Tips to Improve Your Memory and Enhance Your Brain Power

Tips to Improve Your Memory and Enhance Your Brain Power


Rest and Exercise

Memory loss often occurs with age, and in association with injury or disease. However, we can also experience some memory loss when we fail to rest and exercise our brains
AND our bodies. A good, uninterrupted sleep for at least seven hours can have an amazing effect on your memory. Think about it. When you are sleepy, you tend to be
less alert and miss or ignore things around you. You often pay less attention to details and care less about what is going on.



Exercising regularly for at least 30 minutes has a beneficial effect as well. Stronger bodies have more energy and tend to get things done, like learning new things. More blood flowing to the brain also translates to more oxygen going into your brain cells, and more waste going out. Think about a time when you were well rested and full of energy and compare it to a time when you were too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa. You probably acted and felt differently—and so did your mind. 



You are what you eat!

Our dietary habits directly affect how our brains perform. The simple act of taking the time to have a healthy breakfast can really kick-start your brain’s day! As we age, so do
our brain cells. We also have fewer brain cells, and the pathways between them begin to lose their ability to communicate. A few changes to our eating habits can help to slow down this process, however. Fatty foods that clog up our arteries also slow down the flow of oxygen to the brain. A few “good” fats, like the Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish,
are good for our brain health, as are Vitamins A, C and E found in some vegetables, fruits and nuts. A change toward eating better will help your memory to improve as well. 

Condition your brain to learn

A busy brain is a healthy brain. When we study and learn new things, we activate the learning processes in our brain. If you’re not the scholarly type, you might want to start
stimulating your brain by using the opposite hand or leg to accomplish every-day tasks. For example, you could cross your arms or legs differently than you usually do. You
could use your other hand or foot to throw or kick a ball or use your computer mouse with your left (or right) hand. You could even write with your none-dominant hand.
These exercises may feel uncomfortable or wrong to you, but your brain will be concentrating, exercising and learning. 



Teach your brain to solve problems

Concentrating on games, like chess, scrabble or word puzzles, and reading are all great exercises to improve your brain function and help you to memorize better. The next time
you are planning a trip or outing, take the time to plan out your route, research to decide which restaurants are best and the best attractions to visit. This forces your brain
to recall past experiences and rearrange that knowledge into a new project. This is a great exercise for your brain. 



Practice makes perfect

Take a few minutes each day to train your short-term memory. Try to memorize quotes or short sentences you have read, or try to read sentences backwards. Or, study a
picture for a few minutes, close the book and write down as many things as you can to describe it. One of our favourite exercises (a bit of a throw back to grade school) is to
take a word and rearrange some of the letters to form other smaller words. These may sound simple, but these tasks are excellent brain exercises. 


Discover your learning style

Take the time to discover whether you are a visual, auditory, or tactile learner. Once you’ve determined how you learn best, you can discover what learning activities will
best stimulate your brain’s ability to retain information. It won’t take very much research, and the effort will certainly pay off. 


Visualize for best results

The power of our minds is infinite. Replaying an occurrence in our minds will help us to remember where we put those keys, or even to remember the names of people that we
met at a party or networking event. Visualizing can even help to prevent losing things in the first place. Try this little tip. When you are stowing something away, imagine
yourself returning to retrieve it later. Visualize yourself opening the cupboard or desk drawer and removing the item. If possible, repeat this visualization more than once and
when it is time to find it, you WILL! 



Plan to succeed!

Plan to set aside some time each week to do something to stimulate your brain, whether it is walking the dog, visualizing or playing a game. Even if you do just a few small
things, you’ll still be ahead of the many people who do nothing at all. Keep in mind that freeing your mind of the junk that you could easily write down, like appointment times, task, contact info and lists, will make more room for your brain to think and remember.