Recently, Heather Tay paused work to go roller skating at a pop-up rink in Union Station, on Feb. 1.Paige Thompson/The Globe and Mail
Heather Tay has herded cattle in Arizona, learned to ride a motorcycle in California and scuba dived in the Red Sea, even though she is a terrible swimmer. So you’d think everyday life, at home in regular old Toronto, might get a little dull.
But in the spirit of making her own adventure, the 55-year-old has tried belly dancing, polo and snowshoeing. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, she paused work to go roller skating at a pop-up rink in Union Station. On restless weekends, she occasionally grabs a friend and they choose a neighbourhood to roam, vowing to stop briefly at every restaurant or bar they pass. Ms. Tay isn’t much of a drinker; this is a pub crawl of discovery. Among the treasures found: new people, new music and a rooftop pool bar she didn’t know existed.
The delight that Ms. Tay gets from roller skating is wrapped up in nostalgia.Paige Thompson/The Globe and Mail
“You never know what’s around the corner, or what interaction could change your life in big and small ways,” says Ms. Tay, who runs a career accelerator at Canada’s Black Screen Office.
Ms. Tay is intentionally practising novelty, a well-supported happiness intervention. Decades of research have found that happier people typically embrace novel experiences, and that novel experiences increase happiness. Experiencing something new releases dopamine into the brain, creating a sense of thrill and pleasure. You don’t even have to jump out of an airplane or swim with sharks. A little creativity – such as eating popcorn with chopsticks – can also make the familiar feel delightfully fresh.
Unfortunately, the burst of happiness we might get from poking at popcorn doesn’t last long – as researchers found when they actually asked people to eat their kernels with chopsticks. Blame our highly adaptable brains that habituate to both adversity and good fortune. Not even the much-anticipated tropical vacation can sustain a happy high. According to an analysis of tourist surveys by Tali Sharot, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University College London, the peak mood of people on a beach holiday tended to return to baseline by the third sunset.
That’s why we need a regular dose of original moments. Many spikes in happiness, even if fleeting, can generate compound well-being. And since most of life is spent in the routine of every day, harnessing the full power of novelty requires recycling the normal into something new. In last year’s book Look Again: The Power of Seeing Something That Was Always There, Dr. Sharot and her co-author, Harvard law professor Cass R. Sunstein, suggest changing perspective.
Or, to quote Ms. Tay, look up. When she forgets to be mindful of her surroundings and hustles through the day head down and mind closed, she says, “I find myself not in the best mood.”
Ms. Tay roller skates with her friend Michelle. Perhaps most important of all, Ms. Tay says, you often try new activities with friends, or make ones in the process.Paige Thompson/The Globe and Mail
Instead, she leaves her phone in her pocket and scans her environment: The city skyline is constantly changing, and there is always an overlooked heritage building to admire.
A 2020 paper published in Nature Neuroscience also found evidence for Ms. Tay’s neighbourhood crawls. American researchers used GPS to track 132 people in New York and Miami for several months, regularly asking them to chart their moods. Participants reported more positive well-being on the days they visited a greater diversity of locations.
Novelty has fringe benefits, Dr. Sharot explains, such as connecting us to nature, sparking curiosity or forcing us to break a sweat. In our twilight years, learning a skill can bring cognitive benefits.
Perhaps most important of all, Ms. Tay says, you often try new activities with friends, or make ones in the process.
What is it about the practice of novelty that brings her joy, other than that dopamine hit? The delight that Ms. Tay gets from roller skating is wrapped up in nostalgia; her first kiss, she says, was at the roller palace she frequented as a teenager. Admiring the buildings in Toronto, like a tourist seeing them for the first time, connects to her early ambitions to become an architect. Rustling cattle increased her confidence in defying expectations, including her own.
For Rhonnie Cohen, 70, it’s been energizing to accept that her time for new experiences is finite. “How many great years do I have left?” she asks. “If I don’t embrace what I have, what a waste.”
Ten years ago, in a spontaneous act of extreme novelty, she left her marketing job, sold her Toronto house and possessions, moved with her dog to San Miguel, Mexico, and changed her name unofficially to Rhonnie from Rhonda. “The sound of it makes me happy,” she says. Compared with “Rhonda,” the overtaxed, schedule-bound professional, “Rhonnie” is a lot more fun. Every morning, she thinks, “What am I going to do today that’s different?”
Our novel actions don’t have to be grand adventures. They can be as simple as saying to the server at your favourite restaurant: “Surprise me.” Or, these days, by making grocery shopping a scavenger hunt for Canadian ketchup.
Novelty reaps particular rewards in middle age, Dr. Sharot says, when work and home life can feel the most routine and happiness, on average, is typically at life’s lowest point.
Robin Thorsteinson assigned herself a challenge to have 50 new experiences before turning 50, one of which was skydiving.Robin Thorsteinson/Facebook/Supplied
When my friend, Robin Thorsteinson, for instance, was facing her 50th birthday last year, she assigned herself a challenge to have 50 new experiences before the milestone arrived. Staying alert to original opportunities fostered an unexpected mindfulness, she says. “I became more intentional about who I was spending time with and how I was spending it.”
By her birthday, the adventures included: goat yoga; performing as her son’s school mascot, Shredder the Shark; go-karting; and racing floaties across the bay near her cottage. The most memorable ones, she says, required taking a leap, “and trusting the people you were with to laugh with you.”
Of course, life requires both new discoveries and familiar pastimes – a balance sought by Rakan Al-Shawaf. The 29-year-old entrepreneur has lived in cities around the world, moving when his view needed refreshing; his current base is Mexico City. In the process, he’s learned multiple languages and sports. On a February weekend, he attended a bachata festival in Dallas, honing the Latin dance he started learning seven months ago.
Still, he worries that chasing novelty to battle boredom is becoming unsustainable. He knows that familiarity can be a source of comfort – he’s watched The Office an estimated 40 times. And he desires “the compound interest of being in the same place and doing the same things,” enjoying the inside jokes of long-time friends. He wants to stay in one place some day, and still stay curious.
But repeat consumption can also be novel, suggests Ed O’Brien, an associate professor of behavioural science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the popcorn-chopstick study.
In that experiment, researchers suggested that people experienced more enjoyment because they had to pay closer attention to eat the popcorn. In a 2020 paper, Dr. O’Brien proposes that when we return to a beloved comedy or repeat a favourite meal, we may discover an overlooked element or experience it from a different perspective. “Exciting discoveries lie ahead,” he writes, “if we return to where we have already been.”
To that point, my friend Robin would say that novelty is best experienced with the people who already bring us joy. This was a condition of completing her list: She couldn’t do any adventures alone. Jumping out of a plane, for challenge No. 47, was an original high, she says. But the parachute float to the ground was all the more meaningful because she made the leap with her eldest son.
