The Benefits Of Trying New Things
Whilst you will already know there are many benefits to trying new things, actually having a go at something new might be something you think about doing more than you actually put into practice.
If you need any encouragement to stop procrastinating and do something that’s completely new to you hopefully this will help. Sign up to that class you’ve been pondering, book onto a workshop you’ve been looking at for a while, or if you need some motivation to take action, here are just some of the many, many benefits that come from trying new things.
Recalibration
Immersing yourself into something new means you need to pay attention, whether that’s to follow instructions or to complete steps in a process.
When you pay attention to something, it helps your brain to take a moment to switch off from the daily chatter, from the to-do lists and the busy-ness as it focuses on the new experience.
Giving your thinking-mind a break can help you to re-focus, re-frame and re-calibrate, which in turn can help you to plan and prioritise more effectively.
The Benefits Of Trying New Things - Storytelling
Every time you try something new, you’ll gain a story to tell.
When you’ve achieved something you didn’t think you could, you’ve got a great story. When things didn’t quite work out as you’d hoped, you’ve got a great story.
Even if you haven’t particularly enjoyed whatever new thing you tried, you can chalk it up to experience, and you’ll still have a tale to share with others about your experience.
Rekindling a child-like wonder of the world
Children are exposed to new experiences pretty much every day as they learn at home, at school and at play.
Their eyes widen in wonder at things we as adults may consider mundane, but that’s only because we’re so used to them.
As adults we watch and read the news which focuses on the negative. New experiences can expose you to good people, good events, and positive stories.
Trying new things gives us an opportunity to rekindle some of that innocent intrigue into the world we had as children and explore our curiosity.
Continual Learning
Whenever you try something new, you’ll learn something.
Perhaps it’s a whole new skill, maybe it’s the history of something, some new terminology, a new technique, or a new theory or idea. You’ll definitely finish with a new piece of knowledge.
Even if the nugget of learning that you take away isn’t about the thing you were trying, so for example perhaps it’s something you observed, or to do with someone you met, you’ll still take away information you didn’t have previously.
Strengthen Your Relationship With Yourself
The more you try new things and realise that even if it doesn’t go to plan you’re ok, the more you can trust in yourself.
You’ll get to know more about how you respond in different environments, and discover more about what you really enjoy and perhaps want to follow up, and find what you don’t like too.
Having a go at something you’ve never tried before can also unleash potential you perhaps never realised you had, and if it turns out you’re not particularly good at something, well, it can be an opportunity to laugh and not take yourself too seriously.
The Benefits Of Trying New Things - Build Confidence
You can’t easily ‘learn’ confidence. There are lots of tips and advice, but ultimately to become confident, you need to build it through experience.
Walking into a room full of strangers to do something you’ve never done before can be daunting. Following the steps in a dance class can feel challenging.
You’ll find the more you do something the easier it generally becomes, and the easier something feels, the more confident we are.
Gain Fresh Perspectives
Wherever you are, and whatever you try, it will undoubtedly help to expand your view of the world in some way.
Without realising it, we can easily find ourselves living in an echo chamber, only hearing about similar view points and only seeing one side of a story in our day to day life. Algorithms push things we’ve already expressed some interest in onto us further. Friends are often friends because we share the same values, ideas and principles.
Trying new things opens you up to different ways of thinking, new ideas and alternative view points.
Travel Without Moving
If you enjoy travel, what is it about travelling that you enjoy?
Is it meeting new people? Learning about new places? Seeing new things? Escaping the day to day? Trying new foods? All of this can be achieved through trying something new.
Immersing yourself in a new experience can sometimes be as rewarding as visiting somewhere new, and often with a smaller price tag.
Practice Vulnerability
Everyone was a beginner once. Trying new things allows you to embrace the opportunity of starting from scratch again.
Trying something for the very first time can feel uncomfortable, or even terrifying, and those are feelings most of us would probably say we don’t choose to experience if we’re being honest with ourselves.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable helps you to be your authentic self. Being vulnerable makes you more open to asking for help and connecting with others, and it can help you to foster trust in yourself and others.
Strengthen Your Resilience
Inevitably, when you try something new you’re not likely to be perfect at it.
On the one hand, you might uncover a glimmer of potential, and on the other you might discover you’re just not cut out for the new thing you’re having a go at.
However, when you try something new, even if it doesn’t work out as expected, or you don’t like it, it’s likely you will be fine. What’s the worst that could happen?
Perhaps you’ve made a meal you’ve never made before and it tastes disgusting, you’ll be ok. You don’t have to eat it.
