Why New Experiences Make Life Feel Longer

Want to Feel Like You're Living a Longer, Fuller Life? Does it feel like time is flying by faster as you get older? In this solo podcast episode, I’m revealing a powerful secret to slow time down and experience a FULLER RICHER LIFE by creating new, dense memories. Here’s the thing—we often fall into routines that make life feel repetitive, and as a result, time seems to pass by quicker. But neuroscience shows us that when we engage in new activities and experiences, we create more vivid memories, which can actually slow down our perception of time. Here’s what you’ll take away from this episode: The neuroscience behind why creating new memories helps to slow down your perception of time. Practical tips on how to break out of your routine, like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand or taking a different route to work. The challenge to pick two new experiences over the next year that will enrich your life and create lasting memories. How anticipation of upcoming events can make your days feel longer and more meaningful. The importance of living with intention to create a life that feels fuller and more impactful. In this episode, I’m challenging you to stop letting time slip away and start living more DELIBERATELY. Whether it’s learning a new hobby, taking a new approach to your daily habits, or exploring a different aspect of your life, it’s all about engaging with the world around you in fresh, exciting ways. Tune in to learn how small shifts in your daily routine can create big changes in how you experience time and life. Let’s make every moment count and MAXOUT your time, together! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. And the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com/ed. That's growthday.com/ed. I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m. And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time too.

• 1:30Ed Mylett?

  And you definitely can't afford to waste it waiting weeks on a big bank for capital. Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason. Over 20 years in business, over 12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff, borrow better.

• 2:08Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I'm so grateful that you're here today. And you know what, speaking of today, days, time, etc. Didn't it seem like time passed much more slowly when you were a little boy or a little girl? Your childhood summers, didn't they seem to last longer than the ones do now? Don't they just, didn't summer just seem to fly by? Yet, when we were kids, they seemed to just last forever, the endless summer. And I've always wondered why that is. And I also, by the way, love when I read neuroscience that validates the work that I teach. It's applicable work that I teach, but when science

• 2:50Ed Mylett?

  kind of validates it, and one of the things I've been so big on now for about a decade is imploring so many of you to try new things, have new experiences. And now I really know from a scientific standpoint that I'm right about that. And so time really did go slower when you were a child, by the way. And time really is passing you by and going much more fast now. And science can validate that. So first, I want to thank someone who listens to the show named Melissa Bell, who sent me this article and said, I think you should talk about this since you already talk about doing these things. But now there's scientific work. So there's a great article out that I'm gonna, you know, want to give credit to in today's show from Inc. Magazine. And it talks about, it's, the title says, "Want to feel you're living longer, a fuller life?

• 3:36Ed Mylett?

  Neuroscience says making denser memories is the best way to slow the passage of time." Jeff Hayden wrote this article, by the way. And we're going to talk about today, your life and time. And if things feel like they're just passing faster than they used to, it's because it truly is, at least in the way you experience it. You know, our life is the way that we experience it. It's our version of our life. It's our filter of our lives. It's our reality is our life. Two people can experience the exact same things and have a different reality, and they have a different life as a result of that. And so it actually turns out scientifically that your summers inside of you, in your mind, in your spirit, in your emotions, did pass more slowly. And that's because of something called dense memories.

• 4:20Ed Mylett?

  Neuroscience is now proving that the more you build dense memories, the more the perception and passage of time slows down. And so I want to talk about it with you today and then give you some suggestions as to what to do. You know, there's a, he talks about this too in his article, but there's this dock outside. Uh, I, I'm now blessed that I live on this island that I was able to get a few years ago. And this is my first summer here, first time I've ever spent a summer here. And I have to tell you, it's feels like the longest summer I've had in 30 years. And I've figured out that the reason for that is everything's new. The location's new, kind of being on an island is new, being in the part of the country that I now live in is newer.

• 5:00Ed Mylett?

