When Was Your Last First Time?
Some questions stay with you long after you’ve heard them for the first time. Like, where do all my missing socks go, and are they happier without me? The one I keep thinking about ever since I heard it in an interview was: “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” I inevitably asked myself the same thing, and the silence was so loud I couldn’t ignore it. Most of the “new” experiences were Netflix shows, swapping my regular emo playlist, and watching the latest Marvel movie. In other words, I engaged in what I call “fake newness”, where the surface changes, but the core remains the same. Since I didn’t have an answer, I devised four experiments involving small things I’d never done before, and used them to analyze the question through the lens of psychology and philosophy.
Your Brain Hates This (And That’s Why You Should Do It)
Day 1: The Day I Brushed My Teeth With My Left Hand – If anyone asks why there’s toothpaste all over the mirror, I’ll just say I’m “recalibrating motor coordination.”
From the moment we’re born to the end of adolescence, our lives are full of firsts. Riding a bike, first sleepover, first heartbreak, and so on. But if there’s one thing that characterizes adulthood, it’s falling into a routine of comfort and repetition. Having a routine isn’t that bad because it’s our way to make daily life more manageable and reduce stress. Routines create structure and predictability and help us minimize decision-making and free up mental energy to do more demanding tasks. Like doing research for an article or scrolling Pinterest for two hours. The drawbacks of a routine are monotony and the development of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. As soon as you develop a routine of your own, you resist change. You might use a routine as an excuse because you fear breaking out of the norm, for example.
We’re all familiar with comfort zones, the psychological state where you’re at ease and in control of your immediate environment. When this is the case, you experience low levels of anxiety and stress. You also don’t grow. Despite what you might have heard on social media, stress isn’t bad. Unless it’s the stress of scrolling for a movie on streaming services, that’s a recognized medical condition. The problem with stress is when we experience it chronically. When you avoid uncertainty, scarcity, and vulnerability, you never know what you might have become. We exchange a false sense of control for a fixed mindset (this is the belief that abilities are static and unchangeable). The opposite of the fixed mindset is the growth mindset, which is the belief that abilities can be developed through effort and dedication.
If we don’t push out our comfort zones, they grow stagnant. The comfort zone is often represented as a set of three concentric circles. The smallest is the comfort zone, which we already discussed. When we step out of our comfort zone, we confront the learning zone (also called the growth zone), which involves new challenges and risks. This leads to the acquisition of new skills, increased confidence, and a broader perspective. If we go too far outside the comfort zone, we end up in the panic zone. The panic zone is also known as the danger zone, which immediately makes me think about the film Top Gun. Unlike Tom Cruise, though, I’m not pulling 9Gs, just trying not to poke my eye out with a toothbrush. In the panic zone, we experience so much anxiety that we have to retreat to the comfort zone. The key is to find the balance between comfort and new experiences to grow without feeling overwhelmed.
Your Comfort Zone is Trying to Kill You
Day 2: Taking a Different Route Home – If I ever get lost and end up on the wrong bus, I’ll just tell myself I’m not lost, I’m just “expanding neural pathways.”
By now, we’ve established the importance of engaging with new experiences. This is as important for the body as it is for the brain. Doing new experiences releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter and hormone associated with pleasure and motivation. When we do something the brain identifies as good for us, it releases dopamine as a form of reward. My brain once rewarded me for successfully parallel parking, and I’m still chasing that high. When our dopamine levels surge, it helps us solidify memories and makes us more receptive to learning new things. Novelty boots creativity, reduces stress and anxiety, and contributes to a greater sense of well-being.
Then there’s neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt to new experiences. The more you engage in novel and challenging activities, the more you strengthen existing neural pathways and create new ones. This happens when you learn a new language, solve a puzzle, play a musical instrument… or remember why you walked into the kitchen. Even playing video games stimulates the brain and promotes neuroplasticity. Challenging yourself to do something new forces your brain to work harder, so it’s forced to process the information and develop new connections. When you do something new, you’re essentially rewiring your brain.
When we experience something for the first time, we often go into the flow state (also called the theory of optimal performance). This is the mental state of deep engagement we experience when there’s a balance between the challenge of a task and our ability to perform it. People often refer to it as “being in the zone” because when we experience the flow state, we tune out distractions and feel a heightened sense of concentration. It’s worth pointing out that time distorts to the point that we lose awareness. Kind of like when you ‘just check Instagram for five minutes’ and suddenly it’s Wednesday.
Finally, there’s a term from psychology you might have heard before. Hedonic adaptation (also known as the hedonic treadmill) is our tendency to return to a base level of happiness after experiencing major positive or negative life events. In the context of doing the same activities, we experience novelty at first, but that feeling diminishes over time, and we return to our baseline level of happiness. This happens with material possessions, relationships, or hobbies, so it’s important to come up with strategies to mitigate hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation explains why that fancy latte tastes magical the first time, but by the fifth day in a row, you’re just paying $6 to feel normal. You can mix up activities to maintain novelty, practice gratitude, and find meaning beyond the shallow pleasure possessions or activities give us.
