Benefits of Novelty and Challenge
21 Jan 2022 · 11 min
In this episode of the Brendon Show, high‑performance coach Brendon Burchard explains how novelty and challenge are two of the most powerful levers for creating a "fully charged" life. He describes the neuroscience behind novelty—dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin spikes that heighten attention—and warns that unchecked novelty can become distraction and overwhelm. He advises listeners to purposefully seek meaningful novelty (new skills, experiences, learning topics, date‑night ideas) rather than mindless scrolling. Burchard then shifts to challenge, framing it as one of his ten "human drives" (the "Charge"). He differentiates meaningful challenges—those that combine creative expression and contribution—from busy‑work or overly difficult tasks that cause stress. He offers concrete prompts for listeners to identify new learning goals, personal health challenges, or relationship‑building activities, and shares personal examples of adding novelty to his own relationship every 90 days. Throughout, he promotes his Growth Day platform as a tool for tracking habits, journaling breakthroughs, and receiving live coaching. The episode ends with a call to share the podcast, rate it, and join the Growth Day community.
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Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week, sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day, you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance, an inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your friends because we all have to share more positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard, Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. Now let's begin.
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, and obviously that's what novelty is, right, some 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 vasoprosin or oxytocin. Depending on what's happening. And we suddenly feel more attentive, right? And that's a good thing. Except in the modern era, even that excitement, right? You hear it 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. 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, right? You click this blue link, you see something new. Ooh, a new video. Oh, click over here. Another new video. Another new video. Another new video. I might be your 10th video in the last 20 minutes, and I recognize that, right? 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 you become our worst enemy? Because now we get so distracted in everything else, always chasing the new thing, always after, you know, sort of that pulse that we get from being a little add, 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're learning new things that you want to learn. Bring novelty in your life in an aspect like this. Ask yourself, what would I love to learn to get better at whatever I do in my life? What would I like to learn to get better at what I do in my life and go study new things in that area? That way, the novelty is meaningful, right? There's a difference between just novelty that spins you in 50 different directions. Lots of distraction. It feels good, but it also exhausts you in that category. But then there's the novelty of you're 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.
Hey, it's Brandon jumping back in here again. Are you looking to go to the next level in your life right now? The next level of joy, abundance, success? Then you already know that you need to journal about your lessons learned in your life. You got to track your moods and your habits. You have to learn from the best personal development coaches and teachers in the world. And you got to stay inspired and accountable so that you can be more focused, disciplined, joyous, and keep growing. That's what the Growth Day app is going to help you to do, my friend. It's the world's first all in one personal development app. It has all of the tools you need, all the coaching and the community that you need to level up to progress every week, to track your breakthroughs, and to keep growing in every area of your life consistently over the long term. So go start your transformation right now@growthday.com or just download the Growth Day app on your phone right now. Every day. You can keep improving every day. We are here for you. And every day is truly a great day to grow together. So let's make self improvement a way of life. Let's make that self improvement stick. Go to growthday.com right now.
Second component of a fully charged life is challenge. Now, as soon as they say challenges to people, some of them freak out. They're like, I don't want more challenge in my life. I'm already overwhelmed. Right? But challenge is everything for our own advancement and growth. It's one of 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 men. 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. The first component is creative expression, right? A new challenge that creatively expresses us. Those are the ones we get excited about. Think about the things you've done at 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 are creatively building something. There was a creative process going on there, and it brought you to life. 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 were 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, right? Have you ever been given a challenge by your boss or, you know, sort of 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, you know, 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? They're requiring 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 than 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 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 that 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 that add new novelty into the relationship, they keep it fresh. I hope you're doing that in your relationship.
Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendon Show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity.
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So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday, because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars. Cheer us on, leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff actually really does help. And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance. Every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the Growth Day community, so be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com. Sam.