  I'm having all these new experiences, discovering new parts of the place, new experiences, new hobbies that I've created since I've been here. And be honest with you, it feels like the longest summer I've had that I can ever remember. And now I know why, because my mind is creating all of these new dense memories as opposed to thin, familiar ones. There's actually a dock, he talks about this in the article, which is just crazy to me, but there's a dock when you get off of the boat to come to where I live now. And I remember the first time I pulled up to that dock, the walk seemed forever to get to the, the land. And I now know that the reason is my mind was creating all these new perceptions and memories and experiences because

• 5:45Ed Mylett?

  I could see the ocean that left in the rocks over there and how high the tide was and a bird flew by and I could see a pasture out in the background and I was taking in all this new information because I'd never been here before. And as a consequence, my perception of time slowed down. And now, when I get off that dock, it's like a 10 second walk and I'm on the land. Why? I've done it 500 times now. And so none of it's new, everything's familiar. And our brains, the way they work, they're always trying to conserve energy. We're always trying to move towards what's familiar, right? So because now my brain's like, I've seen that, I've seen that, I've seen that. This is common. I, I understand what that is. It's got nothing to lay down a dense memory of. It's all very thin. And so the passage of time is very quickly. It's the same reason why when you're on a treadmill and 10 minutes seems like nine hours, doesn't it?

• 6:30Ed Mylett?

  It's because you've done the treadmill before. There's going to be no new experience. You know exactly what it's going to feel like. You know exactly how you're going to be breathing and sweating by that time. So your mind, it's just, it just seems like it's going to take forever. Yet it goes like this. Our perception of time is somewhat perverted by. The experiences we have or not have ever had before. And so all of this article is very familiar to me. So I'm going to share something with you, some of the stuff from it that I just love. So there's a new article in Scientific Reports. There's new research in there and it says, how you perceive the passage of time is related to the amount of new perceptual information you're absorbing at any given time. So when you're young, everything seemed new in those summers, new experiences, new hobbies, new friends, new things you see.

• 7:14Ed Mylett?

  All these new experiences. And so it changes your perception of time. There's a study, and by the way, time feels longer, not shorter. When something is familiar to us, our brain can process this. It's even like. When you meet someone, as you get older and older, you have less dense memories because you have more information already. So that's why, like, if you're an entrepreneur, oftentimes you can get very bored with your business after a while. Because there's nothing new to it. Right? You haven't created anything new. There's no new way in which you do business, no way. Innovation in business is not just so that you stay competitive, but it's also so you stay fresh, so you stay interested. So that you enjoy it like you did as a child in the summertime. Maybe think about the, it says in the article, it's great. Think about the first sale you ever made in your life, if you're in sales.

• 7:58Ed Mylett?

  You can remember it like it's yesterday, right? The memories, the details of it, but your 500th sale, it's just a blur. Right? And that's why when we meet people, even times like when we were a child, we meet people and would take forever. Now you meet someone. I've met that type of person before. I've met someone with that career before. I've met a guy from that area before. I've met a lady with that background before. I know somebody with that name already. And these memories are much more thin. Your first date compared to your 80th date. The memories are just very different. The perception of time is different. Our emotional experience is different. So what am I really saying so far? So far, it looks like scientifically, if you have a very familiar life, it's going to go by very quickly. And if you have any sense in your life that life is passing you by, it's true.

• 8:42Ed Mylett?

  It's true from two standpoints. Number one, time is running out on you. And two, the things you're doing are so familiar, you're not getting any juice, any dopamine, any, anything out of your life anymore. Because the more we do something, the less we get the hit. It's why a drug addict, oftentimes you'll meet people that'll tell you they've been on. You know, whatever drug, crystal meth for ten years and they're like, I don't even get high anymore. I, I don't even get high, but I do it out of the habit of doing it because it's, it's who I am. It's keeps me familiar with myself. And often in life, if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again, you don't get high anymore. So that's why it's incumbent upon us to create new things we do, new experiences, and they don't have to cost money. Some of the ones I'm going to list today that I'm doing

• 9:25Ed Mylett?

