The Charged Life

We can experience more energy, engagement and enthusiasm in life when we tap into the power of novelty and challenge. Here’s how to do it: 

1. Make Novelty Meaningful: When something is new to us, it feels fresh and activates our brain to pay attention and often feel rewarded. The challenge in the modern era is that this can backfire - all the new stuff we see is not rewarding but often distraction. It feels good to browse, but too much browsing destroys our ability to focus on meaningful things and have real progress in life.

For novelty to positively activate us in our lives, we must plan for it. Make sure you’re learning new things that you want to learn and that help you grow and advance your life. Ask yourself, “What would I love to learn to get better at what I do in my life?” When you study, experience and pay attention to new things in_ this_ area, novelty becomes meaningful and helps you grow and feel fully alive.

1. Make Challenges Meaningful: Challenge is _everything _for our personal advancement and growth. It’s one of the Forward Drives (from my book The Charge) and without it we feel bored or restless. Often when we’re lost or bored in life we’re simply lacking a meaningful challenge! 

Ask yourself, “What new meaningful challenges am I pursuing right now?"  

Meaningful challenges have two components: Creative Expression and Contribution. We get excited about new challenges that creatively express what we think, whatwe feel and who we are. That is why art or new business projects that require real thinking and new ideas are so invigorating to us - they make us stretch our minds. Add the ability to make a difference with the challenge, and suddenly we have the right mix for truly engaging and meaningful pursuits. 

So what new things can you learn that will help you develop? What new challenges can you take on personally or as a team to stretch the boundaries of your beliefs and behaviors? You can purposefully add more novelty to your life and challenge yourself creatively in a contribution-oriented way. This is the path to living The Charged Life!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

This is about Novelty and Challenge. It’s like two of the most powerful things in our lives to experience The Fully Charged Life. Now, some people like novelty and some people like challenge, and other people don’t.

Why?

And how can we use those two very things to make a dramatic difference in our lives about:

How energized we are for life.

How engaged we are for life.

How enthusiastic we are for tomorrow.

Novelty and challenge play a big role.

Now, we already know from neuroscience that novelty is such a huge thing for us because every time something new happens—obviously that’s what novelty is, right? Introduction of something new or a new component of something we already understand. 

But something feels new, it feels fresh; something happens in our brain. We get an influx of dopamine or vasopressin or oxytocin depending on what’s happening and we certainly feel more attentive.

And that’s a good thing except in the modern era, even that excitement. You hear all the time that Variety is the Spice of Life, that’s about novelty—something new happening in our lives. It just activates our brain in a very different way. We feel rewarded when we see or experience something new, typically.

But here’s the challenge, in the modern world, when you’re in front of a computer—novelty, as soon as it starts driving you—guess what happens? Distraction!

You click this blue link; you see something new, "Oh! Oh! A new video … Oh, click over here, another new video…another new video, another new video”. I might be your like tenth video in the last twenty minutes and I recognize that.

And so what ends up happening is that drive of dopamine in our brains that rewards us for new things and paying attention to new things also can become our worst enemy. Because now we get so distracted in everything else; always chasing the new thing, always after that pulse that we get from being a little A.D.D. You know paying attention to everything.

So, the challenge is this—if novelty is going to be something that really activates you in your life, make sure that you plan for it.

And here’s what I like to tell people, “Make sure that you are learning new things that you want to learn.” Bring novelty in your life in aspects like this. Ask yourself:

What would I love to learn to get better at whatever I do in my life?

And go study new things in that area. That way the novelty is meaningful.

There’s a difference between just novelty that spins you in fifty different directions, lots of distractions, it feels good but it also exhausts you in that category.

But then there’s a novelty of your planning to learn new things—planning to experience new things—whether it’s a new date night with your spouse or your partner or your lover. Or it’s a new textbook you’re going to study. Or it’s a new book or a new movie, a new experience, a new ted talk. Whatever it is, watch something new or consume something new or experience something new that you feel is actually helping you grow.

