The place to begin was the theater of my mind. I read of a brain training center that treats children with behavioral problems and adults entering dementia. I called and asked if their neurofeedback program could help a healthy brain achieve a better balance between the noisy frequencies that fill my mind with chatter and the quieter, more calming ones. They said it might, and I decided to participate in a few sessions.

I followed a therapist to a soundproofed room, where electrodes were attached to various parts of my head and connected to a computer that measured the electrical patterns of my brain. The therapist’s objective was to invigorate neurons that were less active — the rarely quiet part of my brain — while dimming those firing more vigorously. After six sessions, I had no idea if my mind attained a healthy equilibrium between chatter and calm.

I do know I emerged determined to find in my daily life the tranquillity I experienced in that room. While I’ve meditated for years, the peace I feel during 30 minutes of mindfulness is quickly eclipsed by noise in the street and in my head. I had to begin replacing the dramas playing in my mind with the quiet needed to reflect on how I was going to spend the time remaining to me.

I’m trying to break other habits in far more conventional ways. As in many long marriages, my wife and I enjoy spending time with the same friends, watch the same television programs, favor the same restaurants, schedule vacations to many of the same places, avoid activities that venture too far from the familiar.

We decided to become more adventurous, shedding some of those habits. European friends of ours always seem to find the time for an afternoon coffee or glass of wine, something we never did. Now, spontaneously, one of us will suggest going to a coffee shop or cafe just to talk, and we do. It’s hardly a lifestyle revolution, but it does encourage us to examine everything we do automatically, and brings some freshness to a marriage that started when Dwight Eisenhower was elected president.

My fitness regimen had also become habitual: treadmill, swimming, core exercises and resistance training. Watching others work out in different ways tempted me to vary that routine. When I read about a rehabilitation program designed for a New York Giant defensive lineman who had mangled his hand, it made me wonder if I could ask new things of my body.

The gym he went to was near my home, and I arranged a meeting with his trainer and asked if he could design a far less rigorous program for me. He added exercises I had never attempted, pedaling and running in brief bursts of intensity, lifting weights while balancing on one foot, focusing more on reaching and lifting movements that mimic the functions of everyday life, countering the stiffness accompanying aging by stretching, bending and leaping. The workout I now follow is mentally and physically taxing but within the capabilities of someone my age, and I regard it as part of my intention to ask more of my mind and body in these remaining years.

None of these efforts to break old habits will add one day to my life. But I feel I’ve stepped off the conveyor and am experiencing some of the passion and adventure I felt in the first 18 years of my life.