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When you hear the phrase ‘try something new’ do you think of jumping out of a plane or learning to ski?  Big things.  That’s what it means…right?  Wrong!  Yes, some new things you try can be scary.  But it doesn’t have to be big to be something new.

Over the years, I’ve tried many new things that were scary like hiking mountains, flying solo to a yoga conference, learning to downhill ski and others.  But I’ve also tried many ‘smaller’ things that were new like going for a float, learning new styles of yoga, eating in new restaurants and reading new book genres.

And yes!  Reading a new genre of book counts as something new.  It’s a small change, but it counts.  New things, new changes don’t have to be dramatic all the time.  That would be exhausting.

Why Try New Things

Trying new things gets you unstuck.  Gets you out of a rut.  It stimulates your creativity and depending on what you learn can make your more marketable.  Whether that’s in the workplace or in your personal life is up to you.

Trying something new can increase your confidence.  Now I know you won’t believe that while you’re learning how to ski and keep falling down all the time.  But once you get better at it you’ll feel great!  And your confidence grows.  Plus, who wants to live with the regret of not trying something?

Figure Out What To Try

If you want to try something new, it’s often good to have a list of things to try.  Sure, something might come up that sounds intriguing and you need to do it right away, but it’s also good to know what you’d like to do.  For this exercise, you’ll need paper, pen, and 3 different highlighters plus a timer.

Give yourself twenty minutes and just write down every idea you have of things you want to try.  Big or small.  Want to try that new restaurant or go to a movie alone?  Write it down?  Learn how to water ski?  Write it down.  Just keep going with the list for twenty minutes writing out everything that you can think of even if it sounds silly to you.

Now that you have a list (hopefully, a really long list,) pull out your highlighters.  It’s time to separate the list into Easy, Medium and Hard.  First, go through the list and look for all the easy things.  These are the items that don’t take a lot of preparation or time.  Trying a new book genre, finding a new route to drive to work, going for a picnic in the park, learning how to play a new game.

Once done with finding all of the easy items, now it’s time to find all those of medium difficulty.  These are the items that might include getting other people together or might require a larger time commitment or might even require saving a bit more money in order to do it.  On this list, you include things like planning a dinner party, taking an online training that doesn’t have a strict timeline, going to the closest city to watch a show or visit a museum.

And then finally, the harder items.  These items will probably need some extra training in order to do them or even a lot more money.  Put in here those instances where you want to learn to ski or scuba dive, want to go to an out of state conference or training session or taking a college class that has a specific timeline to meet.

What’s Next?

What’s next?  You go out and do something.  Anything.  If you’ve been stuck in a rut then maybe you grab an idea from the easy list.  It allows you to get your feet wet with trying something new without you having to spend a lot of money or time on it.

If you still need some ideas of what to try, then below are some posts with suggestions on new things including ones that I’ve done.  I’d love to know what new thing you tried this week.

5 Ways To Try Something New

How You Can Learn New Things

How To check Something Off Your Bucket List

There Be Whales Here

It Was So Easy It Surprised Me

Decadent Trail Mix That Is The Best Recipe

Floating Can Be Magic For Your Pain