2: Try Something New

Here is something that surprised me when I first came across it: the brain's response to new experiences is chemically distinct from its response to familiar ones.

When we encounter something genuinely new — a different route home, an unfamiliar cuisine, a skill we are learning for the first time — the brain releases dopamine. Not in the overwhelming way associated with addiction or intense excitement, but in a quiet, motivating, life-affirming way. The kind that makes you feel alert, engaged, and — there is no more precise word for it — alive.

As we age, the ratio of familiar to novel experiences tends to shift dramatically. Our days become more routinised, more comfortable, and — if we are not careful — more repetitive. The brain, receiving fewer novel inputs, becomes less practised at processing them. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the world begins to feel a little smaller and a little flatter than it once did.

Trying new things reverses this. It is, in the most literal neurological sense, a way of keeping the brain young.

It does not need to be dramatic

I want to be clear about something, because the phrase "try something new" has a tendency to conjure images of paragliding or learning Mandarin. Those things count, certainly, but they are not the point.

The point is novelty at any scale.

A new restaurant. A different walking route. A recipe you've never attempted. A book in a genre you'd normally overlook. A class at the local community centre in something that mildly interests you. A conversation with someone you wouldn't normally speak to.

All of these activate the same underlying mechanism. All of them tell the brain: we are still exploring. We are still curious. We are still here.

What would genuinely interest you? Not what you think you should try — what actually draws your attention, even faintly? Start there. Small curiosity, followed through, is worth more than grand ambition that never quite gets started.

There is a version of the bucket list that can feel slightly intimidating — a catalogue of expensive, demanding, or physically challenging experiences that seem to belong to a younger or more energetic self.

I'd like to suggest a gentler version. Not a list of things you must do before you die, but a running list of things you are genuinely curious about. No pressure attached. No deadline implied.

Write down everything that interests you, however modest. Mark off anything that genuinely isn't possible right now for practical reasons. Then, from what remains, pick one thing — just one — and take a single step toward it this week. Not a commitment. Just a step. Look up a class. Buy the ingredients. Walk a different way home.

See what happens.

The people I know who seem most alive in later life are not necessarily the ones who have done the most extraordinary things. They are the ones who have never quite stopped being curious. Who still say, occasionally, I've never tried that — let's see.

That quality is available to all of us. It costs nothing. And it is one of the most reliable paths to staying young at heart that I know.