Excitement of every day

 

Few weeks ago, while delivering a corporate talk at Zurich, someone from the audience asked me, how can we keep our every day exciting and fresh, since that was one of the key messages of my talk. And I said that there are many ways of doing it, but one very obvious and easy method is to always try do something, every day, that you have never done before. It is obvious because a human brain has developed to such a stage of infinite capacity to assimilate and analyse that we need to keep feeding it with something new to keep it active and satiated. If we don’t feed it something new, be it an experience, ideas, etc then it soon starts getting bored and then we get addicted to things like tiktok or Insta, which offers us instant satiation often without any substance. And it is simple because anything new that we have never done or experienced before doesn’t have to be something challenging or even out of the world. It simply should be something that you, as an individual, have never done or experienced before. It should be new at a personal level.

To give you an example, taking a new route to commute to your office, or to sit facing a different direction, or to try eating something with your hand instead of with cutlery, if you use public transport then walking one stop further before boarding the bus or subway, or getting off one stop before your usual one. To say hello to someone you have never met before, to take a cold shower in the morning, to go running or some activity that may seem commonplace but you have never done before. When we do this, it is like offering a new challenge to our brain. To try to do things you are unfamiliar with. This is like a kick to our neurons. We always get excited when we are going for vacation to a new place, when we are about to meet someone we have never met before, to cook something unfamiliar, and this excitement is key to every day freshness. But our regular every day life doesn’t usually offer us new experiences, since we have been hard wired to follow a routine in our personal and professional life. So that we don’t face surprises and are able to do things more efficiently.

But here’s my point: instead of saying, I will not do it because I have never done it, you could say: I will do it precisely because I have never done it before.

And this simple change in mindset will make your every day exciting and refreshing. Because the probability of something unknown happening builds up an excitement, anticipation, and eagerness. Even when we are scared of the unknown, you will find that it is also exciting simultaneously. For example bungee jumping or zip lining or for me snow boarding. Let the excitement overpower your fear and your brain will be dazzled with happiness.

Like today for me, I indulged in this practice of walking like a stork through absolutely frigid water. I was out walking along with my dearest friend, ambling through sky reaching conifers, babbling about everything under the sun, when suddenly we came across a small rectangular pool of water with a wooden bench along side. And she told me about cold water therapy, so we took off our hiking boots, and socks, rolled up our trousers and got inside. The outside temperature was around 4C, with smattering of ground snow and the water must have been about the same temperature. So we stomped around like storks, high kneeing all the way. After round 3 we both felt we would have hypothermia so we came out and soaked the sun and let the water dry by itself. It felt warm and nice and tingly. Then towards the evening, after a sumptuously prepared chemical free dinner at my friend’s house, I learnt about the International Phonetic Alphabets and we practised quite a lot of it, while nearly rolling in ground at my inaptitude in anything linguistic. And just as I was going to conclude this post, I learnt and practised two rounds of Wim Hof breathing technique.

My today has been super exciting, though at the time it started in the morning, I had no idea that what new things I would experience, yet I did. Because I have this perpetual desire to experience new things either through direct engagement or vicariously. I always keep my mind and heart open to newness. And never say no to something that I come across for the first time. When others say, ‘why’, I say ‘why not!’

My advice, go out there and find your excitement every day and turn your ordinary day into an extraordinary one.

Picture courtesy:  Félix Lam on Unsplash under Creative Common License