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My brain is hungry? What… you want me to eat more fish or something? Yeah, you should eat more fish, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying that your brain is hungry for knowledge. Hungry for stimulation. Hungry for use. In a previous article I spoke about keeping your body healthy with exercise. This article is going to be along the same sort of lines. Except this time, we’re going to get that grey stuff between your ears healthy.
Education Is Not a Dirty Word
Lots of people get put off from education by their experiences at those horrid places called “schools” and “universities”. They endure bland course materials and blander teachers and lecturers for years on end. Some people are so relieved to be rid of all that learning stuff that they never open another book for the rest of their lives. I pity those people. I pity them because learning is such a wonderful thing. And it is something that you should love. You should crave new knowledge right up to the day they are putting you in a pine box. I’m gonna have them bury me with a few books in the coffin… just in case. 
Don’t Neglect The Fun Stuff
Feeding your brain and continuing your education isn’t all theory, facts, and figures. There has to be some fun stuff too (not that facts and figures can’t be fun). Part of keeping your mind exercised and healthy is to entertain it. Catch a movie or a play. Read some fiction. Get with some friends and play card or board games. If you’re a blogger, you obviously enjoy writing, so try your hand at writing fiction. Check out some of the fan-fiction blogs.
Ways To Hold Back The Alzheimer’s
The next time you go grocery shopping, take a small notepad and a pencil with you, but leave the calculator at home. Now, as you are filling up your shopping trolley, jot down the price of each item on the notepad. When you’ve finished your shopping, but before you go through the checkout, add it all up. In your head! See how close you can get to the actual total. I say “close to” because some of the items would not have had a fixed price, some things like loose fruit and vege where it depends on the weight. I always estimate those. If you can get to within a couple of dollars of the actual total, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that your additions were good.
If you buy newspapers, do the crosswords. Yes, you can use a crossword dictionary, but a real dictionary and thesaurus are much better. If you don’t buy newspapers, buy one of those puzzle or crossword books occasionally. Sometimes these are better than the newspaper crosswords because they have the answers in the back. Don’t you dare cheat! It’s better because you don’t have to wait for the next edition to hit the streets before you can check your answers.
Play sudoku. You don’t know how, or you’ve never heard of it? OK, cool… go find out. There’s also chess and backgammon that are great for giving you a decent mental workout.
When you are driving on the highway and you see a sign that shows how far away the next town is, work out in your head how long it would take you to get there.
If you have school age children, get into the habit of checking their homework. I don’t mean just checking to see that they have done it, but that they’ve done it correctly. Work through the problems yourself and see if you are as smart as your kids. If they’re not old enough to be going to school, play “I-spy” with them. Or any other game that makes them think.
Draw. As in, draw a picture. It doesn’t have to be a Rembrandt or Picasso, nobody but you needs to see it. Grab some paper and pencils, crayons, or paints, and have some fun creating something. Try your hand at pottery or sculpture if you find that drawing isn’t your thing.
Join your local library. Borrow a couple of books per week. And try not to restrict yourself to any particular genre or subject. If you can find your library, I bet you can find your museum too. Go check it out. Libraries and museums are amazing places. Trust me, you won’t regret becoming a regular visitor to either.
Information Overload
First of all, there’s no such thing. Nobody has ever overloaded their brain. You could cram every scrap of information in the world into one person’s head and they’d still be able to carry on as normal and continue to learn new things. But when you do feel like you’ve got a bout of information overload, it’s just your brain’s way of saying “hey buddy, kick back for a little bit so I can process all this funky stuff”. Vege out in front of the TV every once in a while, it requires less brain activity than sleeping.
Final Thoughts
I hope you never have them, final thoughts that is.
Education isn’t scary. It doesn’t have to be hard or even formal. It can be, and should be, fun. Your entire life is one big fat learning experience. Embrace it. Oh, I almost forgot… here’s your further reading for this article.
Till next time…
Help me write more great articles like this, fuel my mojo with a coffee!
