How to keep your mind sharp, positive and active

how to keep your mind sharp

Many studies and researches have indicated that having a positive outlook in life can affect your physical health. In an article on Mayo Clinic, it is found that when you have positive thoughts, your body naturally has more vitality to boost your immune system, have better resistance to illnesses and greater coping skills in stressful times. Here are typical ways for you on how to keep your mind sharp, positive and active to get out of the blues and get into happy thoughts.

How To Keep Your Mind Sharp, Positive And Active – Top 14 Tips

1. Move Your Body

move your body download

Physical activities can help pick up your moods and boost your thoughts.

To stay sharp, try to increase daily movement and break up long periods of sleeping or sitting.

Lace up running shoes and run. This sport activity helps increase oxygen levels in brain and through the body. In turn, the body releases endorphins to make runners feel energized, producing a sense of comfort, well-being and pleasure.

You can also play golf to get mental stimulation. As this sport requires players to use decision-making skills and have stroke strategies. It also instills the mind-body discipline and involves players’ control of repetitive movements.

Besides, there are various activities to lift up your moods and keep your mind sharp such as surfing, walking, swimming and so on.

2. Learn A Language

learn a language

Instead of watching TV, you can learn a new language with a foreign language film with subtitles. Learning a new language can help maintain your brain flexible and keep your mind sharp. Also, by learning new words and trying to keep them in mind or practice the words daily, you can reduce the slowing of your brain functioning that often comes with aging in the elderly.

Additionally, learning a new language also help you discover the world, have more interesting explore of new cultures, histories, lands and people. You therefore will be happy to share your knowledge of the universe with other people and stimulate your mind to keep information in the brain systematically.

See: Learning Chinese With Rocket Chinese Premium

3. Do Spelling Exercises

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Read a book and do not forget to check spelling mistakes. By spotting spelling mistakes, you are going to practice cognitive skills and give the brain a boost.

When reading, you will use your brain to analyze information. You will get clear about great points and negative points. You can give your own ideas about an outlook. So, your brain will keep working and naturally you are sharpening your mind via comprehensive reading and spelling exercises.

4. Monitor Your Moods & Self-Talk

monitor your moods & self-talk download

For some reasons you may get down and lose the control. It’s time for you to reset your mind to get positive mood. Also, practice self-talk techniques. Say positive things to empower your mind. Then, you will stay in the balance, get calm and have a sharpened mind. In other words, when you lose the control, you stay in stressful moods, by activating your brain with positive thoughts and self-talk words; you can lift up your spirit fast. Try doing this technique every time you feel imbalance.

5.  Sleep Well & Get Up Early

sleep well & get up early download

Sleep is an essential part for your proper mental functioning. Make sure to have sound sleep at night. If you get troubles associated with sleep, meet your doctor to find out possible solutions.

Besides, you should take a daily short nap at noon to reset your mind. Next, try to form a positive habit to get up early as your mind can be trained the best in the morning by physical exercises ( walking, yoga…) and mental exercises (meditation, book reading…).

Similarly, sleeping early at night also helps you keep your mind be restored well after a long working day. Practice these sleeping habits for your better sharpened mind and brain.

See: 29 home remedies for insomnia in adults and elderly

6. Learn An Instrument

learn an instrument download

Next to interesting ways on how to keep your mind sharp is to learn about music. Playing an instrument simply is an entertainment. However, this activity can benefit your mind because music can stimulate creativity of the instrument players. Learn to read music and boost your mental stimulation. You will develop the power of recall and the concentration on maintaining tempo and tune.

For people at different ages, they all can learn to play a new instrument and practice it in spare time for getting more fun and for relaxing your mind, too.

Read: Learn to play the ukulele online

7. Work With Your Hands

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Your fingers include a lot of nerve endings that connect your activities made by your hands with your brain. Hence, do work with your hands to increase the connection between your work and your brain. As a result, your brain is trained to be sharper and you can do great things with your fingers dexterity.