  do cost some money because I've been blessed to have that in my life, but most of the things in life that we really enjoy are simple. You didn't have any money when you were a little kid. You didn't have any resources. What you had was things that were new all of the time. So this new article, the article in scientific report says that new perpetual information, the more we absorb, the more we enjoy an experience and the longer it seems to last. So the more your brain has to process, the more it slows time down, the less your brain has to process, the more it speeds time up and there's just nothing great about it. There's a new article in here that they quote from neuroscience and bio behavioral reviews found that once we reach our twenties, listen to this, the release of dopamine as the result of experiencing new stimuli starts to drop,

• 10:11Ed Mylett?

  also causing time to seem like it passes more quickly. So if you want to get back to that part of your life that felt like childhood again, the blissful experiences, if you had them when you were a child, you need something they call dense memories, dense memories. And again, this is something I've talked about for ten years. But now there's validation of it and I appreciate this article as a result. So you know, that walk that I had on the dock really is reflective of that. The first time I rode a horse, which was not that long ago, I can vividly remember it and it took forever. Now I get on the horse and I kind of ride it, right? And it's sort of familiar. It's not as dense of a memory in my life.

• 10:54Ed Mylett?

  One other thing they say in the article that I think is really fascinating is that it also is why in some cases in life, for certain tasks, you can't quite estimate exactly how something's going to take, especially something you've done before. So like, for example, I, um, the gentleman who helps me with my horses here has been sick for a while. So I've been cleaning all the stalls. And but I've done that a lot, you know, I've cleaned the horse stalls quite a bit. But because I've done it so much, I think it takes me about five minutes. Right? So I, the other night I said, I'll be back for dinner. I went down there and I said, I'll be back in 10 minutes. I, I figured it'd take me five, then I'd get back. But the truth of the matter is it takes me about a half an hour to clean out all the stalls for all of the horses that we have here. But because I've done it so much, I don't have

• 11:35Ed Mylett?

  a perception of time because it's something that's just a pattern for me. It's familiar to me. So that's why sometimes you underestimate tasks of how long they're going to take if it's something you're familiar with, which I thought was a fascinating thing as well. This is really important, though, if you're starting to get bored with your business or your career. And it's really why if you don't create new ways you do things and innovate, add a new product, a new strategy, a new script, a new way of teaching something, a new way of approaching it, whatever it might be in your business life, you can become very bored. And bored entrepreneurs or bored employees aren't productive and they can actually be dangerous when they get bored because they start to not even do the things they're supposed to do to become successful. So here's the, here's the deal. How do you

• 12:20Ed Mylett?

  slow the passage of time? So there's a Stanford neuroscientist named David Eagleman.

• 12:26Ed Mylett?

  And he says that we all have the impression, you know, he's talking about these childhood summers lasted forever. But when you're older, the summers go by, like I said, more quickly. And he said, that's because your brain's job, this is so fascinating to me, is to build an internal model of the world. Your brain is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull and all it's trying to do is understand the structures of the world so it can operate better, also truthfully, so it can conserve energy. Your brain is always trying to conserve energy and not have to work as hard in case it needs to do something else. So when it encounters a surprise, when you encounter a surprise, your brain writes it down and makes a change to your circuitry, literally. But as you go through life, he says, and your brain develops better models of the world, less and less carries much surprise. That's

• 13:10Ed Mylett?

  why you lay down fewer memories as you age. You've seen this situation before. You've met that personality before. You've done that job before. The memories you lay down are much thinner. They're more impoverished. But in contrast, when you're in your childhood, everything's new. And so the richness of your memories gives you the impression of increased duration.

• 13:32Ed Mylett?

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• 14:15Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/mylet to see if you qualify. That's R-O dot C-O slash my let to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co/safety. R-O dot C-O slash safety. So when I ended up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating, and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed, and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists that use a 10-point quality inspection system. Here's all I can tell you. The stuff has lasted over time.

• 14:59Ed Mylett?

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• 15:37Ed Mylett?

