Brain Exercises To Do Daily For A Stronger Mind

What does your brain do for you? Every aspect of your being moves through the brain. While it may not be something you can hold in your hand, your brain needs a little taking care of too. 

Intellectual health is as important as your physical and emotional well-being. 

When was the last time you gave your brain any form of exercise? If you can't remember when or what you did to help boost your brain's stamina, then you are due for one quick dose.

Exercising the brain helps improve focus, memory, and daily functionality. As a person gets older, the brain also gets older; that's why it needs more help than usual. People of all ages can benefit from regular brain exercises. 

Does thinking for work count as brain exercise? While it uses a massive part of your brain, stress-related activities are not brain exercises. Instead, they are brain challenges that put your mind against a problem. 

There is no doubt about it. Regular brain exercises can help build a sharper mind. 

Brain Exercises To The Rescue

What is the importance of exercise? For physical health, regular exercise helps keep the extra weight off and keeps your heart healthy. For emotional training, it allows the person to discover emotions through various experiences. 

On the other hand, brain exercises prove to be important in keeping a person's mental and intellectual health in order. Research shows that there are more than a handful of ways you can hone your mental sharpness. 

When you engage in activities that help you exercise, you are allowing your brain to stay healthy no matter what age you may be. There is a special kind of exercise for every aspect of how your brain is used. 

For example, there are brain exercises that help boost your memory. There are others that help you find your focus so you can concentrate on the work at hand. 

Every brain exercise helps ensure that you remain sharp even as you get older. 

What Brain Exercise Can Work For Me?

The options for brain exercises come in a wide variety, and each one promises to be more exciting than the last one. So if you are looking for some brain-boosting exercises, here are a few of them on a list:

Jigsaw puzzles are always fun

Whether it is a 1,000 piece puzzle of the Eiffel Tower or 100 piece puzzles of Mickey Mouse, jigsaw puzzles are always an excellent way to challenge your brain. 

Research backs up the claim and says that doing jigsaw puzzles uses several cognitive abilities. It also remains one of the most effective protective factors for visuospatial cognitive aging. 

Putting together jigsaw puzzles is not easy. You have to look at each part and try to put them together as they should fit. But no matter how challenging it may seem, a jigsaw puzzle exercise truly helps improve brain functions. 

A card game is also exciting

When was the last time you enjoyed yourself while playing cards? A study conducted in 2015 involving several mentally stimulating games for adults showed that a quick game of cards could generate greater brain volume in several regions.

The same study also claimed that playing a game of cards could significantly improve one's thinking skills and even their memory. 

Which card game is your favorite? Take your pick:

• Bridge
• Solitaire
• Gin rummy
• Crazy eights
• Hearts

All these are exciting card games that you can truly enjoy by yourself or with your friends. 

Vocabulary building is always educational

What's the most challenging word you learned recently? A person with a rich vocabulary is someone others consider as smart. While this may be true, vocabulary building exercises is not just about making you look smart. 

It actually is an activity that helps keep the brain sharp and strong despite the harsh effects of aging. Did you know that playing vocabulary building games enables you to sharpen several regions of your brain?

In particular, the areas involved in the auditory and visual processing is greatly improved when you add more words to your register. But how do you do it?

Here are several cognitive-boosting activities that could help you determine how vocabulary building shaped your brain the way it is:

• Keep a notebook within arm's reach while you are reading. You can easily write down the difficult words you encounter and search for their meaning later. 
• Write down the words that you don't understand the meaning. Search for what it means and reward yourself with a good pat on the back.
• Using new words can be quite a challenge in the beginning, but it's the only way to check if you truly understand what it means. 

Learning a new skill is the secret to success

Learning new skills always proves to be exciting. Not only is it fun and exciting, but it may also be what strengthens the connections in your brain. 

Research in 2014 revealed that learning a new skill can help improve one's memory function. When you engage in sports, it's one of the best ways you can put things in perspective. 

Mental benefits of sports include sharpness of memory, allowing you to make decisions even under pressure. It would be more helpful if you engage in a team sport. 

Apart from learning a new sport, what else do you want to do? Is there something you really want to learn more about? There is always a new skill waiting to be discovered.

What's The Bottomline?

The goal of every brain exercise is to expose your brain to various activities to allow it to grow. Focusing on your brain health is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. It is about gaining more focus, memory, and mental agility to be prepared to do what you need to do, no matter how old or young you may be. 

By incorporating brain exercises in your day to day life, you are able to challenge your mind to think outside the box. You are able to sharpen your cognitive skills and possibly learn something new along the way.