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Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World
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. She’d spent so much time stuck in her head that she’d allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.
From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending Flavor University, Rubin show us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate, sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us—as well as a way to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.
Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
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. She’d spent so much time stuck in her head that she’d allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.
From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending Flavor University, Rubin show us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate, sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us—as well as a way to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.
Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published April 18, 2023
About the author
Gretchen Rubin
41 books114k followersAuthor Update:
Gretchen Rubin is excited to announce that the paperback edition of "Life in Five Senses" is out now. Order your copy today and explore using your senses for a happier, healthier, more creative life.
Author Bio:
Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature.
She’s the author of many New York Times bestselling books, such as The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, and The Four Tendencies, which have sold millions of copies in more than thirty languages. Her most recent book is Life in Five Senses, also a New York Times bestseller.
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.
Gretchen Rubin is excited to announce that the paperback edition of "Life in Five Senses" is out now. Order your copy today and explore using your senses for a happier, healthier, more creative life.
Author Bio:
Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature.
She’s the author of many New York Times bestselling books, such as The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, and The Four Tendencies, which have sold millions of copies in more than thirty languages. Her most recent book is Life in Five Senses, also a New York Times bestseller.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 958 reviews
May 19, 2023
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. These activities aren't so bad at face value, but her execution of them and subsequent conclusions are just so ordinary. She invites friends over for a tasting party that includes things like Hershey's chocolate and Heinz ketchup. She discovers that The Met is full of beautiful things. She creates a playlist of her favorite songs. She buys herself flowers and discovers they're pretty. She goes on an eating expedition in New York City and eats potato knishes and bagels. She pats herself on the back for noticing when her husband has changed his shirt. Makes homemade slime. No new territory is covered here.
While I applaud Rubin for her new mindfulness and sense of adventure, it seems to me that her comfort zone is just too narrow to provide insight for many of her readers. Why not find beauty in a single leaf? Listen to music from around the world? Try a new cuisine? Try a sound bath? Or, better yet, travel to an exotic locale and report back on how all your senses were engaged in this new environment? That would be something worth reading.
On the second part, Rubin's sensory experiments are woefully pedestrian: visit a museum, compare different foods, discover what kind of music you like. These activities aren't so bad at face value, but her execution of them and subsequent conclusions are just so ordinary. She invites friends over for a tasting party that includes things like Hershey's chocolate and Heinz ketchup. She discovers that The Met is full of beautiful things. She creates a playlist of her favorite songs. She buys herself flowers and discovers they're pretty. She goes on an eating expedition in New York City and eats potato knishes and bagels. She pats herself on the back for noticing when her husband has changed his shirt. Makes homemade slime. No new territory is covered here.
While I applaud Rubin for her new mindfulness and sense of adventure, it seems to me that her comfort zone is just too narrow to provide insight for many of her readers. Why not find beauty in a single leaf? Listen to music from around the world? Try a new cuisine? Try a sound bath? Or, better yet, travel to an exotic locale and report back on how all your senses were engaged in this new environment? That would be something worth reading.
January 23, 2024
Loved this one and included it on my summer reading guide https://everyday-reading.com/2023-sum...
September 6, 2023
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. I also found touch interesting as someone who can rarely walk by things without touching them, even when I’m already familiar with the texture!
Over the last two years, I have made more of an effort to try being present and mindful in the moment. I’ve gotten better, though there’s still definite room for improvement — It can be challenging with the number of distractions in our daily routines, but it really does make a difference and can make an experience more enjoyable.
I listened to this audiobook and listened quickly. Gretchen Rubin narrates and I enjoyed hearing about her quest and reflecting on how I can appreciate the five senses more in my own daily life. It was helpful to have a physical copy of Life in Five Senses to refer to while listening too.
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. I also found touch interesting as someone who can rarely walk by things without touching them, even when I’m already familiar with the texture!
Over the last two years, I have made more of an effort to try being present and mindful in the moment. I’ve gotten better, though there’s still definite room for improvement — It can be challenging with the number of distractions in our daily routines, but it really does make a difference and can make an experience more enjoyable.
