Scents and Sensibility

It was early 2019, and my first book,?The Millennial Whisperer, was about to be published. As any writer knows, this can be the toughest part of the journey. It’s a very vulnerable time. And I’d taken out an unsecured, $200,000 loan. I began to question the book, and everything about it, and I turned to my wife with tears in my eyes.?

“Julie,” I said, “do you think I’ll look back on this with fond memories? Do you think I’ll ever want to write a book again? Because this has been so much harder than I ever anticipated.”

Our home in Atlanta always has a certain fragrance, from the candles we burn and the cologne I wear. And I’ll typically save the last quarter inch of wax or last drop of cologne; I keep them on a shelf in my bathroom.

So four months after I confessed my anguish to Julie, I pulled the candle I’d been burning from the bathroom shelf. I yelled over to Julie in astonishment and delight. The memories that had happened around that one candle scent were already good ones.?

Smell and memory are so closely linked because of the anatomies of our brain, a phenomenon better explained by the experts at?The Harvard Gazette. And for me, scents easily beat photos, Instagram posts, or the written word to elicit some of the most powerful memories of my progress and challenges.?

It’s become such an essential part of my life—timestamping moments and memories with senses. Every month I rotate through a different scent for a candle and a cologne and I pair them up with my current life situation. Julie laughed at me for spending $200 a month on this practice until she realized just how important it is to my psyche. It really does change the whole environment of a room. When visitors walk into our house, whether or not they realize the olfactory effect (which I also match to music), they say, “Chris, the vibes in this place are just so amazing!”?

Hotels know this; the Delta Sky Club knows this, but why don’t we do it in our own lives? Why not open up our senses to fragrances that will remind us of our joy, our resiliency, our struggles, and our triumphs?

Le Labo is my go-to for colognes, and since it’s September, I’m into the musky scents of fall, like Musc 25, while Santal 33 is more of a wintry smell. And we shift from summer’s Jack Johnson vibe to more Band of Horses, Pine Grove and Rogue Wave. It’s more chill as I anticipate the coming season and the changes of fall.?

Let this be your invitation to do a smell exploration, starting with the?Le Labo discovery set. Decide which ones resonate with you, and allow your brain to timestamp memories in an amazing new way.