Are You Using Your Brain Power For Better?

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Ask yourself – are you using your brain power for better? In all honesty, are you truly utilising the tools you have been given in this lifetime? Take a moment to evaluate your life up until now. Spend some time in introspection and ask the question of yourself. The funny and awful thing about life is that it can suddenly be taken away or key aspects of it can. Whatever your age, the onus is on all of us to make it count. It is too easy to get stuck in a rut.

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Maximise Your Brain Power Via Learning

In life, we never stop learning and if you have turned off that tap, well I am sorry for you. The grey matter upstairs is hankering for new stuff to engage with. We are all big brained monkeys and it is our brains that have made the difference to our place in the greater scheme of things.

Meaningful mental stimulation is essential for a life well lived. You may be involved in the accumulation of wealth and material things. You may consider this your prime motivation for living. However, amassing money can only ever be a means to an end and part of the overall story.

Brain Power Is The Maxim That Matters

Learning and applying that learning are key brain power features, which need to be constantly in play. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are the death of our brain power. Are we asking for trouble in this regard because our brains have atrophied through lack of stimulation.

We get stuck in our ways and do and think the same stuff day after day. Is it any wonder that our minds become bogged down in plaque born of neglect and indifference. Use it or lose it, my dear old dad used to say.

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Use It Or Lose It!

Are you using your brain power for better? Better for yourself, your family, your world, and your community. These things matter. Read inspiring books. View informative videos. Talk with stimulating people. Get out of your comfort zone. Give something back to the planet. These things matter.

Are you drinking too much and self-medicating? Are you just treading water in the shallows of life? Learn something new each day instead. Something that really matters. Allow yourself to get uncomfortable and think about challenging stuff.

“Older adulthood is often portrayed as a time for slowing down—whether by choice, as we retire to live closer to loved ones or in a more agreeable climate, or by necessity, as our recollections of information new and old become increasingly foggy. Recent research in Psychological Science suggests, however, that this fog may not arise as an inevitable result of normal aging. Instead, wrote Karra D. Harrington (The University of Melbourne) and colleagues, undetected neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia may bias measures of how brains change with age, leading researchers and society at large to underestimate the cognitive abilities of healthy adults ages 65 and older.

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“Given the relevance of the findings from this study to individual and societal attitudes about aging and the ramifications of those attitudes for the health and well-being of older adults, it is vital that models of cognitive aging be reconsidered from the context of preclinical neurodegenerative disease,” Harrington and colleagues explained.

In daily life, people continue to be productive contributors to society as they age, and some become increasingly productive.

Beier (2021)

The researchers examined how undiagnosed early neurodegenerative disease may bias measures of older adults’ cognitive abilities. Their study involved 199 people ages 65 to 89 who were participating in ongoing studies at the Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. To participate in this particular study, individuals had to have an initial clinical dementia rating of 0 (out of 3) and to have undergone three procedures in a previous study at the center: a PET scan and a spinal tap, both of which can be used to measure dementia biomarkers in the fluid around the brain (in this case, amyloid-ß and tau), as well as a structural MRI, which can be used to detect decreases in brain volume and thickness associated with various forms of dementia.”

(https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/lifetime-of-learning)

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Make Learning A Habit Of A Lifetime

A conscious habit. Using our brain power is the key to a better and more productive life. Read books that make you think. Seek out knowledge from original sources wherever possible. Look beneath the surface of things. Go beyond your own prejudices. It will keep a sharp edge on your most important tool in the shed.

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.

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