We all work out hard at the gym every now and then, but how often do you train your brain?
Yes, you should be exercising this as well. General exercise, games and even meditation can help you with this. Try the following and bookmark this page and make the following part of your daily routine.
You’ll see the first result within a week and you’ll continue to see more results month by month
Enriching your vocabulary
A rich vocabulary is a sign of a smart person, right? Reading books is an obvious way to become smarter however not all of us have time for that these days
Here’s a solution, this one-minute exercise will help you find new ways of saying the words “beautiful” and “comfortable”.
Stop reading for a second and look around… now describe the first object that caught your eye, that chair in the distance for example.
Can you come up with five or six different descriptions of it? Give yourself 30 seconds to come up with them.
Was this exercise hard? If you felt like the words you needed were at the tip of your tongue but you could not think of them, here’s what you can do.
Go to an online thesaurus like https://www.thesaurus.com/ right down all the synonyms you need, then as you go back to this exercise choose another object and do the same thing again and you will find this task will become easier every time you try it and your vocabulary will start to grow!
Visualizing
Time to do some memory training, this is an essential part of any brain workout. If I were to ask you to memorize the following words:
- Top Model
- Ocean
- Sun Hat
- Dog
- Sandwich
And then ask you to go away and come back in a few hours and repeat these words it would be a little difficult. But what if you try to connect these words logically?
A top model was by the ocean and a gust of wind blew her sun hat off but a dog saved it and it was rewarded a sandwich
Now play that in your mind, it should now be easier to remember the words and in their original order as well
Chunking
This is another memory boosting exercise. How good are you at memorizing numbers?
Generally, your brain doesn’t really care about your short-term memory that much, it usually lets them go into the ether and holds them for about 30 seconds.
It only keeps a maximum of 5 items in there.
So, imagine you had to memorize the following sequence of numbers: 5834867491
Your brain would most likely forget it but what if it was for some data that your using at work?
Now this data becomes somewhat important but not important enough to keep in your long-term memory.
Checking these same numbers over and over again will get pretty annoying but the good news is that you can train your short-term memory pretty easily
If you split the number into sections it will make it easier to remember eg. 583-4867-491
You can try this with your social security number, credit card or your friends’ mobile number
Keep doing this chunking method and it’ll boost your short-term memory
Memory Shortcuts
There are some pieces of information that we need to remember for good. For example, historical moments in countries, capitals, presidents etc.
Can you remember the first 16 presidents? We all remember Washington but from there on most forget.
A good example to remember the first 16 presidents is the following:
Washington’s Army Jogged Many Miles, And Jogged Very Hard To Philadelphia, To Find Pretty British Ladies
- Washington
- Adams
- Jefferson
- Madison
- Monroe
- (Quincy) Adams
- Jackson
- Van Buren
- Harrison
- Tyler
- Polk
- Taylor
- Fillmore
- Pierce
- Buchanan
- Lincoln
So, if you memorize this line remembering the presidents will be way easier. You can also try mnemonic devices those lines with a hidden meaning to keep other information in mind as well
Pocket Reading
Have you ever tried neurobics? This is a set of exercises that are meant to stimulate different areas of the brain in what might seem unusual.
The term neurobics was coined by Dr. Katz a professor of Neurobiology at Duke University Medical. He knows how to activate all your senses in one exercise and doing this is very good for your brain
Put some coins in your pocket.
Now without looking inside, try to figure out what coins each one is. Feel them, their size, texture, edges, all of this can tell you a lot.
When your done check if you have guessed them right.
To make this a little more difficult as you progress you should try this with coins from different countries or even with marbles as each one might have different indentations on different colored marbles
Inventing Conversations
Another neurobic exercise which is also fun is from a segment from “Whose Line is it anyway…”
This is where they play a scene on a television and mute it.
They then improvise and invent some lines for the characters speaking.
It’ll be more fun to do this with your friends, but doing it by yourself will also stimulate your brain and imagination
Making predictions
Try to predict the outcome of something which will be known in the next 24 hours, this could be a sports game, an event at work, the ranking of a song on a music chart, etc.
Making a prediction is a great way to boost your brain power, it takes some imagination to do it and secondly it will keep you intrigued and stimulate the reward system of your brain.
According to neuroscientist Judy Willis MD if you are right you will be happy if you are wrong you will make your conclusions and might learn something new
Riddles
Different kinds of riddles are a great help if you want to keep your mind sharp.
The following are mathematical problems / riddles
If you take three apples from a group of five. How many will you have?
Answer = 2
That’s an easy one
You can buy 8 eggs for 26 cents, how many can you buy for a cent and a quarter?
Answer = 8 eggs
There are 7 daughters in the family, each of them has a brother. How many kids in the family?
Answer = 8, all sisters just have one brother.
The following link is a great tool for generating general math problems
https://gregtangmath.com/wordproblems
Logical riddles are also another great way to keep an active mind
What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?
Answer: Man
Building Focus
Let’s finish this workout with something this super relaxing, we all find it hard to concentrate at work or school sometimes, or that feeling when your thoughts are going in all the wrong directions.
All you have to do is close your eyes and breathe in and out ten times, do this without thinking of anything.
I know this might seem like an unusual way of getting smarter but this exercise is all about developing your ability to focus and concentrate.
Just give it a go and slowly count to ten
You will notice how it gets easier and easier to cut out all of the background noise as you breathe and you will find it easier to focus and concentrate
Now don’t forget to add this to your bookmarks or favorite so that you can come back to it easily. If you liked this be sure to leave a comment and share on your social media