  Okay, so what's the key then? Here's the key, and you're not gonna like this if you're just a habit person. See, remember this as we step back. Human beings are a compositions of habits, patterns, and behaviors. And they go through them over and over. They have habitual thoughts, habitual ways they drive to work, habitual conversations. They've got a group of friends that are the same. They watch the same types of TV programs. They get the same political stuff in their feed. And so they continue to do these same things. And it's an odd analogy as someone who's a child of an alcoholic drug addict, but they get less high off of life. And you're a composition of patterns. If you want to have a longer life, and I mean this literally, I think you'd probably be happier and physically live longer.

• 16:23Ed Mylett?

  But if you want at least have the perception of a richer life, you've got to get out of the familiar. This is not just proven in my own world experience with all the people I've coached and after 53 years on earth, but now neuroscience is telling you your internal world, your internal experience is flying by. You're getting less dopamine because it's so pattern based. And getting humans to change is difficult. Now, here's what people will say when I say this to them. They go, yeah, but I know what I like. I like this particular steak. Rick, you know, I like to do this particular habit or hobby. Right? I like these particular types of people. I know what I like. I'm established in my ways. And you know what? I'm pretty happy. Yeah, but things are flying by. They're flying by. And you're running out of time.

• 17:08Ed Mylett?

  I had a friend of mine just the other day, and everyone knows I've had some health issues. You know, some frankly significant. And um, he goes, bro, you know, you're gonna have between five and 30 summers left.

• 17:22Ed Mylett?

  And it stopped me in my tracks.

• 17:25Ed Mylett?

  Five and 30 summers. I'm 53, so if I were blessed, I'd get 30 more great summers. And I know I've had anti-aging people on my show. I know that. Say you lived 125, maybe I will, maybe you will. But healthy, you know what I mean? And maybe I will, maybe science will change where I can live to 125. I don't know. But I actually have already had some significant health scares. Five and 30 summers left. Well, I want those to last as long as they can. How many more conversations am I going to get to have with my mom? How many more are you going to have if they're still here? How many more actual experiences with your friends?

• 18:03Ed Mylett?

  You know, you say I'm 25 years old. Okay, so you have 50 more summers.

• 18:08Ed Mylett?

  That's it. It's finite. And I can tell you that if you don't begin the habit of what we're going to talk about in a second here, you're going to have a whole lot shorter life in your experience. Because you're not laying down dense memories. So generally speaking, they say in the article here, do new things, try new things, push yourself to do these new things. Try to create more firsts and more different experiences. Have you heard that before? Me on this show for about a decade. Do that, and when you look back, time will seem to have passed more slowly because your memories will be much denser. That will change your perception of what psychologists call retrospective thinking.

• 18:51Ed Mylett?

  Then leverage the power of what psychologists call perspective timing. Generally speaking, perspective timing is looking forward to predicting future outcomes, especially regarding time. This is my go zone. I've been saying this lately. Everything in personal development

• 19:07Ed Mylett?

  tells you to be present and to be more present, including me. But I have also said, I believe you have to be able to be focused on the future as well and look forward to a compelling future. Isn't there something cool that if you know you're going to go to a concert on a Saturday night that just helps you get through the work week better? Isn't it? Or if you knew you had a vacation coming, isn't it just easier to get the grind done? So although we want to be in the present, we also want to have some focus we're looking forward to in the future. And that's why goal setting and dreaming and envisioning your future life and spending time on that is so critical to a rich life. Turns out scientifically, they recommend here, if you're going on vacation in a month,

• 19:52Ed Mylett?

  Put the date on your calendar. Stick a note on the fridge. Looking forward will make the intervening days feel like they take longer and make the anticipation a little sweeter. So it turns out that the anticipation of a future event actually slows down time as well. As a kid, weren't you looking forward to those summers? Remember, remember how upset you were when you had to go back to school when they ended, right? So if you have things to look forward to in your life, turns out that slows down the perception of time because of anticipation. So doing new things, and by the way, don't go on vacation to the same darn place. Well, we love the blah, blah, blah resort. Okay. You've done that one. Now I'm going to be honest with you.

