Brendan explains how novelty and challenge powerfully energize and engage people. He describes novelty’s neural rewards (dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin) and warns that unmanaged novelty can become distracting; recommends planning meaningful novelty (learning goals, new shared experiences) to avoid overwhelm. He frames challenge as a key forward human drive that revitalizes people when challenges are meaningful and matched to ability—highlighting two components of meaningful challenge: creative expression and contribution. Practical examples include relationship rituals (trying new places/activities), career-creative growth (new formats, stages, books), and personal health/listening goals. Ends with calls-to-action to subscribe, get his book, and sign up for the newsletter.
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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. 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 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, right? You click this blue link, you see something new. Oh, a new video. Oh, click over here. Another new video. Another new video. Another new video. I might be your, like, 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. In our brains that rewards us for new things. And paying attention new things also can become our worst enemy. Because now we get so distracted in everything else, always chasing the new thing, always, 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. Second component of a fully charged life is challenge. Now, as soon as they say challenges, 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 and 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. 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 are 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. And when you find no meaning in it, right? Have you ever been given a challenge by your boss or you got, you know, sort of something 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 that will help you develop? Because those new things, if you're paying attention to them, you will 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. And then challenge I'm always thinking about in my brand, in my business. How can I get better at videos? How can I challenge myself to be better in new contexts for speaking on new stages or or writing 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 charge life. Hey guys, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so I can send you free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel. You here. If you like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.