I listened to this audiobook and listened quickly. Gretchen Rubin narrates and I enjoyed hearing about her quest and reflecting on how I can appreciate the five senses more in my own daily life. It was helpful to have a physical copy of Life in Five Senses to refer to while listening too.
June 13, 2023
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.
February 2, 2023
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. After a trip to the eye doctor left Rubin concerned about her long term sight, she resolved to really see her surroundings from then on; and being the kind of person who enjoys self-appointed tasks and challenges and recording her findings, Rubin decided to spend a year deeply exploring each of her senses and taking notes. Life in Five Senses is divided into what we commonly think of as our core senses (Rubin notes that others might include our sense of equilibrium or feeling one’s heart racing, but she’s focussed on the “Big Five” of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), and along with scientific information that Rubin includes from her research, the author shares many stories of her own experiences through the course of the year, often based on training or exploring her senses. This type of intentionality is exactly what the 75 Hard challenge is meant to promote and I did find myself inspired by Rubin’s project; the blend of informal storytelling and scientific research hit the sweet spot of interest for me, and again, I am really glad that I started my own project here. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
It was strange to realize that I make the world. In darkness and silence, my brain receives countless messages as my five senses probe my surroundings. In that outer world, there’s no color, no music, no scent until those messages return to my brain — and then the world bursts into life inside my body.
One of the tasks that Rubin set before herself was to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day for the year; to both find ways to focus on particular sensory experiences and to discover the surprising within the familiar. Acknowledging that the access, time, and freedom that she has for this project makes her “very fortunate”, Rubin jokes: When I told my college roommate about my experiment, she said dryly, “Note to self: move within walking distance of the Metropolitan Museum.” (At the end of the book, Rubin stresses: “I’d chosen a museum, but, of course, someone else might choose a different place. A park, a route through a neighborhood, front stoop — the place doesn’t really matter. With familiarity and repetition, the world reveals itself in an unexpected way.”) So, although living in NYC meant that Rubin could easily take courses on perfumery at the Pratt Institute, attend a Dinner in the Dark restaurant, or handily book a sensory deprivation tank — and these kind of heightened experiences do make for good reading — a walk with the dog through my own neighbourhood over the course of a year, while really being attuned to my senses, does sound like the most meaningful way to live; why waft through life? I was interested in Rubin’s project and appreciated the conclusions she drew and the stories of how she implemented her findings into her domestic life.
As for the researched bits, I was intrigued by the following (about the brain’s focus on finding and studying faces):
According to Roman statesman and writer Cicero, King Xerxes the Great “offered a prize for the man who could invent a new pleasure.” Inventing a new pleasure seems like an impossible task, yet this explains the extraordinary attraction of YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and, of course, Facebook. They give us entirely fresh ways to gratify our desire to look at faces. We can view more faces in a single scroll through social media than during a lifetime in a medieval village.
And I found the following surprising but not surprising:
Because our expectations shape our experience, we respond differently to the same scent if we’re in a context that tells us “Parmesan cheese” vs. “vomit,” or “pine tree” vs. “disinfectant cleaner.” Does gasoline smell good or bad? People disagree. What’s the smell of “fresh” — is it pine, flowers, the ocean? Claims that “citrus is cheering” and “ peppermint is energizing” are based purely on learned associations. Americans find the smell of lavender “relaxing ,” but people from Brazil consider it “invigorating.”
And I found several things very surprising (but not incredible enough to fact-check), as when Rubin writes, Though it seems possible that humans, like other animals, communicate with pheromones, researchers haven’t yet been able to identify a single one or when she notes in an aside Despite the old trick question, the tomato can qualify both as a fruit and a vegetable, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture categorizes it as a vegetable. So, surprising or not, I did appreciate the research that Rubin includes throughout.
Even though I was celebrating my senses as never before, I kept dreaming up new ways to explore them. I knew that by going through my body, I could reach my spirit, and through my spirit, I could reach my body.
