About a month ago I went kiteboarding for the first time around frozen Lake Champlain with my friend Cory. It was mid-February and he had been regularly strapping on skis or a snowboard every weekend to glide across the ice. In an attempt to entice me to learn the sport he offered to drag me around the ice with a rope-tow attached to his harness for a couple of hours. I had a blast that day. I don’t think I stopped smiling the entire time. And beyond that – it was so much more exhilarating than taking laps at the ski mountain like we had originally planned to do. But why?
When you compare the thrill of riding downhill vs the thrill of being pulled horizontally, they’re relatively similar. You’ve got fiberglass and wood strapped to your feet and you’re flying over the snow and ice. From an outside point of view they’re undoubtedly comparable. The difference here was novelty. I had never gone kiteboarding before, whereas I’ve boarded at the mountain countless times. This feeling of newness is not only exciting, but getting out of your comfort zone can also be highly beneficial for your brain.
In a recent episode of Unlocking Us, Brene Brown interviewed the neuroscientist and New York Times best selling author David Eagleman about his book Livewired. The most fascinating part of their talk was about brain malleability and how it changes as we age. Eagleman argues that exposing ourselves to and trying new things is crucial:
“This is really the single most important thing that all of us can do as we get older, is constantly challenge ourselves. And by that I don’t mean just do a Sudoku puzzle or something, what I mean is as soon as you get even reasonably good at Sudoku, bag that and start something new, start something that you’re not good at that is frustrating, but eventually achievable. And then as soon as you get good at that, you bag that and you start the next thing.”
To emphasize this even more, Dr Kathryn Papp, a clinical neuropsychologist at Brigham and Wommans and Mass General Hospital is quoted in a Harvard Health Letter discussing ways to promote neurogenesis. According to Papp neurogenesis is “the growth of new cells…[which] occurs throughout life, even in older age.”. One of the ways that we can improve neurogenesis is by challenging our brains, which “may create new connections between brain cells by changing the balance of available neurotransmitters and changing how connections are made.”.
Oddly the past year has simultaneously been filled with novelty and a roadblock to it. About a year ago many Americans had to leave the office to work from home due to the pandemic. Though it was challenging to get used to at first, this completely divergent day to day life was momentarily stimulating. In contrast to commuting into an office day after day, this new stay home structure was definitely different. Though many employees report that there are many aspects of WFH that they really enjoy, others are completely sick of it. Unfortunately the downside to novelty is that it inevitably wears off, and with restrictions still in place it’s particularly challenging to try new things right now.
So, the end of this post comes to you with a challenge. Within the next week, I encourage you to try something that is new for you. It can be something seemingly small, or it can be something that will drastically change your life. Draw a funny picture if you don’t consider yourself an artist. Buy a notebook and start journaling. Go for a walk down streets in your neighborhood that you’ve never walked down. Plant some flowers, and forgive yourself if you forget to water them and they die in a week. Learn how to dribble a soccer ball. Learn how to sing the alphabet backwards.
Do something fun, and it will help your brain at the same time.
As always, I’d love to hear about it!
Enjoy your weekend!
Thinking of an earlier blog, I wonder if the reason for not trying something new is the fear of feeling like an incompetent goofball, regardless of whether anyone else is watching or not. Perhaps we should always be in a position of “beginnerhood” at some endeavor, be it kiteboarding or tackling new subject matter by reading. That might be one of many definitions of “being alive”.