WRITE WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW

Have y'all ever heard the phrase 'write what you know'? Well, I haven't been writing for as long as many people (I'm only sixteen years old), but I've found that that quote should really only be treated as a starting point. After all, if you never take any risks, you'll never discover new things.
Here's a personal example:
I've only ever written in the third person. It was just the kinds of books I read and the way I was used to writing. Third person worked really well for me, no doubt. I have written around four novels in the third person. But recently, I really wanted to advance in my writing abilities. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love writing in the third person and I think it makes a great book. I just decided it was time to try something else.
So recently, I have been experimenting with the first person, writing short stories and now even starting a new series in the first POV. It's definitely a new challenge for me, but I feel like it has really help me grown in my abilities...my writing styles, descriptions, and especially character development.
Point is: trying new things is fun and totally beneficial.
I'm telling you, I can't even estimate how many hours I generally spend doing research for my stories. Because there's things I don't know about. No one knows everything, but we all know different things. So we can learn from each other...each other's stories, each other's writing. If we only wrote what we know, I have a feeling we'd have pretty boring stories.
Here's what I mean:
I've almost drowned before (honest...when I was like four but the memory is so vivid it has stuck with me forever). But I have never broken a bone before. So I could write drowning scenes with good description that I knew was real. I was writing what I knew, so I knew how to write it. But to write a scene where my character broke a bone, I ended up doing a lot of research. About the different kinds of breaks, how long it took to heal, and what people said about the pain. Better yet, I talked to some friends who have broken bones before. And then I was able to come up with a decent (I hope) description of my character breaking their leg.
Another more abstract example:
I know what it's like to be in love (I've had a couple crushes within 16 years of life). I know what it's like to be head over heels for a guy, ok, I think a lot of us know that? Hehe. So I can describe my character's emotions before/while/after they're in the relationship, because I've experienced all three. But I've never lost someone close to me before. I have a really small family, and those who have passed away are people I never really met. I've never felt depressed or felt that loss before. So I talked to people who have, read stories, just did what I could to find out the things I didn't know so I could incorporate it into my story. And overall, the experiences I haven't experienced have made my writing so much better.
I think we need to quit being afraid to try new things with our story-telling, because you never know what the end result is. We all have things we know that we can write, but we can't know everything. Sometimes it really pays off to go out and try something new.