The road to the mind perhaps starts with the nose?
Arguably one of the most underrated senses on our body (and probably OUR favorite) is our complex sense of smell. Our five senses are how we view the environment around us. With that great responsibility, we shape how we interact with people, objects, and even our own personalities based on how things and people smell. To appreciate our sense of smell and all the nuances that come within, let's get into how fragrances can shape our experiences and the moods we shift back and forth from daily.
Have you ever had that moment where a slight whiff in the air brought you back to a simpler time? A time when life seemed to just drift by yet last for an eon. This is thanks to our keen sense of smell and how it interacts with our brain. It is often thought that our sense of smell is most intricately linked with our memory. Neatly housed in our brains is a sector called the olfactory bulb. This tiny portion of our mind is in great proximity to our memory processors. The brain's memory processing part is responsible for managing our memories and neatly filing them in the corners of our minds for later use. For this reason, even a microsecond of a scent can take you on a nostalgia trip going back decades at a time.
Building on the previous connection to memory, a scent can often be a mental image of you that other people have in their minds. The memories that others keep will influence different triggers in their minds and influence how they will interact and understand you. That's why picking a scent that meshes well with the way you look and your natural aroma becomes a critical defining factor in the way you present yourself.
In terms of gender norms, citrus-based scents are often regarded as more masculine, whereas floral scents are feminine. A carefully curated mix of these two approaches transcends gender. It creates a wonderfully broad spectrum of complex aromas that delight the senses and can take the audience on a journey that will shape your interactions with them years down the line.
Last but certainly not least, a scent can display who you are as a person and the journey that you've walked throughout your life. When a fragrance audience is at a whiff distance from the performer, several things can happen. For one, the wearer usually comes off as more confident than they could be, an effective icebreaker if anything. Another is the expression of your unique personality. As everyone's individual scent foundation is different, fragrances create a unique concoction for everybody, coming off as slightly different depending on who you are. Using this knowledge to your advantage, you could effectively get out there and start expressing yourself in no time!
And if you need somewhere to start
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