Mental faculties are like our muscles, exercise keeps them in shape.
A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has confirmed that you can strengthen your mind in the same way as your muscles, that is, with a little exercise. Mental training improves some of the intellectual skills necessary for everyday life, such as how quickly you react behind the wheel or your ability to make decisions.
The research was carried out with 2,802 healthy volunteers with an average age of 73 years, who in ten two hour sessions learned different reasoning techniques, memorization strategies and tricks to accelerate mental processing. The surprise was that the results not only improved from one day to the next, but they were maintained ... five years later!
There are also other qualities of the mind related to creative intelligence that the tests do not value, such as imagination or humor.
Nor do they value emotional intelligence, that which takes into account the emotions (their own and those of other people) involved in a situation.
Run away from routine
Training the mind positively is not about filling it with information, but about allowing its creative potential to manifest. Einstein said that it is crazy to think about improving by repeating the same thing every time. To grow, the mind needs to escape from routines. You have to set yourself challenges and be carried away by curiosity.
If we have allowed our time to be occupied by obligations or by passive entertainment (watching television, listening to the radio or even routinely reading the press), it is convenient to recover and cultivate the time for personal interests.
No need to look for fancy occupations. In fact, the most indicated are the mental activities that are based on what we like and, if possible, that involve the people we appreciate. Thus, we can experiment with those of our environment: let's play to surprise them, to dislodge them, to make them laugh, to tell them as if some histone invented on the fly were true.
Another proposal to work the creative mind is to explain dreams in the morning during breakfast and play at interpreting them, taking into account that dreams are dreams, you should never judge anyone by the content of a dream. It's fun and it also helps you get to know yourself better.
Get the game back
Children use play to learn to live, so we should never stop playing. In this way we would not stop learning and we would also remain young in spirit and in mind. Fortunately, there are games for all tastes and ages. Board games, role-playing games, sports, etc.
We can think about things that interested us a few years ago or go back to childhood. Maybe we loved doing handicrafts, modeling clay, or drawing, but we stopped doing it as we grew up.
Or we can delve into topics that are of our current interest.
Or we can simply dress up and perform a story in front of a group of family or friends.
In any case, let us be carried away by curiosity and follow our interests. And, if necessary, let us reserve time for them on the agenda, giving them as much importance as obligations.
Connect the two hemispheres
Activities that improve the connection between the cerebral hemispheres are particularly interesting. The left is the logical, rational and analytical one, and in our culture it is overstimulated. The law is that of emotions, intuition and sensitivity. It is related to the arts and tends to observe things as a whole. It is important to train both parts of the brain, for example, listening to music, dancing, looking at works of art, creating them ...
It is true that we cultivate the mind, but we often do it in a very specialized, repetitive and monothematic way. Our brain has enormous capacities to explore, which can only be developed to the extent that we use it, but not as serious and responsible adults, but as the young people we want to continue to be.
Know how to resolve conflicts
The ability to carry out our own projects, and train ourselves in the art of solving problems, are the keys to success in many aspects of our lives.
You have to avoid falling into the vicious circle of asking yourself the same questions over and over and giving yourself the same answers, like a computer that gets "hung up".
Also avoid paralyzing ideas, such as "There is no way out" or "I am not capable."
Faced with a conflict, it is good to clearly state it in writing, as well as its possible solutions with their pros and cons.
But the greatest discoveries of humanity have occurred during naps, in the bathroom ... Cultivate mental rest.
Creative exercises for your mind
Take the words from any sentence and try to create as many sentences as possible in the shortest time possible. Or you can choose a set of words at random. It may be absurd, but it must be grammatically correct.
To remember words, a technique is to repeat them very quietly, while looking for aspects of the name to which an image can be associated. For example, if Fernando is tall we can think of a pine tree (the brain memorizes better if it makes associations)
A stimulus for creativity is to invent an absurd title for a story, for example, "The incredible landing of the sidereal nutcracker, and from there write a short absurd text in five minutes.
Make small changes to your routine. For example when making the salad, add an ingredient that you have never used before. Think about the life of those nuts since before they were a fruit on the walnut tree. Imagine a country house, the shade of the walnut tree, and underneath a table where children play. The seasons pass ... You can draw a picture and hang it on the fridge.
Some useful riddles to escape from the first impression:
1) Two mothers and two daughters go together to buy dresses for a wedding. Each of them returns to her house in a new dress. However, among all of them they have only bought three dresses. How is it possible?
2) What can be the trick so that if we throw a raw egg from a height of ten meters onto a piece of cement it is not damaged?
Solutions:
1) It is about a grandmother, a mother and her daughter (therefore, two were mothers and two were daughters).
2) It is difficult for a piece of cement to be damaged by a raw egg.
