Build muscles.
When doing ‘resistance’ exercises you want to push muscles to the point of ‘failure’ or fatigue, for example sitting against the wall until you can’t. That’s what builds muscles.
Further infoWhen doing ‘resistance’ exercises you want to push muscles to the point of ‘failure’ or fatigue, for example sitting against the wall until you can’t. That’s what builds muscles.
Further infoJoining a yoga, pilates or t’ai chi class will help. Stand on one long. How long can you do it for?
Further infoWhat are you doing today that counts as resistance exercise, that is pushing a muscle system close to max? If nothing today is a great day to do the 8 minute routine: https://foodforthebrain.org/library/strength-training-in-8-minutes-with-kate-staples/
Further infoMake an ‘appointment’ for yourself to fulfil on your exercise commitments in the same way you would make an appointment with the dentist and keep it.
Further infoCongratulations. You’ve finished a month focusing on activating your mind to give you better memory, concentration, focus and connection.
To see how much improvement you’ve achieved in reducing your Dementia Risk Index, click the button below to complete only the ‘Active Mind’ related questions. This will show you, specifically, what level of improvement you’ve made over these past 4 weeks, what effect that has on your ‘Active Mind’ domain score, and your overall Dementia Risk Index.
You will then be asked to choose the next domain you’d like to focus on for the next 4 weeks. Note: if you got distracted and didn’t make many changes such that ‘Active Mind’ is still in your top two weakest domains you can choose to focus on this again with more resolve.
Some people live alone and feel lonely. Some people live with others and feel lonely. Some have social interaction but still feel lonely. Loneliness is a risk factor for cognitive decline. So, what is loneliness all about?
It is sometimes described as the feeling we get when our need for rewarding social contact and relationships is not met.
Two great books on the subject are Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness and Vivek Murthy’s book Connection.
Also, listen to this podcast on Spotify, where the two authors are talking about loneliness and connection.
Sometimes we feel lonely when are main group of ‘friends’ don’t really get who you are and what is important for you. Also, maybe you don’t know. Discovering your purpose is a journey. When you live your life with purpose it’s not so easy to feel lonely.
Of course, if you are experiencing grief from the loss of someone close to you, that journey through grief must happen. A ‘must see’ film is Griefwalker, about the work of Harvard-trained theologian Stephen Jenkinson, who teaches that death empowers us to live and that we must know grief well in order to appreciate our own lives. Many may find Jenkinson’s belief that our deaths are not something to be denied or avoided but ‘befriended’ as challenging; he points out that not every culture fears death as we do, which is so often a driving force behind our suffering.
Exercise: finding your purpose 1
1 Sit comfortably in a quiet place. Recollect how you felt at the age of ten. What gave you your sense of purpose then?
2 What was your sense of purpose at ages 15, 20, 26 and 35? Write down whatever comes to mind without too much deliberation, making a list of different purposes you’ve been aware of at different times in your life.
3 Now, ask yourself, ‘What gives me a sense of purpose now?’ Write down as many of your current purposes as you can.
4 Now, become still, perhaps by doing a meditative practice, or just focussing on your breath, and ask your innate wisdom, your higher intelligence, ‘What is my true purpose?’ Offer this question without ‘thinking’ the answer, and write down, without censorship, whatever comes to your mind, starting with the words, ‘My purpose in life is …’
Exercise: finding your purpose 2
Another way to become clearer on your purpose is to answer these questions:
1 What do you love to do or enjoy doing?
2 What makes you feel good? What gives you a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment?
3 What are you good at?
4 We all have certain gifts or talents. For some it’s the ability to listen; for others it’s having a clear mind. What are some of your gifts?
5 What is needed now in the world, in your community or your family?
6 How can you use your gifts to help or to serve?
When you contemplate these questions, and put the answers together, you will find some powerful insights into your own purpose and, with that, more of an understanding as to how you need to change your life to feel socially rewarded and not isolated, which is the key to unlocking feelings of loneliness.
