Do Something Different

Think about how many people you know who are genuinely trying to make a change. From the growth minded to the New Year's resolution crowd. Someone in school studying to earn a degree. People working through addictions, whether that's a physical tic or something much harder. The common thread across all of it is that they're trying to do something different.

And doing something different feels weird.

I think most people, when they hit that feeling, take it as a signal to stop. Like the weirdness is evidence that the new thing isn't right for them, or that they're not cut out for it. I've felt that. You probably have too.

But here's what I keep coming back to: the weirdness is the point.

The Cost Is Real#

When you do something different, you're firing different neurons together. That new co-firing is fighting against the path of least resistance in your brain. Established habits run on efficient, well-worn circuits in the basal ganglia. New behaviors route through the prefrontal cortex, the brain's most resource-intensive real estate. New patterns cost more. And that cost is what you're feeling.¹

It's almost become a cliche, "neurons that fire together wire together,"² but I love it because it's a catchy useful mnemonic. The discomfort isn't random. It's the sensation of your brain building new infrastructure while the old defaults are still dominant.

Reclaim the Feeling#

So the thing I want to reclaim is that feeling. Instead of pushing away from it, recognize it as a reminder. Growth is happening. The wiring is changing. That friction is not a stop sign, it's proof that something real is occurring.

It Goes Further Than Growth#

But doing something different goes further than just growth and discipline. It's also about exploration.

Think about the route you take somewhere you go regularly. There's a default path, and you take it without thinking. Now think about what happens when you take a different one.

Sometimes nothing. But sometimes you walk past a place you've never noticed. You find a shortcut. You see something beautiful. You learn something about your city you wouldn't have encountered otherwise. The road less traveled is less traveled for exactly the same reason new habits feel hard: the default groove is cheaper.

When you break the default, you expose yourself to possibility you couldn't have predicted. Serendipity, in the literal sense: a fortunate discovery you only made because you deviated from the expected path. A place that brings you joy. A conversation. A small lesson you carry with you.

The growth mindset and the exploratory mindset are different dimensions, but they're rooted in the same source. One is about who you're becoming. The other is about what you might find. Both only open up when you break the default.

Do something different. Notice the feeling. That's what growth and discovery feel like from the inside.

Footnotes#

1. Graybiel, Ann M. (2008). "Habits, Rituals, and the Evaluative Brain". Annual Review of Neuroscience, 31, 359–387. Graybiel's lab demonstrated that as behaviors become habitual, neural control shifts from the metabolically expensive prefrontal cortex to the basal ganglia. New behaviors show the reverse: high prefrontal engagement, higher resource cost. ↩

2. The phrase is commonly misattributed to Donald Hebb. Hebb formalized the underlying concept in The Organization of Behavior (1949); the catchy mnemonic was coined by neurobiologist Carla Shatz as a plain-language summary in "The Developing Brain", Scientific American, September 1992. ↩