Training your brain and other tips for cognitive health

It’s important to care for your cognitive health, including training your brain and other suggestions here. Much like your physical health, it requires careful maintenance. This point is especially true if you hope to optimize your life to reach your full potential. For those of you who want to work as entrepreneurs, or business owners, or simply wish to best yourself in your current career field, it’s important to know what your most vital tools are.

Your intellect and competent means of applying that intellect are perhaps the two greatest aids you can have.

But how can you care for your cognitive health? Is this the same as caring for your mental health? And moreover, how can you apply this to your lifestyle in a practical, worthwhile, integrated, relatively-convenient, and sustainable manner?

Those are great questions to ask. Who knows? This may be the difference between feeling stuck in second gear or sport mode. It could be that your very business successes or failures are determined by your ability to move forward, confidently, keeping your best asset in good condition.

Let’s explore that potential with the following advice:

Train your brain

Training your brain is important. For the most part, we do that daily.

Working on your daily work responsibilities, managing your relationships, or simply partaking in exercise each morning helps to aid your cognitive health. It’s why when people retire, they can often deteriorate unless they find something new and active to spend their time with.

You may have seen elderly people, well into retirement age, take on a part-time job or volunteering responsibility just to keep sharp mentally. It’s a smart strategy.

But if you’re already active and alert, you can still help yourself. For instance, using crossword puzzle books subscriptions or working through a simple math problem each morning (if that gives you pleasure), can help you stay mentally active and cognizant.

Sometimes, reading a chapter of a book each morning can be enough. This is especially useful if conducted before work, to help you warm up to the stresses of the day ahead of time.

Meditate & deal with stress

Meditate and deal with your stress. If you’re good at handling stress, you may pay it no mind. You may have learned measures to deal with it, such as completely soaking yourself in your work, or eating too much, or drinking a glass of wine each night.

But unless stress is actively expressed, it will often build up. That can lead you to feel overwhelmed at a future point when you feel weak.

Meditation can be very useful in helping you relieve your stress, along with the previously-mentioned tip to train your brain. Meditating may even help you think more directly even when it rears its head.

You may find that exercises, stretching, yoga, mindfulness, reading, or even expressing yourself through creative arts help lower it. This, in turn, lessens your cortisol, lessens the harmful effects of cortisol, and as a result, completely lowers cognitive dulling or decline over the years.

Open yourself up to challenges

The core of a woman’s spirit (and anyone else’s) is made from new experiences. This means that you simply do not feel active and engaged unless you have something new on the horizon, mapping your way from order to disorder in the same manner that humans have always done.

If things are just a little too predictable, if you avoid things that are out of your element, then you might find life feels dull. It certainly leaves you unable to deal with unpredictability, of which you will see much throughout your life.

So, what challenges could there be? Well, you needn’t have to climb Mount Everest.

Perhaps you could take singing lessons if you’ve always wanted to belt out a rendition of your favorite ballad with confidence? Maybe you could restyle your wardrobe and go for a completely new aesthetic?

These seemingly little elements give life joy and energy. They also help train your brain, which stays sharp because you’re giving it the means to do so.

Train your brain but also give yourself personal time

It’s possible to do TOO much. You cannot do everything in a day.

You cannot ignore your biological needs and rhythms. If you feel yourself lacking in sleep (perhaps the worst harmful contributor to cognitive decline), or you’re overly stressed, or you simply have no time for yourself – think about securing some.

That might mean declining over time, or hiring an assistant. Personal time is essential, not only for your spirit but also for your mind and its functioning.

With this advice, including how to train your brain, hopefully, you can more easily take care of your cognitive health.