• 20:35Ed Mylett?

  I'm so crazy about this topic. I've probably taken it to the extreme in my life. Like we've moved a lot. We've, we've lived in many different places. And about every time we move, people, isn't this the best place? And I'm like, yeah, but after a while I've been there and I want to experience something new. So I'm the same way with restaurants. I, there are restaurants I love to go to, but I've been there like I get it, but it's not as rich as an experience as it was the first time. I actually, there's a great restaurant here where we live and, and um, it's my favorite restaurant, probably. But I gotta be honest with you. I brought people there recently and like, yeah, it was really good. And I'm like, no, it's the best. But if I actually based it on the experience I just had, truth is it's good.

• 21:16Ed Mylett?

  I'm still going off of the first experience. Why? Cause it was a dense memory. It was amazing. It was new. It was incredible. You know, I'm right about this, by the way. You know, I'm right about it. So the first time was like, oh my gosh, I've never had food like this in my life, the service. But the truth is the 18th time I've been there, it's really good. But it's not what I remember. But I keep saying it is to everybody I bring there. Because I'm going off the first dense memory. Does that make sense? So try new things, go to new places, do new stuff. I'm going to go through some specific things in a second.

• 21:52Ed Mylett?

  And so it says about, you know, having the anticipation of life really matters as well. Eagleman also says doing new things or just doing the simplest things a little differently. Like taking a different route to work, rearranging your office, or even just brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand. I think I covered this on about 15 podcasts ago. Will make you seem as though you're extending your time a bit because you're forcing your brain off its hamster wheel of doing things a particular way every day. And so they say this at the end, since time is your most valuable resource, why wouldn't you want to make it seem to last as long as possible? Okay, so how do we do this? Well, I'll tell you, I'm crazy now about creating new experiences and doing new things.

• 22:37Ed Mylett?

  And let me be candid with you. That is not my personality. I don't like surprises. At least I think I don't. I don't like to do things I'm not good at. I'm 53. I know I like to golf. I know I like to lift weights. I know I love comedy. I know I love good food, good glass of wine, good cigar. I know what I like. And I kind of know the types of people that I like. I also know my life feels like it's passing me by. It's flying by. And

• 23:13Ed Mylett?

  I have a really good blessed life. I have the resources to do things that I'm very fortunate to be able to do. And so these decisions I've made the last decade to create change and variety in my life is not easy for me. In fact, if I relate to you, if you're saying, man, I just don't want to, don't need to. I promise you, if you do the things we're about to talk about for a few minutes here, you'll have a richer life. It will seem to last longer. And it may even last longer. I do crazy things like brush my teeth with the other hand. I mean, that's a simple thing, right? But I also have tried a bunch of new things. So for example,

• 23:56Ed Mylett?

  I am, I learned to ride horses the last three or four years. I have a bad back. I had every reason in the world not to do it. Right? I've got a bad back. I have other hobbies that I enjoy. It's expensive hobby. Um, I'm no good at it.

• 24:13Ed Mylett?

  But man, is it one of the most therapeutic things I've ever done in my life. I find myself on YouTube, learning new ways to saddle a horse, bridle a horse, lunge a horse, train a horse, uh, new strategies of, of how to help feed them, new things about their feet. Uh, the amount of things I've learned the last three or four years that I know about horses and riding them and caring for them and having the right people around them. And how good they are for my soul and my spirit is incredible. Does it take time away from other things I like to do? Yeah, but you know what? This has been the longest summer I've had since I was a little boy. And I think those horses are part of it. I think this new place is part of it. I think new books I'm reading. I'll give you something I'm doing now.

• 24:56Ed Mylett?

