We need new experiences in order to learn and evolve, signaling our mind and body that we are ready to transform ourselves. But what are these so-called “new experiences” and how can we use new experiences to improve our life?
Welcome to this Health Minute episode where we’ll be diving into the topic of using new experiences in order to transform ourselves and our life.
A new experience can be something like driving to work using another route, moving to another city, meeting new people, going to a different store for daily chores or booking a hotel room for the weekend. All of these can be defined as new experiences.
When you have a new experience, you literally create new circuits (neural networks) in your brain related to that new experience. You basically develop your brain in new ways each time you’re having a new experience. With each new experience you get out of the common rehearsal of being the same you.
Once you’re having a new experience, your mind pays attention to all the inputs that it receives through the five senses and it records emotionally how that experience felt like. We can say that every experience has both a physical component (a neural network in the brain) and a chemical component (an emotion in the body).
New experiences put us into the present moment; but we have to be very mindful about this. We shouldn’t use new experiences as a way to “hide” the present moment awareness. New experiences should not be seen as a way of escaping everyday problems.
New experiences also activate the neocortex (new brain responsible for our conscious decisions). When we’re having a new experience the brain shuts down all the distractions from the outer world, making the new experience the only focus in our conscious mind.
When we have a new experience, when we go out of our comfort zone, we stop reminding ourselves who we are (or should I say … who we were). We give ourselves permission to become someone else, thus thinking and feeling in new ways. New experiences transform both the mind (we develop new neural networks) but also the body (the body feels different emotions).
It is already scientifically proven that, if we go out of our familiar environment even for a few days, the brain will start installing new neural circuits related to those new experiences. But what it’s more astonishing is that, when having new experiences the body will also transform in order to reflect those new experiences.
In conclusion, one important way that we can change ourselves (mind and body), improve our health, overcame a negative situation, … etc, is to separate ourselves from the same environment that we’ve been stuck with for the past 5-10-20 years. This isn’t the only condition, since we also have to identify the new way of being, research who we want to become, and mentally rehearse that new way of being. But having different experiences is part of the change needed in order to become a new person.
One last important thing to point out is that the mind apparently does not know the difference between the so-called “real experience” (that takes place in the outer world) and an “imagined experience” (taking place in the inner world of the mind). This means that we can basically rehearse in our mind a wanted new experience and the body will slowly start to feel chemically like the new experince has already happened, ahead of the actual event. The body will transform chemically after an imagined experience, ahead of the actual experience taking place in the physical world (or should I say in expectation of that experience).
Feelings and emotions are the result of having experiences. But if we’re having the same experiences every single day, we will end-up living by the same emotions daily. And this means that we’ll be activating the same genes every day which only leads to the same outcome from the day before.
We have the power to change ourselves and our life by embracing new experiences in the world or by mentally rehearsing new experiences. Both of these methods can transform our mind and body in new ways, and thus our entire life.