And reaching the spirit through the body and the body through the spirit seems to be the point of living more intentionally. The 75 Hard challenge requires that I exercise twice a day, one of those times outside, and while walking my dog in the recent below freezing weather, I have to admit that concentrating on my senses — noting the odd bird call and the squeaking of my boots on the snow, looking for the pops of colour against the hazy white sky, really noticing a smell, even if it’s unpleasant diesel from a passing truck in the otherwise empty scent field — living in the moment and experiencing each one to the fullest, this trumps wafting through the day (or worse: trudging through the slush with my head down just so I can put a check mark on the chart; that’s a terrible metaphor for life.)
Rubin ends Life in Five Senses with many recommendations for ways that a person can enhance their own sensory experience, and whether that might involve adding in pleasant stimuli (artwork or candles and or savoury treats) or removing annoying ones (really looking for clutter in the spaces we see every day, turning down [or off!] the jabbering television), there’s plenty here that anyone could implement to create a happier, more meaningful life. This was certainly the right book for me in the moment (even if the biggest challenge was limiting myself to reading just a bit of it every day).
March 15, 2023
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! 😍
And I hopped in delight to find the bowl with feet in the Met! 😍
January 22, 2024
Using my five senses to ground and still my mind has always been my primary coping skill and way to be more present. I love how Rubin's writing is so approachable and applicable! She doesn't just say what works for her- but gives hundreds of ideas from friends and research too for how our individual sensory life experiences can give us more joy and awareness in life. Self-help books often feel overly prescriptive to me, but this one did not give that vibe at all. It was very lighthearted and self-loving feeling!!
May 13, 2023
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.
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.
September 16, 2023
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"?
Maybe I'm being too harsh and living in New York City can really make a person forget they're a human being bestowed with the basic five senses, but considering the city has a reputation for being a concrete jungle, I'd infer that's not the case. The author must be one of those sheltered types who've never gone hiking in the mountains, swum in lakes or creeks, made barbecue in the wild, slept in a tent in the woods, felt sand caress their limbs, entered Sephora just to breathe in all the fragrances and done countless other little things that make us feel human. Also, not everyone lives in NYC and has so much time on their hands to visit a museum daily. If this book was intended for an audience of people who forgot how to live, then perhaps it's a success, although the author barely scratched the surface of the subject considering the plethora of personal anecdotes and descriptions of the Met, all crammed in a booklet of 200-something pages.
And now a quote from yours truly:
Life is out there, so go out and live it.
END OF RANT
May 18, 2023
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.
I think my biggest problem with this book is Gretchen herself. She is boring. She is fastidious. She is fussy. She lives too much in her own head. I'm sure many readers would slap the Autism label on her but I'm not convinced that it fits. She doesn't like to listen to music and she was extremely reluctant to try any sort of different cuisine. The taste chapter mainly recounts how she samples different flavors of ketchup/chocolate/cheese/barbecue sauce and how she and her husband go to a blindfolded dinner, then later how she and her daughters take her mother-in-law to taste knish, bagels with cream cheese and salmon, and a chocolate babka. Go out on a limb, girl! I am not particularly interesting and have a low threshold for overstimulation (for example, I find NYC to be overwhelming after a few days), but even I was bored at what Gretchen considered to be a stretch. The fact that it took me 10 days(!) to get through this less-than-300 page book is a testament to its lack of excitement. [I've been averaging 70 pages a day this year; book should have taken 4 days, tops.]
Another problem I have with this book is the sense of privilege. The "Tell me you're a rich white woman without telling me you're a rich white woman." Gretch lives on the Upper East Side, literally around the corner from her in-laws, within walking distance to the Met, and she has enough leisure time to drop in literally every day for a year, except when she's traveling. She doesn't boast about it, and in fact adds a "here's how you can do your own sensory project!" section in the back, but it still stood out to me.
No mention of covid, so I'm not sure if this book was written pre-2020, post-2021, or a bit of both. It seems weird that she wouldn't mention the impact of mask wearing and social distancing on sensory experiences, or how the streets were so quiet during lockdown, and it seems unlikely that between 2020 and 2022 she could have gone to the museum daily without making a reservation.
On the whole, this was a book with an intriguing premise, but for me it fell disappointingly flat.
