Exercise your brain
Like the rest of your body, your brain needs exercise for optimal fitness. When you're learning new skills or trying to change bad habits, your goal is really to change your brain. And brain change is the result of practice and exercise repeated over time.
Norman Doidge, Michael Merzenich and others are featured in The Brain Fitness Program, a PBS documentary. Here are Doidge's four tips for improving your brain:
Tip #1 Your health and heart must be in shape.
Eat healthy, exercise regularly, and sleep sufficiently.
Tip #2 Training must be incremental.
Start from your comfort zone.
Push yourself, but don't go overboard.
Tip #3 Training needs to be taxing and systematic.
Initial changes are just temporary.
More lasting memory and brain change occur when you do something over and over again.
Tip #4 Make it interesting to engage the motivational circuits in your brain.
Motivation is a key factor in brain improvement.
Change will occur only when you are engaged and your brain is in the mood.
