11

OCT
2018

HOW TO STAY MENTALLY FIT

HOW TO STAY MENTALLY FIT

On World Mental Health Awareness Day let’s ask ourselves how we can become ‘cognitively fit?’

Here are 4 steps based on neuroscience research in psychology and other mental health fields adapted and edited from The Harvard Business Review – to aid the brain stay away from depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s and other mind-related disorders.

  1. Indulge in experiences that make your brain grow

     

    – for e.g., you learn a skill from someone say crochet or tennis this implies you re-creating mental imagery later to call in that experience as a method of learning.

  2. Work hard at play

     

    – i.e., to go on creating yourself endlessly (Henri Bergson). ‘Play’ engages the pre-frontal cortex (our most highly evolved and recently acquired brain areas), those related to incentive and reward processing, goal and skill representation, mental imagery and self-knowledge. Companies like Google and Apple, provide environments that encourage some kind of play, referred to as Zen dens, play spaces, and chat chambers. You must have a ‘stake’ in the play as ‘risk’ alerts the brain and activated capacities for both reason and imagination.

  3. Search for patterns

     

    – Challenge both hemispheres of the brain, the left (that which makes you carry out routine tasks); the right (less structured, more ‘poetic’ part of the brain). Expand the left by listening to different viewpoints, read new books and articles, visit places with a focused set of learning objectives.

  4. Seek novelty and innovation

     

    to trigger the right hemisphere of the brain like when you take up painting or a child studies language. Continuous new learning, having an open attitude, the Buddhist monks call an ‘beginners mind.’ A challenge activates the right hemisphere.

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