Improve Memory By Keeping Your Brain Healthy
Your Brain And Your Memory
As you might expect, your ability to remember correlates to your brain’s ability to process and recall information. If your brain isn’t functioning properly or is otherwise unhealthy, it stands to reason your memory skills will suffer.
Actually, the brain works in conjunction with your five senses to comprise memory and the ability to remember. Think about each of your five senses and how they relate to memory. The five senses of hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling, and touching all play an important part in memory skills.
For example, let’s consider the sense of smell. You remember what it smells like to be in the midst of an apple orchard in autumn. Similarly, you recall the aroma inside your favorite pizza restaurant, with pizza baking in brick ovens. You recall that familiar new car scent when you drove your last new vehicle off the lot.
Your brain works directly with your senses to process and recall information. But in order for your brain to function properly, it needs to be fit and healthy. Without a doubt, a highly functioning and healthy brain is the very best memory improvement technique.
Here are five tips to help keep your brain healthy:
Tip #1: Add Dark Chocolate To Your Diet
Yes, it is true what they say about dark chocolate. In moderation, it is very good for you. Dark chocolate contains important minerals that help produce dopamine in your brain. Dopamine is a chemical which helps your brain function at full capacity and improves cognitive skills. So go ahead, enjoy that dark chocolate dessert!
Tip #2: Improve Your Listening Skills
A fun way to improve your listening skills is to pick a song you like and try to memorize the lyrics. To do it, listen to the song as many times as needed and then write down the lyrics in one sitting.
The actual practice of listening with a high degree of focus will sharpen your memory skills over time. You will be amazed at how much sharper your memory becomes if you try this with one song a week.
Tip #3: Learn (Or Re-Learn) A Musical Instrument
Admit it, you’ve always wanted to play guitar, right? Mastering a musical instrument sharpens your brain by using hand eye coordination and translating visuals into music. To play a new piece of music, you are required to read notes in a song book, then apply that information with your fingers on the guitar strings.
Any instrument will do because it involves the same concepts. It is no wonder why many musicians are known for their sharp sense of recall.
Tip #4: Play Catch
Yes, with a ball. If you don’t have someone to play catch with, just toss a ball into the air and practice catching it. Why? Because it improves your coordination skills and your ability to focus. Both skills have a positive influence on your brain.
For an advanced skill, try juggling.
Tip #5: Use Your Other Hand
Suppose you are right handed. Try using your left hand to do tasks you normally complete with your dominant hand, like combing your hair or using a fork. Do it until you become proficient, or at least until it doesn’t feel totally awkward.
The reason to do this is to help your brain adapt to changes. Just like the muscles in your body, it is important for your brain to be limber, flexible, and responsive. Any activity that is counter to your normal approach can help your brain process new information, and thereby improve your memory.
Summary
If you improve the overall health of your brain, you will realize far reaching benefits. Enhancing your brain health is one of the very best memory improvement techniques. Follow these five tips for a few months and you will notice a positive difference!
Why Brain Training Is So Important
If you want to improve your memory, there’s good news and bad news as the old saying goes. First the good news. There are hundreds of memory improvement games, courses, and audio tapes out there. But here’s the bad news …
Memory Improvement And Your Brain
The bad news is this. Almost every CD, ebook, or audio tape teaches you theory, but fails to teach you how to consistently put the theory into practice. Let’s use a practical example.
Suppose you wanted to be a great guitar player. You could read a magazine about playing guitar, or perhaps go to an Eric Clapton concert. But what it would really take to be a great guitar player is practicing a certain set of defined skills and making them a part of your everyday life.
To improve your memory, you have to understand how it works first. It is not a part of your brain, it is the end result of many factors. Memory is having great attentive skills. It’s also about being able to visualize, like remembering where to turn when you’re driving. And memory skills require being able to think quickly, like remembering a person’s name.
And so, since the power of memory is actually determined by several brain functions, it makes perfect sense to improve your skills by improving your overall brain function.
How Your Brain Can Be Trained
As you might imagine, your brain is exceptionally powerful. It has great capacity, but much like a muscle, if it is not challenged, it won’t perform when needed.
In order to train your brain, first you should examine how you learn. Humans learn by engaging all five senses. Think about it. At some point in your life, you’ve learned by seeing, hearing, touching, smell, and tasting. That is not only how you learn, it’s also how you remember.
By engaging all your senses in the learning process, you engage your entire brain. In essence, you give it a workout and it performs better. You can see where we’re going here. The end result of highly engaged brain capacity is a better memory.
Your brain can be trained by using techniques which engage all the senses at one point or another. It is not about memorizing a deck of cards, for example. These techniques are more about a comprehensive, thorough training of your brain to work at its fullest capacity. The only way to do this is by practice.
Summary
Training your brain to use it’s fullest potential is the best memory improvement technique, because memory skills stem from all your senses. Just using one sense, for example, your sense of hearing by listening to a memory tutorial CD, is not enough.
Bottom line, there are hundreds of memory improvement techniques on the market. Be cautious of any that merely ask you to use one of your senses and expect results.
