By the time I was twenty-five years old, I had three darling children under the age of five. It was a challenging period of my life, but the four of us had great fun together. Interacting with them day and night allowed me to play out the best times of my own childhood.
But one afternoon I noticed an odd look settle on the face of an Avon representative who I’d invited into my home. I paused, silently trying to decide what I might have said to offend her. Then our conversation of the previous few minutes played back in my mind – I had been talking to her in baby talk. I said something like, “How silly,” and laughed. She laughed, politely. I was mortified, but I knew what I had to do. My brain needed exercise. By the end of that week I had studied a college catalog and registered for courses for the upcoming semester.
So here I am twenty-five plus years later, finding myself – not speaking baby-talk – but not able to hold a lengthy conversation without stopping in mid-sentence because the word I want to say has disappeared from my brain. It was there, this word-thingy, just the moment before when my thoughts, having been processed into words, were lining up to trip lightly off my tongue. It’s a frustrating experience, embarrassing, and scary. (Most of my girlfriends of the same age have this problem off and on, and we nod and try to fill in the gaps for each other.)
Onward into the fray that is the Internet.
According to HelpGuide.org, “The human brain has an astonishing ability to adapt and change – even into old age. This ability is known as neuroplasticity. With the right stimulation, your brain can form new neural pathways, alter existing connections, and adapt and react in ever-changing ways. The brain’s incredible ability to reshape itself holds true when it comes to learning and memory.” This is great news.
We all know that exercise is good for us. Movement increases oxygen to your entire body, including your brain. It helps reduce the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease and helps to counter the effects of these diseases that rob the brain of oxygen and lead to memory loss.
Our brains also need exercise. Throughout our lives, our brains develop neural pathways to help process information. As adults, we’ve come to rely on millions of these pathways to solve problems and perform everyday tasks. The thing is, if we only use the same paths, our brains won’t be stimulated to grow and develop. We need to purposely find new and challenging activities to exercise our grey matter – not something we’ve already mastered.
Now is the time to sign up for a computer class, learn a different language, take dance lessons, try a musical instrument, play computer games (if board games are your usual thing), or try Sudoku if you’re used to crossword puzzles. You can play games online at luminosity.com that are “engineered to train a range of cognitive functions, from working memory to fluid intelligence.” They have free, challenging games, as well as enhanced ones that require a monthly fee. (Go to luminosity.com for a list of other sites that offer free online games.)
In addition to exercise, there are others things we can do to boost our brainpower – we can laugh more, stress less, and eat healthier.
Research has shown that foods rich in omega-3s are especially beneficial to a healthy brain, such as fish (salmon, tuna, halibut, trout, mackerel, sardines, herring) and non-fish sources (walnuts, ground flaxseed oil, pumpkin seeds, and soybeans).
Antioxidants protect your brain cells from damage and are found in higher concentrations in fruits and vegetables with lots of color (berries, plums, and guavas; spinach, peppers, and parsley), dried fruit, legumes, nuts and seeds, some cereals and spices. (Go here for a more complete list). Green tea is also a good source of antioxidants called polyphenols that protect against damage to brain cells and may help enhance memory and slow brain aging.
Wine (in moderation), grape juice, cranberry juice, peanuts, and fresh grapes and berries contain resveratrol that boosts blood flow in the brain and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s.
In my research I found a lot of encouraging news and choices I can make to improve my memory and keep my brain healthy. “Choice” is a key word here and wisdom tells me to make these choices sooner than later.
Do you suffer with the same word-thingy problem? What are you doing to save your brain?
[We can] come, finally, to find at the end of the day, not merely time’s revenge on life, but life’s revenge on time: an abiding grace for both the fragility and the fullness of life. ~ Umair Haque
I came across an article several weeks ago on the HBR Blog Network that I wanted to share, especially now that January is over and our resolve to change may be faltering. The following was taken from Umair Haque’s excellent article titled “How to Have a Year that Matters.” To read it in full, click here.
