It’s always important to do your best to maintain good brain health. The more mentally agile a person, the better able they are to solve problems and approach obstacles in a rational, effective manner. Studies have also suggested that encouraging your brain to push itself with new challenges can decrease the risk of memory loss and other age-related mental health issues as you get older. Take a look at these six ways you can start to improve your mental agility.
- Find New Interests
Engaging your mind in unfamiliar ways is a good method of maintaining healthy neuroplasticity. This is the quality of the brain to adjust and adapt to new inputs by creating new pathways for connections to be made. By looking for new interests, whatever they may be, you encourage your brain to create new connections and build upon its existing knowledge with fresh information.
- Challenge Yourself
Staying comfortable and relying on the convenience of external support is one of the luxuries of living in the contemporary age. You can easily outsource mental functions such as memory or mathematic calculations to devices, leaving room for your mind to focus on other tasks. However, while this can be useful in many situations, it also robs your mind of the opportunity to challenge itself and grow. The more you insist upon tackling these problems yourself, whether by committing information to memory or taking the time to calculate in your head, the more you train your mind to become a reliable and agile tool.
- Set an Ambitious Goal
Another level to challenging your mind is to take on an ambitious goal with the firm intent of achieving it. This could be as simple as choosing a personal project or deciding to change a career path. Aiming high is a great way of telling yourself that you are capable of growth.
- Help Other People
If you choose to turn your attention to improving the lives of others, you will quickly find out just how fulfilling this can be. For example, if you become a nurse, you will be rewarded with the knowledge that you are actively bringing positive change to the world. This kind of fulfillment is great for keeping your mind agile and awake.
- Overcome Distraction
When people think about overcoming distractions, they think of eliminating them. Instead of attempting this counterproductively distracting task, learn to accept distractions and work through them.
- Learn How to Cope with Stress
Often, the aspects of life that get in the way of mental agility are the quick-fixes people lean on in times of stress. These include different entertainment media, comfort food, and other everyday conveniences. While the short-term benefit of these is clear, they only serve to briefly distract from stress rather than confront and cope with it. By finding out how you can approach the stressful parts of life in a more functional and effective way, you will create space in your mind for what matters most to you.