For instance, surgeons and musicians are skilled with their fine fingers. However, you can do any stuff with your hands and stimulate your nerve endings that are connected with your brain functioning.

8. Engage Your Senses

engage your senses download

Among little-known tips on how to keep your mind sharp is to experience senses. Evidence suggests that by using your senses to taste, smell, touch things you can experience the world and exercise your brain. The researches also show that many causes of poor memory and forgetting relates to the failure to register things during their original experiences.

Simply, sharpen your senses and your mind by identifying herbs with your nose, tongue and eyes, or identifying flower smell, food smell in the same ways. In short, find any ways to use your mouth, hands, nose, ears and eyes to experience the things around you. Then, you can improve your cognitive ability; reduce the risk of dementia and other brain functioning problems.

9. Eat Well

eat well

Proper nutrition is important for people of different ages for both mental and physical health. Once you do not take enough essential minerals and vitamins such as vitamin B complex, vitamin A, folate, magnesium, the lack of these nutrients may affect your brain functioning. Additionally, if you do not consume a proper dose of calories or follow an unsuitable diet routine, your overall health will be affected, including the brain function. As a result, you may get some problems related to mental health such as migraine, blood clots, dementia and a lot more.

Related article: 16 health benefits of vitamin C for skin, hair and the body

10. Keep Learning

keep learning

Learning is a basic exercise on how to keep your mind sharp and active. Keep in mind that it is never too late to learn and you are never too old to keep learning. Open your mind to discover the world and your mind will be always in the sharp and active condition. You can learn things from books. You can take part in a course or class at night. You can widen your knowledge of universe through TV programs. You can learn great lessons from your family and friends. You can join a seminar, meet new people and learn new things from strangers. Actually, there is a variety of ways for you to become a student of life. During the learning process, your brain works non-stop and keeps your mind sharper.

Read more: How To Improve Learning Skills

11. Play Some Games To Challenge Your Brain

play some games to challenge your brain download

Challenging your brain with some brain games can help keep your mind sharp, active and positive. Rubiks, Sudoku, crossword puzzles and chess are excellent game for you to challenge your brain. Why do these games can strengthen your brain? Basically, to play these brain games, you have to use your memory and intelligence to expand the power of recall. You also test your logic and mathematical skills. Specially, crossword puzzles can aid in improving cognitive skills, creative thinking and widening your vocabulary.

Recommended reading: How to improve brain function and memory naturally

12. Do Yoga

do yoga

Don’t forget yoga among various activities on how to keep your mind sharp and active. Yoga exercises are healthy physical movements and they also affect your mental health to be positive, active and relaxed. Yoga requires you have to concentrate on controlling your breathing and muscles. By performing yoga exercises, you will get worries go away, give your mind some rest from stressful thoughts.

Beside yoga, you can do other workouts, stretches and movements to wake up the body core, get your body and brain connected for an active and healthy day.

13. Learn A Healthy Habit

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Bad habits can harm your thoughts, mind and overall health. For instance, the addiction of alcohol often has problems with their cognitive functioning, liver health, skin issues. By forming healthy habits and committing to do it daily, you will have a clear mind and healthy condition to start a day. For instance, you should drink a plenty of water daily, eat more veggies, reduce fat in foods, cut down on sweets, and stretch your hamstrings and a lot more.

14. Keep Reading Something Daily

keep reading something daily download

Finally yet importantly, among tips on how to keep your mind sharp, keep reading something! It’s not important about what you are reading. Just keep reading to strengthen your cognitive ability. For instance, you can read a quote before the bedtime and find out significance of this quote. You can read news to receive new things happening each day. In general, reading is an activity that forces you to add data to your head as the hard drive of a computer. However, the hard drive of a computer cannot be strengthened daily while human brain can. Also, reading is a comprehensive skill and it is a tool to stimulate human mental functioning that never occurs in animals.

I’ve shown you the top 14 ways on how to keep your mind sharp, positive and active. Comment on these 14 ways on how to keep your mind sharp at the end of the post. To read more articles in the same topic, please visit Mind And Body on VKool.

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