  I've never read a fiction book since I got out of high school. I always read nonfiction. I read business, personal development books. I don't read fiction books. I've always said, that's a waste of time. I don't want to read fake stuff, right? I'm reading some fiction books now and it's interesting to me. I'm fishing. I am not your typical personality type to fish, right? Like, I don't like just sitting there, drinking a beer, throwing a line out. You know, I'm an aggressive dude. I'd rather go hit the weights really hard for an hour, you know, and, and do something intense or competitive. And I'm certainly not going to be a competitive fisherman. But you know what? I've started to enjoy it a great deal. Time passes very slowly. I've learned a bunch. I'm growing. I'm almost like a kid again, you know?

• 25:40Ed Mylett?

  And I take really long walks and that's something I've never done. I always ran all the time. Well, I love walking. I love being outdoors and experiencing things. And so I've made new friends and not all of them are the same types of people I've always hung around. All of these things are slowing the passage of time. So you know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing like on repeat all the time? That sweater that kind of just goes with everything or these perfect pair of pants? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples with premium materials like a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton. The styles are timeless, versatile and designed to become the dependable.

• 26:22Ed Mylett?

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• 27:02Ed Mylett?

  So let me ask you a question. Could you go on a new place on vacation? Could you start a new hobby, learn a new language, switch the coffee shop that you go to, switch the location you go to, switch the TV programs that you watch, right? Could you start to listen to something that you've never listened to before? Maybe you're, this is the first time you've listened to personal development. Start to work on that. Maybe it's something that you want to grow or an area of understanding. I've got a very, very good friend right now who's completely learning to speak Spanish, by the way, on Babbel, no joke, but they, they're learning to speak Spanish and they're learning something new. Change your routine. My goal is that every year I have two brand new crazy experiences.

• 27:46Ed Mylett?

  They don't need to cost money, but two crazy, brand new experiences every single year and I'm forcing myself to do it. Most people have a bucket list. I've got a F it list because I don't want to do most of these things. A bucket list is like, man, I'm dying to go see Paris. Truth is guys, I've never traveled that much. I'm not dying to go see a lot of different places. But I'm going because I want to slow the passage of time. I want at the end of my life to look back and say, I maxed out my life. I got all the juice out of my life. I tried new things. I experienced new things. I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. And growing doesn't always need to be your company or your business or your bank account. Growing can be your memory bank. Growing can be your emotions. Growing can be new things you do, right?

• 28:30Ed Mylett?

  Going, you could change what time you get up in the morning. You know, I have a really great friend who's always been a late riser. I'm like, brother, we gotta start shaving some hours off. Mornings are amazing. Seeing a sunrise is incredible. He's like, no, bro, I'm a sunset.

• 28:44Ed Mylett?

  I go, I know you love sunsets, but do you remember most of them anymore? Like, truthfully, bro, like, you remember them? He goes, nah, nah, you know, I mean, I go, hey, it's not that you've seen one sunset, you've seen them all, they're all beautiful. But I said, I promise you, you need to see some sunrises. And so we worked on it. Now he's like, bro, man, I get up, have my cup of coffee. Now he's a dude, so just stay with me. He's like, I light my cigar, I gotta, because man, a morning cigar and a coffee, watching the sun come up. Wow. The guy's 60 years old, right? Slowing the passage of time. Here's what he tells me, this is before I read all of this. Here's what he tells me, he goes, dude, my days last forever. I go, well, crap, you got three more hours in the morning now. He goes, nah, but I go to bed two hours earlier, but the day seems so much longer.

• 29:29Ed Mylett?

  And now there's validation. Neuroscience tells us that's because he's laying down dense memories instead of these thin was of the same sunset. The same stuff, right? Same life, different day. Even if you like it, I gotta tell you, I have all these buddies that play golf, six days a week. They've been doing it for 30 years, right? They're retired and I know they love golf, but they don't look as happy doing it as they did when they first retired because they do it every day. I mean, how many of the same putt can you have? Same drive, same golf course, same guys, same conversations. You know, it doesn't juice you like it used to. Think about that in golf, if you were a golfer, first birdie you ever made, about the 80th. Do you remember it?

• 30:14Ed Mylett?

