3
#
Your Brain
Craves
Challenges
If your brain is a
garden, new activi-
ties are mental manure: the fertilizer
for new brain cells. Trying something
new can improve your “neurocogni-
tive scaffolding,” as one research team
calls it, but you also need to challenge
yourself: meaning you should turn
off Celebrity Apprentice and take a
class or meet friends for a stimulating
chat. Volunteers who tutored strug-
gling students in reading and math
improved brain plasticity and delayed
age-related neurological decline, a
Johns Hopkins University study found.
“Breaking habits opens up millions
of neurological synapses,” says happiness expert Rick Foster. “Take a new
route to work. Get out of bed on a different side. Brush your teeth with a different hand. It stimulates your brain.”
IGNORE YOUR FRIENDS
Sometimes people want you to be safe, so they discourage risks.
But there is no safety. The more you know what you want, the more
you should want it. I knew I’d rather fail as a writer than succeed as a
lawyer. —Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
4
#
Love Is Like a
Snow Globe
It’s way more fun
when you shake
things up. And a mar-
riage that’s boring now only becomes
less satisfying over time, according
to a study of married couples in Psy-
chological Science. Spending time
together helps, but falling into dreary,
moldy-marriage traps—meeting with
a tax attorney is not a date night—will
not rekindle passion. Try something
new! When my wife and I taught
English in Costa Rica, it was exciting
to see us escape our usual roles: to
watch her play dodgeball and bowl
5
#
Feeling Stupid
Is Good
This one I feel strong-
ly about. Each time I
volunteered, whether
building rock walls in the West Bank
or working at a school in China, I
felt very much like a bai chi, which is
roughly the Chinese word for idiot.
Every experience was new, from the
food to the language. In Kenya, I tried
to say the Swahili word for shared
taxi—matatu—and instead said matiti,
which means…boobs. As in, “Wow, the
boobs are nicer here in the city.…”
every opportunity to be a bai chi. ;
with kids using a tennis ball and soda
bottles for pins.
“I think you need real change to
spice up a long-term relationship,”
says AARP relationship expert Pepper
Schwartz, Ph.D. “Boredom is the en-
emy, so creativity is the rejuvenator.”
What’s the wildest rejuvenator
Schwartz has seen? One couple, she
says, became swingers in their 60s
(which, I’m sorry, is a bit too far out-
side my comfort zone). Another cou-
ple studied aikido, a Japanese martial
art. Easier alternatives include travel-
ing to an exotic destination or creating
a joint enterprise, like a small busi-
ness or foundation. The point, says
Schwartz, is to try new things and gain
new intimacy: “Change the mind,” she
says, “and the body follows.”
The more I say yes, the more variety
there is in my life. Do I want to see a
play? Yes. Do I want to take a trip? Yes.
I force myself to say yes because brain
health and physical health are directly
tied to novelty and change. Every time
I’ve said yes, it’s paid off. —Rick Foster,
coauthor (with Greg Hicks) of Happiness & Health
Ken Budd is author of the new memoir
The Voluntourist—A Six-Country Tale
of ;Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and
Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem. He is
giving his earnings to the organizations
and places where he volunteered.
