How to develop your brain with a hobby

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

To constantly develop your mental abilities, it is enough to have an interesting hobby and do it more often. Read what hobbies help your brain work faster and better.

For a long time it was believed that the level of intelligence is programmed in the genes and a person can only use the maximum level of intelligence that he has. However, scientists refuted this opinion, proving that the potential of each person can be developed indefinitely. Here are a few hobbies that promote new neural connections in the brain, which in turn help it work faster and better.

Playing musical instruments

Playing musical instruments helps to develop creativity, analytical skills, language, math skills, motor skills. Some may notice that all of this develops during team sports. This is true, but, unlike all other activities, playing musical instruments creates in the corpus callosum, a plexus of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Building connections in the corpus callosum improves memory, problem-solving ability, and overall brain function, regardless of age.

Reading

The benefits of this hobby does not depend on what you read: "Game of Thrones", "Harry Potter" or any magazines. Reading reduces stress levels and develops all three types of intelligence: agile (responsible for the assimilation of new material), crystallized (responsible for the application of already acquired knowledge) and emotional.

The ability to solve problems improves, the ability to operate with information develops, to find the necessary knowledge and apply it in practice. The reader is better at detecting patterns, understanding the essence of processes, and correctly interpreting other people's feelings.

In work, these skills allow you to better understand how certain things happen, and, as a result, better manage something.

Regular exercise

Regular exercise provides far more benefits than heavy, occasional exercise.

If you exercise regularly, cells are filled with BDNF, a protein that improves memory, learning, concentration and understanding.

Some scientists believe that a sedentary lifestyle has the opposite effect - it prevents the development of the potential of our brains.

Learn a new language

Research has shown that people who speak multiple languages are much better at solving puzzles than those who speak only one language.

Speaking multiple languages improves the brain function responsible for managing attention. This means that it will be easier for you to deal with difficult mental tasks like planning or solving problems.

In addition, knowledge of at least one foreign language has a positive effect on the ability to control your environment and better keep your attention on the processes taking place around.

Many people lack knowledge of a foreign language for further career advancement. Considering how the brain develops during language learning, people who know one or more foreign languages do have a big advantage over others.

Accumulate knowledge and repeat what you have learned

Many smart students seem like real experts on the last day before the big exam. The problem is that this knowledge is quickly forgotten, as they rarely, if ever, apply it again.

One of the reasons that learning foreign languages makes us smarter is precisely because it develops the ability to accumulate knowledge through constant repetition. Because we need the same knowledge over and over again, grammar rules and learned words are repeated countless times.

Apply the way of accumulating knowledge in your life and work: save the bits of information that you receive every day. Copy quotes from books and write down interesting phrases from conversations, start a journal in which you will enter everything that attracted your attention. And do not forget to re-read what you have written from time to time so that the knowledge you have accumulated does not disappear, but is firmly entrenched in your memory.

Make your brain work

Sudoku, puzzles, riddles, board games, video games, and card games all develop neuroplasticity. This is the ability of the brain to change with experience, as well as to recover and rebuild itself under the influence of external factors.

When nerve cells respond in new ways, it improves neuroplasticity, which in turn allows us to see things from different perspectives and understand the causes, and also affects our behavior and emotions. We learn new models and our cognitive capabilities increase. Moreover, people with high neuroplasticity are less prone to anxiety and depression, learn faster and remember better.

Meditate

In 1992, the Dalai Lama invited the scholar Richard Davidson to meditate. When the Dalai Lama and other monks were asked to meditate with a focus on compassion, during the meditation, the brain electroencephalogram showed the gamma rhythm characteristic of the state of compassion and happiness. That is, despite the fact that the monks were not aware of this, their brain was in a state of deep compassion.

This study proves that we can control our brain activity and feel what we want, when we want. For example, feel more powerful in front of a negotiation, more confident when talking about a promotion, and more convincing when selling.

As you can see, the brain can develop indefinitely, and you can make it your goal. Different types of activity stimulate different parts of the brain, so you can have several good hobbies at once and work on your strengths and weaknesses at the same time.

Are you continuing to develop your brain?