Day 327: Novelty

What is one thing guaranteed to make attention stick, excitement build, and curiosity soar?

Novelty.

The new, the original, the unusual.

I came across this TEDx Talk recently and the section on novelty really stood out to me.

The speaker was discussing ways in which we can increase our happiness. The concept of novelty was encouraged to be used in areas of life that seem to be anything but novel. Such as people we know well and see every day, things we do with routine familiarity and autopilot - you know, the pillars of American life:

- family

- work

The things that are not so easy to change or refresh when we start to feel bored or blind to them.

Or are they?

Gratitude and appreciatiation are toted as being key to grounding ourselves and being present in the moment. I certainly believe this is true.

Yet, I've now learned there is another trick (or tool, depending on how you look at it) available to us.

Novelty.

Plus a bit of imagination.

The idea is that when we set ourselves (brains) up to think something along the lines of, 

"oh, wow, I get to go home and see my family- I haven't seen them in 8 whole hours!" 

rather than 

"well, work's over, time to go home to predictable people and routine," 

we prime our brains for novelty. We prime our brains to see the novel in the familiar.

Which, in turn, may actually heighten appreciation and gratitude for the very items we are focusing on.

Adding novelty to a situation is really another way of saying or thinking about changing one's perspective. It takes effort, it takes time, and it takes practice.

It takes - that's for sure. And then it gives.

More than we can imagine.