How to Maintain and Increase Brain Activity Over the Long Haul
November 9th, 2007Four Tips to Keep Your Brain Active and Alert.
Use this list to keep your brain healthy and energized during those marathon work periods.
If you are like most people on this planet, I’d bet you sometimes find yourself feeling like no matter what you do, you can’t get ahead in your work. And when deadlines, overbearing bosses, or family obligations loom over your head, sometimes you are forced to work for extremely long, unhealthy periods of time. However, it is fairly well known that long periods of work and sleep deprivation can alter your mental awareness. Here’s a list of things to do to keep your mind energized and your brain activity high.
1. Meditate – Meditating regularly will recharge your brain and help you refocus your thoughts. It also has great health benefits. When you work without a break for extremely long periods of time, you will begin to find yourself “unable to think about this or that.” If you find yourself thinking this statement, it is a big clue that you need a break. Meditation can help you re-energize your brain.
2. Exercise – The health of your body and mind are interconnected. The status of one will definitely affect the other, so be sure to make exercise a habit and enjoyable. You’ll find that as your physical health increases, so does your mental health. Here’s what a NY Times had this to say about it:
One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise. In humans, exercise improves what scientists call “executive function,” the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that’s appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions. Executive function includes basic functions like processing speed, response speed and working memory, the type used to remember a house number while walking from the car to a party.
3. Get Started – Think about it. How many times does the anticipation of your workload actually prevent you from getting started? Your brain experiences a flurry of activity as you prepare for the tasks ahead, and this sometimes causes you to forget to start! Having a plan is important, but don’t get lost in planning. Or sulking because of upcoming work. Just do it. Here’s a few specific tips for overcoming procrastination.
4. Get A Few Hobbies – Hobbies bring joy to your life and keep your brain active. Why find more than 1 hobby? If your brain focuses on performing only a few different activities, it’ll never develop the wide processing power required for true cognitive development. Having a venue for creativity is just pleasant in general, too. That same NY Times article offered this:
That is, practice can certainly make people better at sudoku puzzles or help them remember lists more accurately. The improvement can even last for years. Similarly, people tend to retain skills and knowledge they learned thoroughly when they were younger. Unless the activities span a broad spectrum of abilities, though, there seems to be no benefit to general mental fitness.
Summary
Start with these 4 tips and you’ll be well on your way to a healthier, more active brain that is more capable of lasting through those long work sessions. If you would like even more tips, here are some more ideas for increasing brain activity.
Learn how to develop psychic abilities with the Silva Method.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
These are methods we use outside of work. What about methods to increase brain activity for use during work?
What about increasing the brain capacity in ways that actually helps with your work? Two of my favourite mentors in this case are Harry Kahne and Harry Lorayne. Harry Kahne, the man with multiple mentalities, and Harry Lorayne with the most phenomenal memory in the world developed methods for people to accomplish the same. A multiple mentality can help us see solutions where others can't. A huge memory helps us remember people, resources, and important data where most people would forget.
I like to combine their methods. I can literally feel the neural pathways forming. Sometimes it feels good. Other times it just plain feels weird, but the exercises from these gentelmen help me get the job done even more efficiently.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:50 am
[...] stress, improves memory, makes you more alert, and helps you keep your brain at max performance over the long haul, among many other [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 7:35 am
[...] might seem counterintuitive, but when you start wearing out your brain power, your work output takes a nose-dive. So, plan long term and don’t burn yourself out by [...]
December 21st, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Enhancing neural pathways improves the memory far more than stress; the Kahne/Lorayne exercises enhance neural pathways. They're really not that different from Silva exercises to increase psychic potential. When you enhance your neural pathways, you have so much more to give over the long haul.
Of course, everyone runs out of brain power sooner or later. But by increasing your psychic potential through proper training it's like upgrading your brain from an alkaline to a lithium-ion battery, therefore, we have more to live over the long term. That so called 80-90% of unused potential in the brain can do amazing things when properly tapped.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am
[...] How to Maintain and Increase Brain Activity Over the Long Haul [...]