I think my biggest problem with this book is Gretchen herself. She is boring. She is fastidious. She is fussy. She lives too much in her own head. I'm sure many readers would slap the Autism label on her but I'm not convinced that it fits. She doesn't like to listen to music and she was extremely reluctant to try any sort of different cuisine. The taste chapter mainly recounts how she samples different flavors of ketchup/chocolate/cheese/barbecue sauce and how she and her husband go to a blindfolded dinner, then later how she and her daughters take her mother-in-law to taste knish, bagels with cream cheese and salmon, and a chocolate babka. Go out on a limb, girl! I am not particularly interesting and have a low threshold for overstimulation (for example, I find NYC to be overwhelming after a few days), but even I was bored at what Gretchen considered to be a stretch. The fact that it took me 10 days(!) to get through this less-than-300 page book is a testament to its lack of excitement. [I've been averaging 70 pages a day this year; book should have taken 4 days, tops.]
Another problem I have with this book is the sense of privilege. The "Tell me you're a rich white woman without telling me you're a rich white woman." Gretch lives on the Upper East Side, literally around the corner from her in-laws, within walking distance to the Met, and she has enough leisure time to drop in literally every day for a year, except when she's traveling. She doesn't boast about it, and in fact adds a "here's how you can do your own sensory project!" section in the back, but it still stood out to me.
No mention of covid, so I'm not sure if this book was written pre-2020, post-2021, or a bit of both. It seems weird that she wouldn't mention the impact of mask wearing and social distancing on sensory experiences, or how the streets were so quiet during lockdown, and it seems unlikely that between 2020 and 2022 she could have gone to the museum daily without making a reservation.
On the whole, this was a book with an intriguing premise, but for me it fell disappointingly flat.
April 22, 2023
It’s impossible to read this book and not feel wonder and a longing to experience more, to sense more. My eyes (and ears, nose, mouth, and skin) were opened to noticing things previously pushed into the background of my life. Rubin has done it again; she’s written a book that will create more happiness in readers’ everyday lives.
June 12, 2023
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. It’s clear that she has an extremely privileged life with a lot of leisure time. It was weird that she was patting herself on the back for doing things considered normal to the rest of us.
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. It’s clear that she has an extremely privileged life with a lot of leisure time. It was weird that she was patting herself on the back for doing things considered normal to the rest of us.
January 14, 2023
Reading this had me sniffing the air and celebrating fresh flowers. I loved it!
June 14, 2023
I find Gretchen Rubin’s writing engaging and thought provoking. I’ve read The Four Tendency’s and Outer Order Inner Calm and found both to be immensely helpful in relationships with people and with ‘stuff’ we collect or are gifted and really want to discard. Life in Five Senses is Rubin’s latest book examining her process in trying to awaken her relationship with Sight, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touch. Her desire to explore these senses came after her eye doctor blithely said she was at risk as she aged for a detached retina. As she walked home she decided to SEE more in everyday life and expand her experiences and interactions with her 5 main senses. Each chapter contains some light science-y information (engaging not boring) and then her experiments with trying to awaken that sense for a richer life experience. She lives in NYC so a daily walk to The Met was her starting point for Sight. For each sense (chapter) she explains what she did and how that has enriched her life - and really her family’s too!! At the end of the book she provides a section of ideas to help readers expand their senses as well. And, bonus, go to her website and take the quick quiz to see which is your most neglect sense! Mine was hearing.
One of the most creative ideas from the book is writing a five senses portrait of a person in your life: husband, wife, partner, child, parent, friend or even a place you love! What a wonderfully thoughtful and personal gift or remembrance for yourself!!
Gretchen - how about a 5 Senses journal - sections for People Portraits, Place Portraits both from our past and including while traveling, space for daily 5 Senses journal reflections etc!!!
One of the most creative ideas from the book is writing a five senses portrait of a person in your life: husband, wife, partner, child, parent, friend or even a place you love! What a wonderfully thoughtful and personal gift or remembrance for yourself!!
Gretchen - how about a 5 Senses journal - sections for People Portraits, Place Portraits both from our past and including while traveling, space for daily 5 Senses journal reflections etc!!!
May 3, 2023
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. It is truly a journey into knowing herself better. And also a journey of how exploring her senses actually caused her to appreciate the things and the people she loves even more than she already did.
