Save Your Brain: The 5 Things You Must Do to Keep Your Mind Young and Sharp_10

Critical Area 3: Mental Stimulation 119 programs. The work setting can also be an environment that provides opportunities for mental stimulation. It is important to first review your own behavior in the workplace and to assess how you might be able to derive more mental stimulation dur-ing your typical workday. Most employees complete work duties on a daily basis that tend to be predictable and routinized. As such, employees spend a good deal of their time stimulating their subcortex, the part of the brain that helps with procedures and skills that require pro-cessing that is subconscious. The goal of a brain health environ-ment is to provide novel and complex stimuli that engage and stimulate the cortex, help to build brain reserve, and maintain conscious processing. Consider the following for ways you can stimulate your brain at work: • As an employee, you are encouraged to try new tasks and activities in your work setting. This will increase process-ing of stimuli that are novel and complex and increase the chance for brain health benefi t. • Do not be afraid to express your creative ideas and provide time for employees to imagine. Integration of diverse dis-ciplines can help to forge new ideas that otherwise might tend to remain in operational silos. • When leading a meeting, consider setting the chairs of the room in a circle or several small circles rather than rows and columns. This can engage everyone in a more integrated rather than didactic manner. A more integrated approach can promote personal interaction and constructive dialogue. 120 Save Your Brain • Ask human resources if your company provides any assis-tance for you to enroll in formal lifelong learning that might occur at a local college or university or within the work setting itself. • Ask if you can assume roles that will nurture your commu-nication skills, including public speaking and provision of succinct responses that are both clear and informative. Ask your information officer if the company has technologies to assist your own daily tasks and if you can learn about the different software. • Ask if you can establish a type of brain health kiosk in the work setting where employees can access information on the basics of the human brain and the brain health life-style, complete their online brain fitness workout, get the latest research news on the human brain and brain health, and even complete their online brain health survey to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their brain health lifestyle. Mental Stimulation in Other Areas of Your Life You can take a brief inventory of the environments you typi-cally traverse on a daily basis. Most of us spend a healthy por-tion of our time at home, which is why a previous section was dedicated to mental stimulation in the home. However, we also spend time in other settings, such as our work site and maybe Critical Area 3: Mental Stimulation 121 a gymnasium, library, or facilities where we recreate or enjoy entertainment. Once you have a conscious sense of where you typically spend your time, you can analyze the value of novelty and complexity that each environment provides you. The goal is to expose your brain to settings that provide activities and stimulation that are novel and complex. You can do this and still have some fun along the way! The following brain-health-promoting tips can be used in different areas of your life to promote mental stimulation: • Try new tasks and activities in your daily life. Some ideas would be to accomplish your typical daily tasks using a different approach, or maybe you could reach your desti-nation using a different route. By changing your approach, you will be providing your brain with novelty and com-plexity and therefore boost your brain health benefi t. • Try to develop one or two new hobbies over the next year. A hobby really is the development of a new talent, and this requires stimulating your brain to develop the neural circuitry that enables you to perform the task or hobby. You can learn how to use a new computer program, or you can take up golf or tennis, gardening or knitting. So long as the new activity is new for you, your brain will be stimulated in a healthy way. • As the brain is pleased with multiple and simultaneous stimuli, consider and encourage communication and learn-ing or teaching that engages multiple sensory systems. We all tend to rely heavily on our visual and auditory systems 122 Save Your Brain to the neglect of our ability to taste, smell, and touch. Your brain can be stimulated using all the sensory pathways. • Break out of intellectual silos and share knowledge. Per-haps most important from the perspective of brain health is the need to integrate and merge different bodies of knowledge, academic and applied, to form an entirely new intellectual or tangible entity (intellectual alloy). This is accomplished by getting groups of people to think dif-ferently and to merge their talents and knowledge with those of others. Most of the time we operate in silos with complete focus on our own goals and deadlines. We can enhance brain health and promote creativity, imagination, and innovation by breaking down silos and merging the content within the silos—the benefit being that mental stimulation, creativity, and new answers to old problems can emerge from this sharing of knowledge. These are just a few tips to get you started—there are so many ways to engage your mind. Mental stimulation is critical to brain health. Your brain is constantly seeking and process-ing information. The wonderful thing about the human brain is that it changes and responds to the types of environmental input provided. This fact provides all of us the opportunity to select specific settings or environments that provide the most brain-health-promoting stimuli, so immerse yourself in enriched environments to keep your brain sharp and fit. Critical Area 3: Mental Stimulation 123 Tips to Promote Brain Health: Quick Review • Keep an active reading habit. This can include a book or two a month, reading the newspaper every day, and a favorite magazine on a weekly basis. • Enroll in a brain fitness program like those found on fitbrains.com. You can engage in daily activities that stimulate memory, language, attention, visuospatial, and executive skills. • Engage in new activities that are challenging. Try to learn a new lan- guage or learn how to play a new instrument. • Be artistic and creative. Pick up a hobby like painting, making pottery, or any other activity that promotes your imagination. • Enroll in a class or workshop that interests you, perhaps a class on public speaking or even course offerings available through corporate learning centers. ... - tailieumienphi.vn