Challenging your brain through regular mental exercises energizes and strengthens your brain. Keeping your brain young and healthy increases your brain fitness and your overall health. Just as important as it is to maintain a steady work-out regimen, we also need to consistently exercise our brains.
One way to exercise your brain is by learning to tell good stories. This exercises your brain in two ways. The first is that you are attempting to remember the events of your story time after time. You are learning to interpret the different aspects of your story so that you can continue to re-tell your story. Also, it is exercising your brain, because you are attempting to tell your story in a way that keeps your listener interested. We all have that one story that we love to tell for the first time to someone. Can you think of a story like that? For me, it’s the time that I went ice skating in the 9th grade and fell a few times. Later on that afternoon while I was still skating, a friend of mine who was skating behind me informed me that my pants had ripped straight down the middle of my butt.
One way to exercise your brain is by learning to tell good stories.
Needless to say, I was terribly embarrassed. What made it worse is that I had probably been skating around mooning everyone for about an hour and finally someone decided to tell me about it. These are the types of stories that you’ll be telling and re-telling for the rest of your life. They are stories that stick with you. So, you should learn how to tell them in an exciting way so that your listener will be drawn to it. And you need to remember all the small details of the story – the smells, the sounds, the sights, your feelings at that time. It is a good way to exercise your memory and your creativity.
Do you know one way to exercise your brain is to turn off the television?
Another way to exercise your brain is by turning off the television. Believe me, this is probably the hardest on me. I have at least 10 shows that I watch on a regular basis; I love good television. Unfortunately, watching Desperate Housewives does not exercise my brain, as much as I’d like it to. We need to learn to spend more time exercising our brains and our bodies. Instead of watching TV, curl up to a good book or get outside and run around your neighborhood. Don’t live a sedentary life.
Not only should you read books, but you should challenge yourself with your reading material. Change things up. If you typically read true crime books, branch out and pick up a history book. Challenge your brain to read, comprehend and interpret different genres of books. You will be exercising your brain by doing something out of the ordinary, and you are also exercising it by learning something new. Book that are specifically good for challenging your brain are history books, biographies, books written by foreign authors, poetry, classics, how to books, art, fashion and design books, travel books and books about religion and culture. Typically, these types of books cause you to think outside the box, and they teach you about diverse groups of people and cultures
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