How To Keep Your Mind Sharp

    Walking into a room again because you forgot what you came for the first time is the common “elderly” moment we have all felt. But is it alarming enough to assume you have a cognitive decline? Various studies prove that weak memory is not a sign of growing age but neural decline. In the words of a layman, if you do not engage in memory-based practices for your brain, it will lose its charm.

     However, there are several basic habits that you can change to improve memory. The age-old remedy of having seven almonds a day might actually have some truth to it. Diet, exercise, active cognitive functions, and your stress levels affect your memory. Memory weakness is as frustrating as it can get. Whether it is failing to recall a familiar name in a conversation or forgetting the kettle on the stove. If you, too, are going through such cognitive changes, then here are some strategies you might try!

How To Keep Your Mind Sharp

Don’t Give Up On Learning 

     You are probably already aware of how learning keeps your brain healthy. It continuously helps create neural pathways that improve memory and fight stress.

     But the medical explanation to it has a little more detail to it than that. Pursuing higher education not only sets a star on your resume but keeps your brain active. These active practices of memory development don’t let it get rusty.

     Pursuing what you are passionate about, re-adopting a hobby, or learning a new skill altogether helps you learn. 

     You can dust off your guitar that has been sitting there for months, or pick up a book you’ve wanted to read. Anything that keeps your thought process running and memory polished will have effective results in your day-to-day life.

     It is all about challenging your brain often enough to have healthy communication between the brain cells. This is a verified and proven strategy to keep your memory from fading away easily.

Avoid Negative Messages 

     Negative messages are but negative emotions and perceptions. Stay away from those! Upon entering the middle-age, it is common practice to increasingly joke about growing old. Mentioning body aches, memory weakness, and fading stamina are what the jokes revolve around.

     If you’re exposed to these types of messages for long enough, you will start believing that they’re real. A person joking about such things is more likely to put little effort into improving. And this lack of motivation rusts your mind and memory.

     What you should do instead is to always believe in yourself. If you are facing moments of memory lapses, then working on improving it will get you somewhere. 

     Surrounding yourself with positive people who ooze out positive emotions will have you on the same energy level. Also, engaging in arguments and conversations about the things that force you to recall memory. Such as politics, religion, education, or any other problems that will help you retain the information you already have.

Use Different Styles Of Learning

     Not all of us are lucky enough to have a photographic memory. So if going over something once doesn’t sit quite well, then don’t worry, you’ve got many others in the same boat as you!

     Incorporating different senses into learning something or adopting different styles will always have you up against a challenge. 

     For example, when playing an instrument, you use your mental memory and muscle memory to learn. The same goes for learning a sport. This is the reason why you may pick up an instrument or play a sport after years and still have your charm. Yes, a little bit of practice is needed to polish the skills off, but other than that, you’re good to go.

     I’d like to quote playing an instrument again. When you learn to play an instrument, you use your sense of sight, hearing, and touch. You see the way a tune is played or how the notes are written.

     You apply different playing patterns by touch, soft or hard, to get that perfect balance between smoothness and loudness. And finally, you compare and contrast your playing by hearing how it sounds.

Repetition Is The Key

     Nine out ten times, if you repeat something enough with the given intervals, you will retain the information. But the point to note here is not overdoing it.

     For example, when talking to someone you just met, calling them by their name will have you remember their name during your conversation. 

     But if repetition isn’t working out good enough for you, you can use some memory and cognitive boosting supplements. https://kratomkrush.com/shop/red-maeng-da-kratom-powder/ is well known for improved memory and concentration. And on the bonus point, it is a herbal extract, so your worry for side effects goes out the window!

     Back to repetition, equally spacing it out will further improve your cognitive memory. That is not to cram something as if for an exam, but to plan out intervals between learning. You can choose multiple times of a day to repeat once or twice what you want to learn. And in a matter of no more than a week, you’ll find out how you've finally fed it into your memory!

Tidy Up Your Space

     Although memory weakness is not associated directly with growing age, the medical conditions that cause it are. But you can put up a fight by easing the burden on the cognitive part of your brain.

     Organizing your house, work, and life will have everything managed routinely. For example, if you have a designated place for keys, you won’t be looking for them often. You’ll know where they are supposed to be and will find them there most of the time.

     This works because instead of putting pressure on your memory to recall where you left your keys, you get more room to learn new things. 

     You don’t necessarily have to remember everything. That wouldn’t even be possible for the best of us. So easing the burden on your memory by setting up reminders, marking your calendar, and organizing everything will have you less stressed out. 

     Plus, you are much more likely to remember where you keep everything if you clean your room every day. That is because you’ll cross over it multiple times and will have an idea where what is being kept.

Connect Your Memory

     The most motivating and inspirational thoughts either come in a shower or in bed at night. But the sad part about these thoughts is that they go as easy as they come.

     There was this cheeky little trick I came across on the internet a while back and is actually helpful. So if you remember something in bed at night and want to recall it in the morning, then throw a pillow to the floor or some other thing that you won’t miss out on in the morning.

     This way, when you wake up in the morning and see the oddity, you’ll know what made you do that and recall the thought.

     Connecting your memory to other physical experiences allows you to recall much faster. Instead of chasing down a trail of thoughts, you can get there directly and spare yourself the stress.