  First par you ever, if you don't make birds, first par you ever made, you remember it? What about your 16th par? You don't remember it, right? So I'm not saying don't do things you love, but I'm saying, man, it's, you're doing it because it's you. You're, you're familiar with the habit of you. You're familiar with you. You're doing an impression of you. And that's what you're going to get out of this life. Or you could get some new sunsets, or you could learn to ride horses, or you could learn a new language, or you could begin a new hobby, or you could begin to learn about trees or whatever. Here's the other thing I do now.

• 30:48Ed Mylett?

  Write this down. I've worked on my sensory acuity. So I force myself to notice things when I'm doing things. So it's not autopilot. I look for little things like this is corny, but when I'm taking my walks, I'll pick a leaf. And I'll look at a leaf and the contour of it and the lines in it and how it's different than another one. You go, that's just, it's not, it slows the passage of time. It gives me peace. It focuses me to shrink. My area of focus. So not just the broad focus, I'll shrink it and get in on one thing, create a new experience. It's a new little line in my life that's brand new for me. There's all these things that we just, we filter them out because we're familiar.

• 31:32Ed Mylett?

  So you either need to do unfamiliar things. Or look at familiar things in a more microcosm focused way. Right, where you delineate small things. I've walked by this tree many times, but today I'm picking out this leaf. I, I, it may be that you're in a park that you've been in before and just stop and like, watch something you've not seen before. Allow yourself to feel the breeze on your face. Slow the passage of time. Slow things down or do new things. And so the big thing for me has been two new experiences a year. Two. They could be something that costs money or something that's not. I highly recommend right now, you say, what are my two experiences the next 12 months that I've never done before?

• 32:15Ed Mylett?

  Place that you're going to go, person you're going to meet, something you're going to learn, new hobby you're going to start, something you're going to begin to read. Something you're allow yourself to feel. Maybe for the first time in your life, you're going to pursue God. More deeply, maybe you've always been a believer of a particular faith, but you've never really gone deep on it. And this year's going to be the year. Where you really read your scriptures or take some classes on it or go to retreat about it. Maybe you want to learn yoga or stretch. Maybe you want to lift weights for the first time. Maybe you're going to start walking, maybe you're going to start running, maybe you're going to do an Ironman, maybe you're going to do a 5K. Maybe you're going to go see someplace. And isn't it cool that you have the anticipation of doing it as we said earlier? So I don't know how many summers you have left.

• 33:00Ed Mylett?

  But I now know that your life lasts longer. Perceptually and probably literally. If we're out of our patterns of our life. And I believe you were born to have a beautiful life. I believe you were born to do something great with your life. Maybe it's a new friend. Maybe it's a new friend. Maybe it's a new relationship. Maybe it's a decision not to stay in one that's no longer serving you. Maybe it's to have this conversation with your significant other and say, let's create some new experiences together. Maybe it's something spicy in that department that you've not done before. Maybe it's somewhere you go, somewhere you meet, something you feel, something you do, somebody you serve.

• 33:42Ed Mylett?

  And man, I'm telling you, your life will begin to have those endless summers. Not everything in life needs to fly by. Not everything in life needs to be familiar. And now we have proof that it extends our lives. So I wanted to share this with you today. What are your two experiences for the next 12 months? What's the new thing? Get excited about it. Have some anticipation about it. And as you're doing it, take it all in. And if you're doing something familiar, find the unfamiliar in doing it. Innovate. Brush your teeth with a different hand. Look at that leaf a little bit differently. Right? Notice, open up your sensory acuity. What are you hearing that you didn't hear before? What are you feeling that you didn't feel before? What are you seeing that you didn't see before? Allow those new senses to create a new experience in the familiar.

• 34:26Ed Mylett?

  So you can get a little bit more out of your life and slow this life down. So you have those summers like you did when you were a little child. All right. God bless you, everybody. I hope today helped you. If it did, share this with somebody that it matters to or that you think it would matter to. And max out your life. God bless you.

• 34:44Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Marlin Show.