Your brain requires constant stimulation – rather like a puppy. You ignore it and it chews the couch. Train it well and it does impressive tricks on command. Yes, your brain is a very squishy pet. The good news is that you don’t need a lab coat, a monastery, or a lifetime supply of green smoothies to sharpen your mind.
You just need to be curious, and you need to be willing to play. Many people think brain training has to be serious and scholarly. Some of the best mental workouts come from lifestyle habits and entertainment like classic chess. Training your brain is going to help with pushing off dementia and other conditions that can set in when your brain goes into isolation mode. Let’s take a look at some ways that you can train your brain without sucking the joy out of your day.
- Learn something useless on purpose. You can pick a topic that has absolutely no practical value to your life. What about the history of spoons, or how magnets are made and how movie sound effects are done? When you learn just for fun, your brain relaxes and absorbs the information faster. You might actually become wildly interested in new things, and then you’ll become interesting at dinner parties, or at least confusing to your friends.
- Play games that make you pause. Fast, flashy games are fun, but the real brain burners are the ones that make you stop and think. Strategy games, puzzle games like Sudoku, and anything that forces you to plan two or three steps ahead on pure mental protein. If you feel your forehead gently warming up, then the neurons are lifting weights. Congratulations.
- Mix up your routine. Did you know that if you brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand, you’re training your brain in a new way? Take a different route to work and you train. Your brains have to remap yourself. If you rearrange your furniture, you then have to relearn where everything goes. Small changes can help you to force your brain out of autopilot mode, where it tends to nap on the job instead of doing things and going through the motions. You get to give it a little jolt of novelty, and that wakes it up like a double espresso, minus the jitters.
- Read things you would normally avoid. If you love fiction, try a biography. If you’re obsessed with self help books, grab a sci-fi novel. When you start to read outside of your comfort zone, your brain has to build new connections instead of cruising along familiar highways. It becomes mental cross training. And it does count, even if the book has Dragons.
- Get moving. Your brain and your body are not roommates who barely speak. They’re more like best friends you constantly text. If you’re using exercise to improve your blood flow and your mood, it’s going to also improve your brain. A brisk walk or a dance session is secretly a cardio workout for your thoughts.
- Argue with somebody. OK, we’re not encouraging you to have an actual fistfight, but a friendly debate is like a sparring match for your mind. Defending your point of view, or offering your perspective on a hot topic, or listening to counter arguments will help to keep your thinking flexible. The keyword here is to do it nicely. You want mental agility, not winning an imaginary trophy that you’re just not going to win anyway.
- Create something from scratch. Using your imagination is a big deal. So write a short story or cook without a recipe. You can even design a playlist with a theme only you understand. Creating something new forces your brain to combine memory, problem solving, and your imagination at the same time, and it becomes the messiest and most imperfect but wildly effective thing you ever do. Plus, you end up with something you can point at and say that you made.
- Practice being bored. Sometimes training your brain means not doing anything at all. It sounds suspicious, but stick with me here. Constant stimulation trains your brain to expect entertainment on demand, but letting yourself be bored encourages daydreaming and then deeper thinking. Some of your best ideas are hiding behind 5 minutes of mild discomfort.
- Teach something to someone else. Nothing reveals what you do and don’t know like trying to explain it to another human. Teaching forces your brain to organise information clearly and spot gaps in your own understanding. Even if your student is a patient friend or a houseplant, the mental benefits still apply.
- Make sure that you are laughing. Laughter reduces your stress levels and improves your mood, but it also makes learning new things stick. When your brain feels safe and happy, it’s more open to new ideas. So share some dumb jokes, watch a comedy or enjoy something purely for entertainment value when your brain is relaxed, it’s a clever brain in disguise.
Training your brain doesn’t have to feel like homework. The best mental workouts are woven into everyday life. If you keep things playful and curious, and you’re not afraid to experiment, your brain will love you for it. It loves a challenge, especially when it’s having a good time. When you work out that your brain is going to respond well to you doing new things, you’ll find yourself turning to new topics because you want to and not because you feel you have to. This alone can be everything that you need to improve the way in which your brain responds to the world around you.
Brain training doesn’t have to be boring but no matter what you do it will be effective. Take your time to lean into it and let it happen and you’ll find yourself happier, healthier and more ready for anything new than you have been before!
