This concept can be easily applied to almost any relationship. New experiences add a level of excitement and uncertainty that we don’t often experience in daily life, and sharing them with someone can strengthen the bonds of love, friendship, and confidence. Similar to the cognitive health benefits of play, choosing experiences that are mutually unfamiliar places both individuals on a clean slate upon which anything can happen. The brain switches into a growth state by releasing endorphins and laying the ground for neuroplasticity. This creates space in the often rigid definitions we ascribe to ourselves and the world around us and opens the door to endless possibilities.
Forging new neural pathways is essential to evolving your own sense of self, but together it’s a way to cement a shared foundational experience in the present while also providing an opportunity to discover things about your partner you never knew. Every new stimulus with which we interact, be it listening to a new song or taking salsa lessons, plays upon every other experience we’ve encountered in our lifetime. When we’re confronted with something new, it reminds us of previous incidents, feelings, and reactions that perhaps we haven’t thought of in a while. The new experience becomes a key to unlocking that past memory, helping us to recall forgotten notes of ourselves.
This process is further enhanced if the activity you’re exploring requires working as a team. This can be as passive as making your way through a hectic crowd, or as direct and deliberate as an escape room. Working in sync towards a common goal will snap you into the present circumstances, highlight individual strengths and weaknesses to appreciate and balance out, and deepen your ability to communicate with one another both verbally and nonverbally.
Your new adventure can be big or small, depending on your circumstances. It can be as elaborate as a vacation to a country you’ve never visited or as simple as dining on ethnic cuisine that’s foreign to both of you. Try a fresh hike, check out a local ropes or adventure course, buy a new board game and learn it together, go ax throwing, there’s no wrong way to get out and have fun.
Sometimes the personal responses brought up can be less than pleasant. Frustration, unhappy memories, nerves, or even fear are possibilities, depending on the situation. While not immediately gratifying, encountering these difficulties together still serves to deepen the bond between partners and friends. If the person you care about is suffering through this new experience, you both get the chance to practice compassion, widen the borders of your empathy, confide in one another, and process these blocks with the might of two hearts instead of one.
The more you embrace the unknown, the more you learn to face life with an open mind, able to connect with more of the world around you while adding to the symphony of what makes you confidently unique.
