Tag Archives: activities

Exercising the Mind

The mind, in all matters concerning it, must be exercised in order to keep it healthy and growing strong. It is as a muscle, requiring constant and consistent activity to stay healthy. Sports players, cards players, computer programmers, engineers, and on and on all continually and relentlessly practice their profession; going over and over selected scenarios, developing new ideas, or reaching new depths of creativity are all ways to exercise the mind.

Starting at birth, new parents are encouraged to challenge their child with new responsibilities, play memory exercising games, or teach them multiple languages. This makes headway into the starting of the child’s academic career, where it is quite obvious it is demanded that they do indeed use their brain for scholarly purposes: calculating formulas, creative writing, memorizing biological systems, etc.

It is easy to sit back and let the exercising be demanded of a person and let it grow in a passive pushing mode, but the real character comes when graduation is upon the student.

At this conjuncture in life, the student is now free from all prescribed and demanded learning. This is where personal motivation comes into the equation. The new graduate is only looking for fun adventures and to explore the limits of their newly found freedom; which by all means is necessary in the growth of the person, but there is a certain tipping point, or balancing that needs to be acquired. After all, balance is the key to life.

The exciting part is now that the graduate is indeed graduated, it is upon them to decide which path they wish to explore.

No longer is the learning prescribed, but rather opened up for interpretation where the mind is the school master cracking the whip, and the conscience is the poor school boy waiting eagerly with big wide eyes for what is to come next; open to be influenced.

Activities like reading and writing are great ways to keep the thought process active and firing on all cylinders, which incidentally can also be used to keep the mind focused (this is a good thing). You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again; in this day and age of the internet and instant communication, it’s hard for people to stay focused on one topic for any length of time.

Writing down ideas can help keep the thought process aligned straight towards success, in all essence of the word.

The main point, however, is that without activities that keep the mind thinking, keeping all those neurons sparking like luminescence in the midnight waters, the brain will not keep the doors open to creative thought.

Before you know it, you will be a machine working at a dead end job wondering how you got there, feeling sorry for yourself the whole time.

SO! I encourage you, don’t let it happen to you! Exercise your mind!

Do you have any other ideas or games that will help keep the mind active?

Short Spurts

1 Reply

There are many schools of thought about how to exercise. Depending on your lifestyle, various fun activities will fit in, others won’t feel as comfortable, but it’s up to you to decide which ones work best for you.

I’ve been trying to focus on the short, relatively frequent exercises. This works best if I’m trying to focus, and in one place for a long time, like on my computer for the evening.

NOTE: This does not mean immediately get up from 5hrs of sitting idle to do 75 pushups in a row and go back for another 5hrs of idle sitting. No. Don’t do that. We’ve all heard of the person who goes out to shovel their driveway and has a heart attack or breaks their back because of the immediate strain. No, this isn’t good.

What this means, is that every 30 min to 1.5hrs or so, the motivated one gets up, loosens limbs with a nice stretch, grabs some rubber bands for a routine, or sits on the Swiss ball (exercise ball) and does some sit-ups. Even lift the bar or dumbbells for a rep or two.

After you finish this, you will feel your heart rate up, maybe even break a little sweat. This is good. This is what you want. You do want this feeling more than less, but any is better than none.

Keep in mind it is important when you’re doing this type of workout, your body is not completely warmed up, so one shouldn’t attempt to push their body to the max it can do, straining every muscle in the body.

Since your body isn’t totally warm, the motivated one will quickly find that this causes uncomfortable strain on muscles, or even pull muscles.

Another way to avoid this is to add a little more time to the beginning of the routine to do a longer warm up, really getting the muscles loose.

Ideally, however, as well as doing these short spurts, the fit person should look to get their blood pumping for at least 20 min at a time, at least once a day. This really isn’t long: a walk around to the park, 2 routines in the gym or 1 routine of yoga will all give you 20 min of exercise to keep you strong. Now go get em!

Good Habits

Play Aggressive Music

When you are driving home, or walk in the door, try putting on some music that you know makes you feel more aggressive. It will psych your mind up into a more energized state that will give you the motivation needed to get that exercise done. Start Off Slow. Note: don’t let this influence your driving habits though, that is just dangerous.

When you’re starting a new exercise habit, trying to get back into the mode of exercising your body, it’s hard to jump right into a 5 to 7 day a week schedule that immediately taxes your body. Start with a 3 day schedule, where your exercising say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after work.

Push Yourself

Motivation has to come from within. Nobody is going to be a better motivator for yourself than yourself. You are the one looking at your body in the mirror, you are the one with health problems, you are the one that feels depressed, so it is you who needs to take charge of yourself and push ahead into new and exciting territory. When you are into a nice routine remember not to get comfortable with the same exercise that your doing every time, with the same amount of distance or weight used. Keep increasing your distance, or speed, or weight that your using to continually grow, pushing yourself to be the best that you can be. The best you only dreamed you had in you.

Also try and push yourself to try new activities. If you find that the same old ones are just dragging on you, try some new things that you’ve never known before. Shadow boxing or power walking, what about dancing?

Keep The Fun

Every person that I talk to always has the excuse that it’s just too much work, and they really don’t enjoy going to the gym to press the bench over their heads like a monkey. Not everybody needs to go to the gym to seek their exercise. Try playing a game of basketball, going for a hike in the woods, or practicing yoga. Sometimes if you focus on games or activities that require additional people to play you will find yourself using that as an excuse not to get your exercise, that nobody else wants to play. Keep a big list of activities that you enjoy doing that are individual activities, and that don’t require extra people to perform. The key here is to enjoy it. If you don’t actually enjoy going for a hike, or stretching for yoga, try and trick your mind into thinking its fun, smile and enjoy it! You’re making your body healthy.

Fun Activities

2 Replies

It is extremely important to keep activities fun all the time. If you get in the same habit of doing the same routine day in and day out, it becomes monotonous and dull, which then decreases your interest in the activity, which in turns makes you resent the fact that it’s what your having to get motivated to do, which in turn makes it harder to motivate yourself to do it.

Nasty loop, I know. I’ve compiled an incomplete list of some fun activities you can partake in to keep things fun!

Some activities that can be done alone by yourself are as follows: Biking, walking, running, yoga, hiking, swimming, working out at a gym, dancing to some Otis Redding, snowboarding, skiing.

Some activities that can be done in a group of people are the following: Basketball, volleyball, soccer, tennis, football, hockey.

The key is to be creative here. Going to the same place every day, doing the same things just gets boring. Mixing it up with a variety of exercises will not only keep you enjoying it, but it will also get you working many different muscle groups to ensure that an all around exercise is met.

Good luck out there!