When the book arrived, the book dust jacket and the book itself brought me so much joy. While it is true that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It is also true that a beautiful cover can add significantly to my enjoyment of a book.
I read this book cover to cover and enjoyed every minute of it. I will be keeping this book near. To enjoy looking at it. And to dip in and out of as well. I look forward to exploring my own senses in a deeper way. To getting to know myself better. And to deepening my relationship with my friends, family and my world as well.
This book may be my favorite of hers. It is truly a journey into knowing herself better. And also a journey of how exploring her senses actually caused her to appreciate the things and the people she loves even more than she already did.
When the book arrived, the book dust jacket and the book itself brought me so much joy. While it is true that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It is also true that a beautiful cover can add significantly to my enjoyment of a book.
I read this book cover to cover and enjoyed every minute of it. I will be keeping this book near. To enjoy looking at it. And to dip in and out of as well. I look forward to exploring my own senses in a deeper way. To getting to know myself better. And to deepening my relationship with my friends, family and my world as well.
April 19, 2023
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. It did make me examine what my dominant senses are-smell and sound-so that was interesting. I am very different from the almost-ascetic author—I burn all my good candles immediately and am not disciplined—so I enjoyed reading about her perspective on the senses. Overall interesting and enjoyable.
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. It did make me examine what my dominant senses are-smell and sound-so that was interesting. I am very different from the almost-ascetic author—I burn all my good candles immediately and am not disciplined—so I enjoyed reading about her perspective on the senses. Overall interesting and enjoyable.
June 14, 2023
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? I’m not sure, but I don’t identify at all with other readers who said this changed their life. I like some of her past books, but this one is a pass for sure.
April 23, 2023
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.
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August 14, 2023Gretchen 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.
April 22, 2024
wholesome read to reiterate the importance of small details in our everyday lives
December 18, 2023
I've always been fascinated with the senses and how they work to make our world vivid and full of life. Rubin's exploration of each of the five senses showed her how to live more deeply and connect more to the natural world and to others. It brought me so much joy to read!
Rubin talks about how to notice more things in our world by choosing an object or a color and training ourselves to seek it out for a short period of time. How to train yourself to spot small details and things usually overlooked.
She discusses the importance of listening in the hearing section and how listening to silence is just as important as listening to sound. How focusing on a specific smell helped her be more present in the moment.
This was a delightful book that I would recommend to everyone!
Rubin talks about how to notice more things in our world by choosing an object or a color and training ourselves to seek it out for a short period of time. How to train yourself to spot small details and things usually overlooked.
She discusses the importance of listening in the hearing section and how listening to silence is just as important as listening to sound. How focusing on a specific smell helped her be more present in the moment.
This was a delightful book that I would recommend to everyone!
September 13, 2023
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.
February 28, 2023
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.
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.
April 29, 2023
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.
January 11, 2024
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.
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.
April 18, 2023
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. all to be more present and sharpen our view of the world, to perceive the whole 360°. In my case, on the other hand, it is more of a way to accumulate memories of perfect moments, which the more detailed they are, the more they will remain forever.
Questo ultimo libro di G.Rubin si focalizza sui nostri cinque sensi. Partendo da un po' di psicologia della percezione ed arricchendo il tutto con la Mindfulness che non passa mai di moda, l'autrice sforna un altro libro perfetto per il suo essere leggermente interessante, senza diventare difficile. Chiaramente questa é la mia opinione e si basa sul fatto che, personalmente, facevo giá parecchie cose suggerite dall'autrice, per ragioni diverse peró. Per esempio lei ci porta ad essere attenti a colori, sensazioni, odori, suoni etc. il tutto per essere piú presenti ed affinare la nostra visione del mondo, per percepire il tutto a 360°. Nel mio caso invece, si tratta piú di un modo per accumulare memorie di momenti perfetti, che piú sono dettagliati, piú resteranno per sempre.
