Boost Your Brain Power – Simple Brain Exercises For Awesome People

It makes perfect sense that you need to exercise your brain if you want it to become healthier and more effective.

Cardio exercises work out our lungs and heart so they remain healthy. Lifting weights stress our muscles so that they can rebuild and become bigger. Practicing your athletic moves makes you better.

The same goes for your mental abilities - you need to perform brain exercises if you want your brain to hold such power.

Go online, and you can probably find thousands of supposed mental exercises that can help you become smarter.

But which of them should you perform? Do you just pick the ones that seem enjoyable, or should you stick with the most challenging?

If you really want to succeed in exercising your mind, you may want to focus on the following types of brain exercises:

1. Simultaneously use all your senses

As we get older, our cognitive abilities decline along the way. Neurologists have discovered that this wasn’t really about brain loss. The problem is that brain cells aren’t communicating with each other properly and that can lead to mental decline.

You can counter that effect by forging new connections between your brain cells, and you can do that more effectively by focusing on brain exercises that can use all your senses.

So you can start by perhaps doing regular actions with your non-dominant hand. You can eat, brush your teeth, or use a mouse with your left hand if you’re right-handed. If you like to read books, you can change things up by listening to audio books or even reading aloud.

You can also travel, enjoy gardening, or go camping. These activities can really engage all your senses. Even shopping at a produce market can let you not just see but touch, smell, and perhaps even taste food too.

2. Make a new connection with your nose

We’ve already mentioned how you should go for various new activities and mental exercises that stimulate your senses. But we have to focus on your sense of smell, simply because it’s often overlooked.

You may not realize it, but the sense of smell can be a powerful brain trigger. The smell of book pages can be very potent for readers, while everyone almost always loves the smell of a new car. Lots of adults also associate the smell of coffee with the proper start of a new day.

So be mindful of what you smell, especially when you’re in a restaurant or your own kitchen. You can also have your favorite scent or an extract of it right by your bedside. Take a whiff when you first wake up, and then take another one while you take a shower or put on your clothes.

3. Stress your brain by trying new things

This became a cliché because it’s true, and that’s an assertion that’s backed by scientific research. It’s been found that if you can keep your brain engaged every day then your brain can really thrive. Your memory will improve and you’ll learn more quickly.

The brain can also grow new brain cells and create stronger connections between brain cells. You may even recover more fully and more quickly if you get a stroke.

So do something new as often as you can. When you get to work or to the mall, try a new road. For lunch, eat something different instead of your usual favorite.

It’s even better if you can try something new that seems “out of character” for you. If you’re a nerd, try a dance class. If you’re athletic, perhaps you can do something artistic like painting or even knitting. These brand new activities can help create new neurons, and it also helps release dopamine which is the neurotransmitter that affects your motivation.

Just try something new that intrigues you so that you don’t get bored with it right away. Let go of your prejudices, and try to experience these new activities with an open mind.

4. Challenge yourself with mastery

Okay, so now you know that learning new things can really help with brain activity and cognitive exercises. But just because drawing is a new skill for you doesn’t mean that you should just draw the same things over and over. You have to try to get better and better.

Perhaps at first, you can draw whatever that really strikes your fancy, such as sports cars. When you get better at this, you may try your hand with airplanes, or even tanks. When you’ve mastered this, you can then perhaps move on to landscapes and drawings of people. You need to get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself every time.

What happens if you feel that you’ve mastered a particular activity like drawing? Then perhaps you can then start with something similar but still different, such as painting or even sculpture.

There’s always more to learn. That’s why artistic pursuits can be so rewarding - there’s always something new that you can learn about. If the drawing doesn’t strike your fancy, then perhaps you can learn a musical instrument instead. You can start with a guitar and then later on with a piano. Don’t stick to just one genre, but learn many different styles to engage your mind more fully.

5. Meditation - One of most recognised brain exercises

This isn’t really a weird activity, though some people may think so. It’s actually a very popular practice in the US, where 18 million adults and close to a million children meditate. Various companies offer meditation programs for execs and employees, while even the US Marine Corps recommend it to help deal with stress.