The Awkward Art of Being Human
Day 3: Giving a Compliment to a Stranger – Worst-case scenario, I’m not awkward, I’m pioneering new methods of human interaction.
Social novelty refers to the preference to engage with unfamiliar individuals and social situations rather than familiar ones. This key aspect of social behavior is characteristic of animals and humans because that’s crucial for judging new opportunities and potential threats. When it comes to social situations, we’re born with a preference for the unknown. Which explains why first dates are exciting, and second dates are rescheduled indefinitely. Rather than sticking to the familiar, we tend to explore and interact with new social stimuli as a way to assess new social dynamics, potential threats, or detect dangers in the environment.
Doing something new for the first time doesn’t have to be dramatic. Even a small act like complimenting a stranger pushes you into the unfamiliar and gets you closer to Aristotle’s idea of the good life. The concept of Aristotle’s flourishing or eudaemonia refers to living well and according to one’s virtues. To Aristotle, achieving one’s full potential was the ultimate human goal.
Eudamonia isn’t momentary happiness, but a state of well-being that encompasses a life of virtue, reason, and purpose. Virtues like courage, generosity, and friendliness are practiced habits. The more virtuous things you do, the more virtuous you become. When you sincerely compliment someone without expecting anything in return, you’re practicing kindness and generosity. Doing so is also a way to step out of your comfort zone, so you’re also practicing courage. Complimenting a stranger shapes your character. Flourishing, according to Aristotle, isn’t about doing grand gestures or heroic deeds. It’s about doing small, repeated actions that build virtue. A single compliment won’t change your life, but saying something like “Hey, I like your jacket” becomes a micro-moment of flourishing. Unless the jacket belongs to their ex, and then you’ve just built a micro-moment of awkward silence.
Then there’s an important concept in both philosophy and psychology called shared meaning. This is the idea that our lives overlap momentarily with someone else’s. For shared meaning to take place, you don’t need a deep bond with each other, but a small moment of mutual recognition is enough.
When you interact with someone else meaningfully, you’re essentially sharing the same story; you’re creating a small bridge of acknowledgement. Think of it as life’s pop-up window: you don’t ask for it, and it’s slightly awkward, but sometimes it makes your day. Let’s think about this for a moment. We’re surrounded by people we ignore, but complimenting someone or making a joke turns a stranger into someone you’ve shared a meaningful moment with. Like everything else in this article, shared meaning isn’t about developing a deep bond with others; it’s about sharing a moment that’s real. These experiments are small, playful actions that add depth to an otherwise ordinary existence.
Existentialism with Utensils
Day 4: Balancing a Spoon on My Nose – It looks silly, but despite what my high school teachers said, I’m now a practitioner of experimental physics.
Existentialists (Sartre, Camus, or Kierkegaard) argued that life is devoid of meaning, but we create it through how we live. When you do something silly, you’re essentially telling yourself, “I’m alive”. Which is good news, because given how often I’m an idiot, I should stop paying for life insurance. Camus would go as far as calling it a defiance of the absurd. Since it’s easy to despair at life’s lack of meaning, you might as well lean into silliness. Some things in life are pointless. Balancing a spoon on your nose won’t get you a promotion, extend your life, or solve global warming. But to existentialists, pointlessness is the point. By choosing to do something, you embed it with meaning and you exercise freedom.
Similarly, in The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the following: “the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!” He told us to push beyond safety and avoid stagnation. Nietzsche wasn’t saying “jump off cliffs”, but he believed that growth comes from friction, resistance, and tension. If we avoid it, we stagnate. The comfort zone shrinks when left alone, but it expands when we stretch it, whether with awkward compliments, lost bus rides, or yes, spoons. Nietzsche might call that the art of living dangerously, but I like to think of it as the art of living playfully.
The Payoff: Why First Times Matter
Experiencing something for the first time offers unique learning opportunities, fosters personal growth, and can be a source of joy and wonder. It allows us to step outside our comfort zones, develop flexible thinking, and create memories that will last a lifetime. Interestingly, the more things you do for the first time, you increase your confidence, creativity, and develop your capacity to embrace change. Something as simple as taking a different route to work can lead to personal transformation. How else can you shed light on personal preferences, strengths, and weaknesses? By doing something simple, you can have a better understanding of who you are.
The unfamiliarity of doing something for the first time evokes a sense of wonder, curiosity, and excitement. This is something we often experienced when we were children, but lost as adults. Not to mention that if you share those first times with someone else, it deepens your connection to them and creates a sense of shared meaning.
Closing: Challenge the Reader
When I originally started writing this article, I didn’t have an answer to “When was the last time you did something for the first time?”, but after a series of uncomfortable experiments, now I do. I now realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I did something for the first time because I was living the same day on repeat. My life was the director’s cut of Groundhog Day, but without Bill Murray’s charm and the cute rodent. This isn’t always a bad thing, but we all need to challenge ourselves to do something different every once in a while.
When was the last time I did something for the first time? Just yesterday, I balanced a spoon on my nose and called it philosophy. I guess that counts. Now, how about you?
Editor’s note: Here’s the interview that served as the basis for the article. Here’s the exact time in the conversation where the idea of “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” came up.