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
Questo ultimo libro di G.Rubin si focalizza sui nostri cinque sensi. Partendo da un po' di psicologia della percezione ed arricchendo il tutto con la Mindfulness che non passa mai di moda, l'autrice sforna un altro libro perfetto per il suo essere leggermente interessante, senza diventare difficile. Chiaramente questa é la mia opinione e si basa sul fatto che, personalmente, facevo giá parecchie cose suggerite dall'autrice, per ragioni diverse peró. Per esempio lei ci porta ad essere attenti a colori, sensazioni, odori, suoni etc. il tutto per essere piú presenti ed affinare la nostra visione del mondo, per percepire il tutto a 360°. Nel mio caso invece, si tratta piú di un modo per accumulare memorie di momenti perfetti, che piú sono dettagliati, piú resteranno per sempre.
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
December 22, 2023
Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World by Gretchen Rubin is an adventurous memoir of self-experimentation that resulted after an eye-opening visit to her eye doctor. Gretchen explores the five senses and how it relates to happiness in her own life. She shares her journey of discovery and delight and includes a plethora of suggestions for readers to jump-start their own five senses experience.
I enjoy reading Gretchen Rubin’s books and listening to her podcast, so I was not surprised with how much I enjoyed reading Life in Five Senses. I loved her exploration of the five senses from the science to the application in her own life. She writes, “I wanted to transform my ordinary day. By paying more attention to the sensations I encountered, I could elevate the familiar experiences that were already part of my daily routines.” She seemed to have a good time exploring her senses. I think a sensory adventure in my own life could become a mindful practice and help me to be more present in my everyday life. I can also see how paying more attention to my senses could bring more joy and whimsy into my life.
Rubin also incorporates quotes, pictures of art from her daily visits to the Met in NYC, a Five-Senses Portrait of her husband (love this exercise), and plenty of resources. I have visited the Met which is a magnificent place, and I enjoyed reading about how she was able to connect the five senses on her visits. In addition to this book, Rubin created a quiz to determine a person’s neglected sense, and mine is smell which does not surprise me. So, I guess now I need to stop and smell the roses more often.
I enjoy reading Gretchen Rubin’s books and listening to her podcast, so I was not surprised with how much I enjoyed reading Life in Five Senses. I loved her exploration of the five senses from the science to the application in her own life. She writes, “I wanted to transform my ordinary day. By paying more attention to the sensations I encountered, I could elevate the familiar experiences that were already part of my daily routines.” She seemed to have a good time exploring her senses. I think a sensory adventure in my own life could become a mindful practice and help me to be more present in my everyday life. I can also see how paying more attention to my senses could bring more joy and whimsy into my life.
Rubin also incorporates quotes, pictures of art from her daily visits to the Met in NYC, a Five-Senses Portrait of her husband (love this exercise), and plenty of resources. I have visited the Met which is a magnificent place, and I enjoyed reading about how she was able to connect the five senses on her visits. In addition to this book, Rubin created a quiz to determine a person’s neglected sense, and mine is smell which does not surprise me. So, I guess now I need to stop and smell the roses more often.
May 24, 2023
Genres: Nonfiction/Personal Development
This 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.
When talking about the first sense, I was liking where she was going with this. But then it felt like she ran out of things to say and turned to the internet. That is not a bad thing by any means. There was just a different feel when she cited personal experience compared to just sharing information. Since this book is about her experiences of exploring her 5 senses, I was drawn more to the genuine insights than the tidbits that felt like they randomly showed up on a search.
This wasn't quite 3 stars but I rounded up because I liked the idea behind her journey.
This 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.
When talking about the first sense, I was liking where she was going with this. But then it felt like she ran out of things to say and turned to the internet. That is not a bad thing by any means. There was just a different feel when she cited personal experience compared to just sharing information. Since this book is about her experiences of exploring her 5 senses, I was drawn more to the genuine insights than the tidbits that felt like they randomly showed up on a search.
This wasn't quite 3 stars but I rounded up because I liked the idea behind her journey.
May 3, 2023
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. Other assertions were not exactly "light bulb" revelations (example: our sense of sight can help us to "connect" with people as we share life experiences.) As an expanded magazine article or perhaps even a five-part magazine series, it might have worked for me. As a full-blown book — albeit a slim volume — there simply wasn’t enough “there” there.
July 12, 2023
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.
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