Gretchen Rubin in Conversation with Annie Murphy Paul

Join Elm Street Books on Tuesday, April 18th from 6PM – 7:30PM at New Canaan Country School for a conversation with Gretchen Rubin discussing her newest book Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World. Gretchen Rubin will be in conversation with Annie Murphy Paul.

Tickets can be purchased through elmstreetbooks.com

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and co-host of “The Happier with Gretchen Rubin” podcast discovers a surprising path to a life of more happiness, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses.

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature which she’s written about in her five New York Times bestsellers, and talks about on her popular award-winning podcast with sister Elizabeth Craft, “Happier with Gretchen Rubin” (over 200 million downloads to date!). 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. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In LIFE IN FIVE SENSES: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World (Crown, on sale 4/18/23), Rubin’s revelatory journey of self-experimentation, she 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 Met and trying ayahuasca, Rubin shows 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.

Profound yet practical, the book is filled with lists and organizing principles, such as a Five-Senses Quiz, Manifesto for Listening, Rubin’s own Audio Apothecary (a special playlist of songs that give her a boost), Taste Timeline writing, Muse Machine creating, as well as jump-start plans to engage each sense.

LIFE IN FIVE SENSES is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with thoughtful insights and hands-on 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.