Further info
It is good to learn new things. It stimulates building new neuronal connections. The ‘average’ neuron (brain cell) makes about 10,000 connections to others. Newborn babies can make a million new connections a second! While it is said our number of brain cells decrease later in life it is never too late to make new connections.
If you’ve been doing your ‘mind’ exercises e.g. crossword, Sudoko, Wordle, Luminosity or Brain HQ, socialising, attending groups, practising music, art, writing, gardening, perhaps learning a new language, you’ll be making new connections. In some way that meditative time, perhaps in Nature, perhaps practising mindful meditation, allows for connections to be made, as does good sleep.
Instead of resisting new things, such as the endless flow of new apps, digital processes, logins, online banking, shopping and living, learning anything new is an opportunity to make more neuronal connections. Taxi driver students, for example, have way more ‘density’ of white matter, which are largely found in the tentacle-like connections between neurons, for that area of the brain that relates to ‘geography’.
Learning a new language is particularly good. There is so much to learn. Check out the courses of offer at the University of the Third Age, aimed at people who are retired and have some time to learn new things in the UK. Find information about local groups and how to join online here.
What have you learnt this week? If nothing, what action are you going to take to remedy this?
Further info
Back in the days of the Greek Enlightenment, which is the origin of Western culture, the Platonic philosophers (philosophy meaning the love of wisdom) studied to pursue three goals of truth, beauty and goodness. We are pursuing the truth about what really keeps our minds sharp, and ‘goodness’ is a function of doing the right things, taking the right actions, not only to uplift ourselves, but also others, and to protect our environment. But what is beauty all about?
There is a definition that ‘love is the proof that consciousness is shared’ (Rupert Spira). That connection we call love occurs in that moment of recognition that we share the same space of consciousness or awareness. The space that ‘mindful’ meditation takes us into the awareness of. The space that Louis Armstrong is singing from in his beautiful song ‘What a Wonderful World’. When asked where we have gone wrong in our relationship with the nature the Cogi tribe in the Sierra Nevada mountains say that we are wrongly taught that consciousness is only in animate objects. They say it is in everything – in water, stone and plants. When you look at something of beauty, maybe a flower, what is it that is uplifting?
There is some kind of arc of recognition when we connect with another, be it a human, an animal, a plant or Nature itself. In studies of the healthiest people the vast majority have a connection with nature, spend time in nature, care about and are inspired by the natural world.
While us humans go to great length to ‘control’ our environment nature seems to do it with ease, adapting to different circumstances. Galileo once said ‘The Sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the Universe to do.’ The Sun, the Moon, all the planets in the Universe are all part of Nature.
Many cultures consider the Sun as God. The Masai’s ‘religion’ is to say ‘Asangai’ at dawn and Asangai at dusk. ‘Asan’ means ‘thanks’ Ngai means ‘Sun or God’.
Spending time in Nature, sometimes barefoot, or swimming in the sea or river or sitting on a rock, also ‘ground’ you. It is an electrical fact that the body generates positive ions/charge from metabolism, and the Earth is negatively charged, from 50,000 lightning strikes a day. So ‘earthing’ literally discharges, acting like an antioxidant, and has numerous health benefits.
Read this review article if you’d like to more about the science on earthing.
Spending time in nature, growing food and flowers, observing the cycles and the seasons, enjoying natural environments is very grounding, for both body and mind, helping to calm negative emotions, and giving you time to contemplate issues, as well as being energising and good for your physical fitness. Your goal for this week is to spend an hour in a natural environment, perhaps a park if you live in a city, or get out of the city and go for a walk in your nearest, wildest place. Turn your phone off.
Further info
There is so much to watch on TV, Youtube, the web, Netflix, Amazon Prime and so on. Is this good or bad for your mind? That depends. How much time do you spend staring at a screen, other than for your work?
Sometimes we watch a programme to ‘switch off’, for entertainment, to end the day and occupy our attention in a non-demanding way.
