Home » Don’t be picky about approaching life – Arthur C. Brooks

Don’t be picky about approaching life – Arthur C. Brooks

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Many parents of young children struggle to introduce new foods into their children’s diets. US children who are picky about eating at the age of two are about 50 percent. They are afflicted, to use the language of nutritionists, by “food neophobia”. The pediatrician once told me that one of our sons, who was a difficult palate, would need to try a new food at least six times before that food stopped filling him with fear and disgust.

My wife and I wanted to fight our son’s food neophobia for practical and nutritional reasons but, most of all, we wanted him to eat adventurously to be able to enjoy this aspect of life. The willingness to taste a wide variety of flavors and smells reinforces the pleasure of eating.

This is an example that is part of a more general openness to a wide range of life experiences – from visiting interesting places to considering unusual political views – that brings happiness. “Only a person ready for anything, who does not exclude any experience, not even the most incomprehensible”, wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a young poet, “He will be able to perceive the depths of his own being”.

Love to cultivate
The data proved him right. Openness, also known as neophilia, is an element that is strongly and positively associated with happiness. Of course, there is the risk of pushing things too far, and becoming chronically dissatisfied in the absence of a constant stream of novelty, or developing an addiction to danger and always looking for the next extreme experience. True happiness comes from a healthy and balanced neophilia, who cultivates a love of life’s adventures.

Neophilia is linked to happiness to the extent that it is associated with extroversion, and extroversion is very often the bearer of happiness. But neophilia also generates happiness because it is an engine of interest which, according to researcher and psychologist Carroll Izard, is one of the two fundamental positive emotions (the other is joy). One feels pleasure when one’s interest is piqued, something that happens naturally when one is exposed to new things. Neophiles therefore stimulate this positive emotion more frequently and intensely than neophobics.

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Much of the neophilic tendencies are hereditary. Some studies have measured it. In 2002, for example, a meta-analysis of research on twins found that openness to new experiences is a genetic fact for about 57 percent of cases. A few years later, Japanese researchers found that a particular mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase A – which neutralizes dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine – is more active in the brains of individuals most likely to have major personality traits. of novelty.

This only partially explains the neophilia, which must be analyzed considering other factors as well. For example, the love of novelty tends to increase in early adulthood, but from twenty to eighty it decreases by about 17 percent, on average, for each person. Politically conservative people are less neophiles – at least socially and economically – than progressive ones. Some researchers believe that fluid intelligence and general knowledge lead to appreciation of novelty. And home education matters: some scholars have found that parents’ educational styles nurture or repress children’s openness to novelty.

The risk of dissatisfaction
Living in a modern, consumerist society could also play an important role. Colin Campbell, a sociology professor at York University in the UK, wrote that “in traditional societies, novelty tends to be feared” and that an insatiable desire for novelty is a characteristic of the contemporary consumer.

This view leads us to the dark side of neophilia. In his book New (New), writer Winifred Gallagher argues that premature obsolescence of objects in modern societies leads to overspending on things we don’t need and that don’t improve our well-being at all. It is difficult to disprove this claim. I realize this as I look at mine smartwatch that pests me by telling me how many calories I have taken, how poor my sleep is, how much I miss to take the right number of steps every day, and interrupts me with a thousand other “comforts” that prevent me from enjoying life.

Neophilia has more serious negative effects than mechanical consumerism. High levels of neophilia are associated with a tendency to take risks in childhood, and therefore to addiction later in life. And if when we are looking for new stimuli it encourages us to explore and create, it is also true that it makes fulfillment particularly elusive, because we look for another novelty at a surprising speed. Unruly newbies are often wandering and restless souls, jumping from project to project, quitting their jobs, and commuting frequently. All of which, as Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey show in their book Why we are restless (Because we’re restless), they tend to make people less satisfied with their lives.

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Four tips
Finding a healthy degree of neophilia is a kind of high-tension act (which, come to think of it, newbies might like to try). Based on your research, here are four principles for cultivating a balanced neophilia that will help you be happier.

First, regularly test your tastes and experiment. We tend to think that our preferences are set in stone and that it is useless to try to change them, especially as we get older and become more irritable in the face of new things. The data does not support this hypothesis. In fact, some studies show that older workers are more open than their younger colleagues to changes in their job responsibilities. At the same time, our senses of taste and smell tend to fade with age, making us more or less attracted to certain foods. Make a list of the things you don’t like and currently avoid. Then read it again and try the things you listed. Food is a good place to start. You can also try to visit places and engage in activities that you would normally reject. Do you hate opera? Maybe yes maybe no. As you age, you may hear it differently from when you were younger.

Second, make sure you choose curiosity over comfort. Write down a list of new experiences and ideas you have yet to try and explore one each week. They don’t have to be big things. Maybe you never read fiction, not because you don’t like it, but because you are more used to biographies: in this case, choose a novel. If you usually watch one of your favorite old movies instead of something new, or choose the same vacation spot every year, make sure to diversify.

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Third, avoid the trap of novelty as an end in itself. If you are quite new to it, it may be that you are already following the above tips and are reaping the rewards. But you may also be prone to restlessness and instability, and to seek material novelties to appease them. In this case, try to zero your satisfaction with a “consumption fast”: do not buy anything non-essential for two months. Your focus is likely to shift from online shopping to more satisfying businesses.

Fourth, if your neophilia translates into impulsiveness, consciously dedicate a little more time to your decision-making processes. Research has shown that slower decision making leads to better results in a crisis. For newbies, everything is urgent, but they would do well to make more thoughtful decisions. Would you like to take that job as a bungee-jumping instructor? Sleep on it. Then take a couple of days to imagine what your life will be like in three years if you make that choice, and ask a couple of trusted friends for advice.

One of the pleasures of life is to see ourselves and others change, especially our children as they grow up. Take my son, the food neophobe. He is now 21 years old, a Marine Corps soldier almost two meters tall, and when he finds food in front of him, he sweeps everything away. I recently reminded him how picky he was as a child, and he said, “I guess you just weren’t hungry enough.”

And here lies the great secret of happiness, the most important lesson on neophilia. The well-being associated with neophilia is not about new things at all, but about hunger: for life. Cultivating a healthy appetite for what life has to offer means opening your eyes to a world of abundance, beauty, fullness and adventure. And this can only bring joy.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)

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