There are many types of meditative techniques, though they all tend to have similar elements. You need a quiet place to meditate so you don’t have any sort of distractions at all. There’s a specific type of posture for you to take, though this must be comfortable for you. So you can sit, lie down or even take a walk while you meditate.

You need to employ a “focus of attention”, which can be a set of words or even an object to focus on. You may even just pay attention to the various sensations you feel when you breathe. Finally, you need to have an open attitude. The distractions can come and go naturally and you won’t judge these distractions at all.

While meditation does have some benefits for various medical conditions, it also has a striking effect on your cognitive state. Studies suggest that meditation benefits include being able to process information better and slowing the effects of aging on the brain.

This may not be easy at first, but you can get better with practice. Often, the goal is to quiet your mind, and that’s not always a simple task for so many people!

6. Try new dishes

This is another brain exercise that can stimulate most of your senses, and there are a lot of things you can do. You perhaps start with another type of cuisine that you haven’t tried before. If you’re a fan of French cuisine, you may want to try Korean cuisine instead.

Or you can try the favorite dishes in Bolivia, Serbia, Kenya, or some other place that you may not have thought about before. This lets you see, taste, and smell new dishes that can stimulate your brain. It’s even better if you try to cook new dishes so you can learn more stuff as well.

7. Brain games

Lots of us these days are enamored with our smartphones and the various apps we can try out to make life better. So it’s understandable if you want to try out various apps that can work as brain games. However, some brain games are better than others, and the best ones tend to demand that you use real life skills to play these games.

Chess is one such game, as it has perhaps been the most common game associated with “being smart”. There’s no real element of luck here unlike card games, and there are no hidden pieces. In this game, you have to master playing with your pieces to trap the enemy king. You also have to anticipate what your opponent can do and make contingency plans for various scenarios. It’s very engaging, and it’s not quite as hard as you may think.

Or you can just go online and appreciate various educational programs that can teach about history, the arts, and the sciences.

8. Start an art project with a group

Forget about the stereotype of the loner genius artist. Man is the social animal, and we evolved to require social contact with others. Isolating yourself from people for extended periods of time can actually hurt you.

Instead, now you can work as a group and with people. The real world is actually collaborative, and lots of thinking happens when we discuss, argue, or even bicker with each other. Socializing is a skill that you ought to develop as well.

It’s also great if you can work together with art. Artistic images can stimulate your nonverbal and emotional parts of your brain. Most of the time, our brains are often preoccupied with linear logical thinking and “cause and effect”. With art, you need to use a different thought process so that you can associate colors and shapes with emotional context.

9. do physical exercise

Some people seem to think every brain workout is just cerebral. The truth is that if you want to learn how to exercise your brain, you can start right way by going to the gym or by jogging.

Physical exertions help you deal with stress better since it boosts the production of “feel good” chemicals in the brain like dopamine and serotonin. It promotes new brain cells and new neural connections, while it helps against mental decline due to aging. With a physical workout, you can send more oxygen to your brain.

10. Try doing things without technological crutches

 When you drive around a new area, turn off your GPS. You can, of course, learn to use a real paper map instead to find your way around. One exercise you can do is to enjoy driving around your city without GPS, and you try to find your way by memorizing landmarks and streets. Doing this can actually help you boost your memory.

11. Learn to dance

This exercise is a great brain challenge especially for so many people locked in their offices. What’s more, it’s one way to help you socialize which is also good for your brain.

You can start by enrolling in a proper dancing class so you can learn a classic style like the tango. Then perhaps you can get help so you can move and groove with confidence at a club. Dancing helps your brain work differently, whether you’re a desk jockey or an athlete.

12. Travel

Go to different places and experience new environments. One study found that if you ever spend some time in a foreign land, you can become more creative and imaginative. That’s because such trips can open your mind, and you’re forced to factor in new ideas and to think in different ways.

Go abroad, and learn the language. Try out their street food. Learn the various rules of etiquette which may be different from what you learned growing up.

Once you get back home, you may find yourself more able to think of new ways of dealing with old problems. The new experiences have opened your mind, and once you’re back home your mind remains open to new possibilities. Try any and all of these brain exercises - you have lots to gain and really nothing to lose!