And now novelty feels fully charged. 

It feels good, it feels something you’re excited about and it does not overwhelm you. Because when you consume too many new things at once, guess what happens?

You get overwhelmed.

Too many new projects on your desk at work, overwhelms you.

Too many new pages to consume on the internet. That overwhelms you.

Too many new experiences in a row, it overwhelms you because it also taxes your brain to pay attention to new things.

So, you want to be strategic and pay attention to those things only that you feel are going to really provide you some level of growth, development and advancement or meaning in life.

Second component of Fully Charged Life is challenge. Now as soon as I say challenge, people, some of them freak out, they’re like, “I don’t want more challenge in my life. I’m already overwhelmed”.

But challenge is everything for our own advancement and growth. It’s what we call the Forward Human Drives in my book The Charge. When you learn about the 10 human drives, you learn that challenge is sort of like this linchpin, this thing that can completely activate our lives.

Take a person who feels restless, listless, frustrated, depressed, sad, down. Put a new meaningful challenge in front of them, that’s just right, it’s right in that sweet spot, it’s appropriate for them; it’s within their reach of ability but it excites them, and you can see them come back to life.

So what new challenges are you pursuing right now in your life?

And that’s a good question to ask when people get really frustrated with their life or bored with their life. They’re just lacking a meaningful challenge.

So what are meaningful challenges?

They usually have two components which are also part of our forward human drives.

1. The first component is creative expression: A new challenge that creatively expresses us, those are the ones that we get excited about.

Think about the things you’ve done it, your work before that really got you engaged and excited for the day. You were probably getting to contribute new ideas. You were getting to creatively express what you think, what you feel. You were creatively building something. There’s a creative process going on there and it brought you to life.

2. And the second component is contribution: You could see your creative ideas, contributing to the whole of the team.

You could see your creative ideas contributing to something that you’re doing and so you started finding meaning in that.

And so, the opposite of that is being challenged when you find no meaning in it.

Have you ever been given a challenge by your boss or, you know, responsible for something on your team and you just thought, I don’t want to do this and it was a challenge but it didn’t mean anything to you, so it just felt like work.

And when you have challenges that are way outside your grasp of competency or knowledge or skill or ability, then those challenges also become overwhelming just like novelty can become overwhelming.

So, we have to be careful about the challenges we do take on.

Have you taken on too many challenges in your life that aren’t meaningful for you? That require lots of busy work but they’re not your life’s work?

That’s the difference between just challenge of responsibilities and challenge of pure true contribution.

So, how are you going to use this in your life? That’s what I want you to think about.

What new things can you start to study and learn that will help you develop? Because those new things, if you’re paying attention to them, you’ll start to feel activated and alive again.

And what new challenges can you take on to really stretch the boundaries of your own beliefs or your own behaviors?

What new challenges can you issue to your team if you’re a leader?

What new challenges can you accept into your personal life? From your health challenges to getting better, that next level of health to challenging yourself to become a better listener, to your partner or your spouse or your lover.

Look, **we all know that living a fully charged life—it’s under our control. **We can consciously design our lives and pay attention to the things that are meaningful.

If you start adding more novelty in your life, on purpose, everything changes.

In my own life, I’ll do it in my relationship. We’ll try to go to new places to eat. We’ll try to go to new adventures and new places to explore together. We’ll try to take on new activities—we have to learn something together. We’ll do things like, every 90 days, we’ll go somewhere completely new, off the grid, disconnected from everything else; just the two of us.

These little things add new novelty into the relationship, they keep it fresh. I hope you’re doing that in your relationship.

And then challenge, I’m always thinking about in my brand or my business: How can I get better at videos? How can I challenge myself to be better in new context for speaking on new stages or writing in a different style of voice in a new book? How can I challenge myself creatively to get better at my art?

Those questions, they fuel me, they keep me alive, they keep me energized and excited each day, they keep me living, The Charged Life.

Like this? Please share with your friends so that your loved ones can start adding more novelty and challenge into their lives starting now! - Brendon