Let’s cut the crap. Life is short, you have less time than you think, and there are no baby unicorns coming to save you…
A life well lived always demands [that] one asks of one’s self: is it worth it? Is the heartache worth the breakthrough; is the desolation worth the accomplishment; is the anguish balanced by the jubilation; perhaps, even, are the moments of bitter despair, sometimes, finally, the very instants we treasure most? There’s no easy answer, no simplistic rule of thumb. The scales of life always hang before us — and always ask us to weigh the burden of our choices carefully…
Hence: every moment of every day of this year, and every year that follows, what I want you to map is the uncharted shore of potential: the capacity of life to dream, wonder, imagine, create, build, transform, better, and love; the infusion of the art of living into the heart of every instant of existence…
There’s a kind of quiet magic that each and every one of us is condemned to have in us, every moment of our lives: the facility to exalt life beyond the mundane, and into the meaningful; beyond the generic, and into the singular; through the abstract, and into the concrete; past the individual, and towards the universal. And it’s when we reject this, the truest and worthiest gift of life, that we have squandered the fundamental significance of being human; that the soil of our lives feels arid, featureless, fallow, a desert that never came to life; because, in truth, it has been.
And so this almost magical facility you and I have, potential, is something like an existential obligation that we must live up to: for it’s only when we not just accept it, but employ it at its maximum, that we can reconcile ourselves not merely to regret, but with mortality; that we can escape not merely our own lesser selves, but the all-destroying scythe of futility; and come, finally, to find, at the end of the day, not merely time’s revenge on life, but life’s revenge on time: an abiding grace for both the fragility and the fullness of life.
I don’t pretend any of the above is revolutionary, or new, or anything less than obvious. Yet, the lessons of a life well lived rarely are: they’re simple, timeless truths.
So let me ask…Why are you here? Do you want this to be another year that flies by, half-hearted, arid, rootless, barely remembered, dull with dim glimpses of what might have been? Or do you want this to be a year that you savour, for the rest of your surprisingly short time on Planet Earth, as the year you started, finally, irreversibly, uncompromisingly, to explosively unfurl a life that felt fully worth living?
The choice is yours. And it always has been.
Let’s live up to our potential this year. Let’s be the best we can be.
If you wait for the perfect map before departing on your journey, you’ll never have to leave. ~ Seth Godin
I
can’t tell you the number of times I’ve torn up a letter I wrote because my handwriting was crooked. Or how often I’ve scraped the elements off a scrapbook page and started over because something wasn’t quite right. I drove my publisher crazy by proofing the manuscript for This New Mountain over and over and over, making little “necessary” changes every time. Thankfully, they made the decision to cut me off and declare the book ready for the world. If they hadn’t done that, I would probably still be tweaking the thing.
I recently came across a blog post on another site that points out being a perfectionist means: 1) little tasks take a lot longer; 2) you have a compulsion to dot the i’s and cross the t’s; 3) you’re never happy with what you produce; 4) you are hypersensitive to criticism; 5) hitting “publish” on a blog post causes anxiety and doubt; and 6) procrastination rules. I agree with all of these points. I also know my perfectionism doesn’t extend beyond myself (see my post about imperfection) because I can leave a friend’s bathroom and not feel compelled to turn the toilet paper roll around the correct way. You know, so it unrolls over and not under.
In the past few years – and especially since my near-fatal publishing incident – I’ve been working hard not to be such a perfectionist. I’ve had to do some serious talking to myself. (Do people really care that my hand-written cards and letters are crooked?) I’ve had to step out and just do it, whatever “it” is.
Like taking on the editing responsibilities for SouthWest Sage (my writing organization’s newsletter ) – a perfectionist’s nightmare, making sure every page is filled up and laid out exactly right. But monthly deadlines have helped me get things done and learn to let go.
And then there’s the matter of all the photo albums I need to finish. Knowing my children would really like to have their baby albums in hand before they die (they’re all in their 30s now) motivated me to get them done. To do so, I had to remind myself that the world wouldn’t end if the paper didn’t fit the page or the colors/patterns weren’t exactly right or the photos didn’t line up. It was a battle.
If you’re not a perfectionist, you can laugh at all of this. If you know and love a perfectionist, maybe you can try to understand the person’s need. It is a hard thing to overcome, and I’m certain I won’t be able to completely – it’s one of the things that makes me a good editor, after all.
The biggest thing that has helped me want to change is knowing that my perfectionism has interfered with reaching my goals, or even starting on a path toward them. I’ve reached the point in my life where I have fewer years ahead of me than behind. It’s time to stop wasting time and get on with it, whatever “it” is.
How has perfectionism affected your life?
I wanted to remind you about our book giveaway this week. You could be the random commenter who receives a free, signed copy of This New Mountain. Just leave a comment on my Book Giveaway post here until midnight (EST) on Friday, January 25, 2013. And read my interview on the S.S. Bazinet website and comment there for an extra chance to win. See my post for more details. Good luck!
Cate Macabe 