Mental Fitness Mondays: So, What’s New?

10th August 2026

Why we can’t sustain that ‘new’ feeling

Today I explore something simple that I think we can all benefit from.

The idea came to me one February Sunday morning. I woke up to my alarm and remembered I needed to get to my gym class. I had a thought of ‘here we go again’ (I’m a regular). Then it struck me that this thought was telling me something about my mental fitness in that moment.

Do You Remember the First Time?

I remembered the first time I went to that same class. I’d felt excited, slightly nervous, and very alive. That day felt so much better than this grey February morning did. A question popped into my head, just two words: “what’s new?”

I decided to experiment with that question. I would simply notice anything that felt new, different, or that I hadn’t properly seen before.

When I arrived at the gym, I noticed a logo for a nearby business I’d walked past countless times without really looking at it. I noticed the rain streaking down the outside of the building. I found myself looking around the changing rooms and the equipment with a bit more appreciation, rather than just moving through it all on autopilot.

And then I got into the class.

Before I knew it, the sense of curiosity had gone. I was back to going through the motions. Squats followed by chest work, then shoulders before abs. Back to ‘here we go again’. That shift is very familiar - there’s quite a lot going on in the brain that helps explain why this happens.

Why can’t we sustain that ‘new’ feeling?

First, the brain is incredibly energy hungry. It makes sense, then, that it looks for ways to conserve energy. One way it does that is by simplifying what we see and relying on patterns and shortcuts.
There’s also a part of the brain, the basal ganglia, which plays a key role in forming habits. Habits are useful - they help us function efficiently - but they also mean we stop noticing things.
And then there’s what’s known as the default mode network. This is where the mind drifts away from the present moment. You’re physically there, but your attention is somewhere else entirely.

None of this is a problem in itself; in fact, it’s often helpful. But it can lead to a subtle experience of life feeling repetitive or flat. You find yourself going through the motions, even in things you once enjoyed.

Where attention goes, energy flows

I see this quite a lot in coaching conversations. People talk about roles they worked hard to get into, projects they once cared deeply about, or routines they chose for good reasons. Yet somewhere along the way, it all starts to feel a bit mechanical. It’s rarely because the situation has fundamentally changed - more often, it’s because their attention has.

This is where the mental fitness muscle of mindfulness comes in. Not in a complicated or formal way, but in a very practical sense. It’s about bringing your attention back to what’s in front of you.

Actively seek out the ‘new’

For me, that morning, the question ‘what’s new?’ was enough to shift something, even if only briefly. It interrupted the autopilot, and that feels important, because the difference between ‘here we go again’ and ‘that’s interesting’ isn’t usually the situation itself - it’s how much of it we’re noticing.

You don’t need a new job, a new routine, or a completely different environment to experience something differently. Sometimes you just need to see what’s already there, but with fresh eyes.

An experiment you can try

So if today is a fairly typical day for you, you might experiment with this.

Noticing something you usually overlook.

Looking properly at something you pass every day.

Paying a bit more attention to the details of a conversation, a place, or even your own reactions.

Even a few seconds could give you a mental fitness boost.

A few coaching questions to leave you with:

What’s new?
What haven’t you really looked at for a while?
What could you pay a bit more attention to today?