Perhaps you go to an exercise class and get the moves wrong. Aside from some possible bruises bumping into people, you’ll be ok.
If you feel very self conscious about trying something new and if it doesn’t go as planned, you may feel your pride is dented. Whilst that can feel extremely uncomfortable in the moment, you will be ok and you’ll move on. You may not realise it at the time, but you’ll have learnt something that will make it easier if it happens again.
The Benefits Of Trying New Things - Spark Creativity
Classes, workshops, tutorials and courses in something you’ve never tried before can be really good for this.
Whilst you might initially think that the new thing you try would need to be creative, actually trying anything new can boost your creative thinking.
Whatever you try will give you a new memory, and a new story. It may help you to think creatively in the moment, in the next week or further in the future.
You never know what other ideas and creativeness it will spark unless you do it.
It's Rewarding
Whatever new thing you try, and however it turns out, you can take away a sense of achievement.
Even if you stepped all over a dance partners feet, or your painting looks nothing like the subject, or you take longer than other people to do something, you still took the initiative to get yourself out there when it can be so easy to stay within the lanes of your routine.
Focus on the accomplishments and the things that do go well when you try something new, and you’ll find plenty of reasons to be proud of yourself.
It's Good For Your Brain
Trying new things gets the neurons in our brains sparking as they make new connections and build on existing ones.
New experiences support brain plasticity. Thinking and memory can get slower and more challenging as we age, but trying new things allows the brain to continue to learn and grow as we get older.
If you try something new and especially if you like it, you’ll get a good hit of dopamine helping you to feel happier and more positive.
The Benefits Of Trying New Things - Open New Doors
You never know who you’ll meet, what you’ll learn or who you’ll inspire when you try something new.
Furthermore, you never know who the people you meet will know. Not only can trying new things open doors to new activities, skills, and opportunities, it could also open up doors to new introductions.
It’s good to remember too, that just because you may be a novice at the new thing you are trying, you have a lot of experience and knowledge in other areas of your life. Who might you be able to open some doors for?
An Opportunity To Practice Adaptability and Flexibility
This is not just adaptability and flexibility in the physical sense. Although some new things such as yoga will definitely help with that.
Trying new things is a great way to practice being around new people and in different environments. The more you do it the easier it becomes.
Purposefully choosing to go into different situations and settings gears you up to being more at ease, more flexible and more adaptable when they happen outside of your control.
You Can Slow Down Time
As we rush through routines and day to day life on repeat, time can become a blur and before we know it we’re back round on the treadmill for another day, week, month or year.
Ever found yourself saying something like ‘where did that hour go?’ or ‘I can’t believe it’s June already!’
A new experience almost always forces you to be in the present moment. The thinking mind has to focus rather than race through things that need doing.
Trying something new not only gives us a moment of pause, it also punctuates our usual timelines. It’s a snapshot in the calendar that we can recognise as being different.
It Levels The Playing Field
As humans, we often compare ourselves to others, whether that’s based on age, occupation, experience, location etc.
If you’re in a group, and everyone is trying the same thing for the first time, many of these comparisons really don’t make a difference. Perhaps you’re going abseiling, in which case it really doesn’t matter if someone is a CEO, self-employed, retired, not working, a student etc.
Whenever you try something new with other people, you’ll usually find you’re so focused on paying attention to the instructions, focusing on what you are doing and your own experience, that there’s little opportunity for comparison.
The Benefits Of Trying New Things - Indulge In Fun!
Let’s not forget, that trying new things can be brilliantly fun! It’s hugely important we make time for ourselves to have fun.
If you’re taking a workshop or a class or a attending a talk, more often than not these are from people who are passionate about sharing their skills and knowledge.
They probably also want you to sign up to multiple classes or further workshops, so they’re going to want to make sure you enjoy your experience.
The odds are in your favour that you’ll have a good time when you take the plunge and have a go at something you’ve not tried before.
So What Are You Going To Try?
These are just some of the benefits you’ll get from trying something new.
Hopefully this is some encouragement and motivation you need to take action.
It’s easy to think we’re too busy to allow ourselves the indulgence of trying new things. Perhaps you say to yourself you’ll do it next week or next month, which rolls around to the month after that, and the month after that.
Trying new things is not frivolous, or self indulgent, it’s important for our wellbeing, for our growth and development, and for connecting with the wider world.
So, what new things are you going to try? What are you going to learn? What fun are you going to have? What stories will you tell?
If you’re not sure of where to start looking for experiences that are new to you, why not take a look at the big list of all of the things I’ve been trying since 2018, or take a peek at the list of great resources where you can find new things to try that I’ve compiled for you.