But if this becomes excessive it can be a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings, such as loneliness, or ‘numbing out’ from issues that are upsetting us. We use alcohol in the same way. Antidepressants, too, can numb emotions.
In these days when ‘mindfulness’, as in meditation, is considered good, many are terrified of a single moment of nothing to do, read, watch, as exemplified by lines of people staring at their smart phone as they travel or wait for a train or bus.
Simply take a few minutes out to sit, go for a walk, meditate, listen to the sounds in your garden or street, be present, lets thoughts go by, feelings ebb and flow, before you dive into another evening of TV.
On the other hand, if you watch a film that stimulates thought, or a documentary that teaches you something share what you’ve learnt or thought about it with others. Discuss it. Give a friend a call. Ask them if they watched it and, if not, to give you a call when they have to get their take on it. Or maybe invite friends nearby to come round and watch a film. Film nights can be great fun. Have you discussed anything you watched this week?
How do you know what to watch? For example, have you ever watched ‘Maiden’, about the first all-girl crew that sailed around the world in the Whitbread Yacht race? Or ‘Searching for Sugarman? Or ‘Le Concert’ – a French-Russian film with humour, depth and great music. Or that Italian classic ‘Cinema Paradiso’? What’s your favourite film or show on TV? Why not share it on our COGNITION Friends Facebook group? Get a discussion going. This kind of interactive activity is good for your mind while becoming a couch potato is not.
Further info
The Dalai Lama once said that every human being has a desire to be happy, and to be free of pain, and that his daily practice is to remember that his desire to be happy and free of pain is of no greater, or lesser importance than that of those he interacts with. This kind of active compassionate practice can also give you a sense of purpose and kind perspective when interacting with others.
A good ‘checkpoint’ before you say something that might be hurtful is ‘is it kind, is it necessary, is it true?’
You never know what’s driving those you meet who seem to be unkind. Perhaps, if you knew their back-story you might behave in the same way. And the same is true for us. What’s our back-story when we have unkind thoughts, say unkind things or do unkind acts?
Owning your own negative emotional patterning is not easy because, first, you have to become aware of it. There are clues. When you find yourself saying ‘you NEVER….’ Or ‘you ALWAYS e.g criticise me’ the chances are you have gone into a negative emotional behaviour pattern driven by an implant belief that you developed in your childhood. An example of this would be feeling ‘never good enough’. Tim Lawrence’s book ‘You Can Change Your Life’ explores this territory in a highly practical way. For example, something as simple as changing saying ‘you make me feel’ to ‘when you said xzy that made me feel ….’ helps this process of becoming aware of one’s own patterns that make you react to certain things said.
Every day most of us meet people who may be struggling with something or other. It may not even be visible. Simply asking ‘how are you?’ is a start. ‘how’s life?’ might open up a bit more enquiry. In some cultures it would be impolite not to ask. Of course, there is a cultural response of ‘good’ or ‘fine’, neither of which may be true. (There is an acronym of FINE which means F****d up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional!). So, perhaps when you’re asked you could tell the truth, briefly, choosing a word or two for how you are right now.
Another way in is to notice something positive and comment on it. “I like your shirt, your hair, your dog, your hat, your style.” If someone is struggling why not offer to help “Can I help you?”
When you speak to someone look at their face, or hear their voice, if they look or sound troubled, you may ask ‘what’s troubling you?’ or ‘you sound troubled. Everything OK?’ Of course, it is easy to project one’s feelings on others so it’s best to check in in case you got it wrong.
Most of the time, just being seen or being heard provides solace. Just to be a witness is often enough. Only give advice if you are sure they a) want it and b) it is on target. You can always say something like ‘this may not apply to you but I’ve found it helpful to xyz’
If you live with someone, do something unexpected. Think: what would make a positive difference to them? It is all too easy to get ‘siloed’ in relationships, carrying on with our own routines, passing like ships in the night.
Your homework today is to carry out one thoughtful act of kindness.
Further info