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You’ve written about something very dear to my heart Steve.
Being an educator and a trainer for over 10 years, I’ve been on the other side of the fence when it comes to seeing people struggling to learn.
Enjoying what you’re learning is the biggest part of keeping the joy of learning throughout life.
For me there are 2 factors that come in to play that affect the enjoyment of learning; the repetitiveness and the cool factor.
Young people lose the joy of learning because they spend so long doing the same thing over and over again, in the same building, surrounded by the same people. This monotony just kills the fun of learning.
Its also, as young people go through the education system, seen as uncool to enjoy school and enjoy learning. It becomes socially unacceptable to enjoy your studies when you’re young and this kind of mindset stays with you for life.
If as an adult you can reclaim a passion for learning then in my opinion you’re set for life.
Hey Ben!
Yes, I agree that enjoyment plays a big part in whether someone continues to educate themselves beyond their school years, but curiosity plays a bigger role, IMO. Find a way to get the kids insatiably curious and I think you’d be onto a winner.
I have to strongly disagree with what you said about repetitiveness, though. Without repetition, you can never have learning. Repetition is the crux of all learning. Perhaps what is needed is to find ways to make the repetition slightly less mundane. But I wonder… is it the fault of the mundane school system, or is it the fault of the “exciting crap” the children are bombarded with outside of school every second of the day. And surely we, as parents, have the responsibility of exciting our children with the “right” things?
How to combat the peer pressure of being uncool if you are seen to enjoy school… to that, I don’t have an answer. I hope to before it becomes an issue for any of my children.
Thanks for your comment, mate. Always a great pleasure to see you here.
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I didn’t mean repetitive of the task – more of the environment. Being the same building and being taught by the same staff is hard on a lot of students. The repetitive nature of the task is key – I heard something once that it takes 30,000 repetitions of something until you have learn it.
I think the way to deal with the peer pressure is by helping to change society’s view to education and learning. Good luck with that!
I can really only speak for the school that my children are attending, but I’ve seen first hand that they do amazing things with the resources available to them. They do try. They don’t always get it right, but they do try.
As for the peer pressure, you’re on board with me to change the world, aren’t you?
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Oh of course – I’ll run the Europe office
This is excellent information.
Learning is an incredible way of going through life and we as humans should be learning new things all the time.
I think another form of “information overload” is when you feel like there’s no hope and you’ve learned so much about something that you feel plain hopeless.
Twitter: bluepop13
Hi Eric!
That’s very interesting. I’m not sure I’ve ever been there. Do you have any specific examples?
Thanks for stopping by, mate.
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Steve,
On the “Information Overload” I have an example for you!
If you feel as though you’ve read every book, taken every action and there’s still nothing happening, take a step back and look at what you’re doing and what you’ve done.
This simply is just saying that you’ve learned so much so quickly you feel there’s nothing left. Tomorrow will come and when it does, just learn from what was.
What do you think?
Twitter: bluepop13
So, when things seem hopeless, step back and reassess, and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Feeding our brain has very important benefits if we just realize it. One thing I’ve learned is that the more you know, the more powerful you become.
Hi Walter!
Oh yes, absolutely! I couldn’t agree more.
Thanks for commenting, great to see you back again.
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
It’s never too late to learn. I recently returned to school to get my grade 12 & let me tell you things are easier the second time around.
Oh that’s excellent! I bet hubby and kids were very proud.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Hubby & son wasn’t. Daughter not so much at the time as she had just dropped out of school. She’s back at adult school now.
Thanks for your post! It’s really very informative. You know what? I shared this with my mom by reading it aloud to her while she was preparing breakfast. Not that she’s too old to read (she’s 74), but I just wanted to encourage her more to have other brain exercises besides reading. Actually, she’s a voracious reader…and you can find books in almost every corner of our home, including the bathroom!
But what really caught my attention here was your recommendation on doing crosswords. It reminded me so much of my late Pops. Thank you very much again.
Hi Lenggai!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. Much appreciate that!
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: SteveYoungs