged me into paying more attention to my sensory experiences, a fact that merits at least a couple stars. It even offered several helpful tips for making the most of our senses. But I couldn’t connect with some of her sensory experiments. more
I’ve read one book by this author that i liked. And one I couldn’t finish. So I tried one more. I don’t have much in common with this lady. Boring Rich New Yorker with 2 kids. more
This is a biased review. This is my third book by Gretchen Rubin and I just really like her. I like the way she writes, her vulnerability, her quirkiness and her humor. I also think she is a crazy intelligent lady and it’s fun to see the way she processes things. So, I’m sure that opinion taints any review I write of her work. more
Lots of ideas that I will take forward into my everyday life. And now I’m on a mission to visit some place where I can spend an entire week in a major art gallery; my version of Rubin’s daily visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. . more
9/10--Every time I read a book by Gretchen Rubin, I think, "Yes, Yes, Yes. " So much of the way she thinks and the things she does just resonates with me on a deep level. I haven't written a full length review of a book in a long time, but I was very tempted to with this one because I just had so many thoughts while listening to it, and I wanted to be able to remember everything I was thinking, feeling, and hoping to implement. I have done many things over the last few years to try to tune into my senses a bit more (look up at the clouds every day, notice other people's eye color, identify scents when I'm walking outside, slowing down to savor food, etc. ). more
Some books just make sense to you at certain times and with self-help, it seems to be a determining factor on how I often rate them. I've been wanting to live a more 'present' life and this book does well in motivating me to just *notice* and sense the world around me better. . more
I have been a fan of Gretchen Rubin’s work since “The Happiness Project”. She is an auto-buy author for me. Her work is inspiring. I knew that she was working on a book about the five senses and so I preordered it as soon as it was announced. This book may be my favorite of hers. more
I really loved the idea of this book, but I think I’d like to read a version written by someone else. I found Gretchen Rubin’s writing really off-putting, surface-level and cloying, especially in certain moments (the repetition of her “Be Gretchen” motto. ). I’m still glad that I read it (I think); though the particular ideas that she recommended largely did not speak to me, I find the overall conceit really inspiring and would like to figure out how to undertake such a project in my own life. . more
It took her hundreds of pages to say that being mindful is important. It's just various examples of mindfulness in her life and experiments that she conducted to increase mindfulness. It got repetitive after a while. more
Adequate narration done by author. I brought this audiobook with me on vacation. I figured it was the perfect time to get in touch with my senses- on a beach, on the seashore, seeing family I hadn't seen since before the pandemic. I listened to the book in the car during the 7 hour drive, assuming I'd finish it just before arriving at my destination. Nope. more