Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford
There is no better way to stay fit than to exercise, and “use it or lose it” is a reality that refers equally to body and mind. If you desire to think sharper, react quicker, and make better decisions you will have to keep exercising your mind to maintain it in good working order. Overall, this means spending less time engaged in passive activities and more time spent doing things that will stimulate the brain.
Some of the biggest time gobbling passive mind activities are pretty well known, such as spending too much time in front of the television, waiting for that guy in Nigeria with $8 million to bequeath to send you another email, or hoping your significant other will properly hang the roll of toilet paper the right way this time. Other more innocuous mind wasters include reflecting negatively upon your past, aimlessly surfing the net, and listening to political speeches in an election year. Actually that last one isn’t as bad as what usually follows, which is 3 or more talking heads explaining to us what the candidate who just spoke had to say. Have we really dumbed down that much as a society that we need to be told what the man in the suit just said, or are we simply too lazy to make the effort to interpret the obvious all by ourselves?
In keeping with Mr. Ford’s admonition, I’ve made a list of some of the tangible benefits of putting your mind to work on learning new things:
You may find something new to become passionate about: Passion is a key to life, and discovering additional ways to uncork it can serve to juice up other, less inspired areas of your life.
Learning new things can make you more interesting. Think the girls at the party still want to hear about your Dungeons and Dragons exploits; or that speaking in Klingon is somehow considered sexy? If you’re repertoire is old and stale, learning new things can help make your more social and enhance your appeal to others.
Learning keeps you alert. You can’t run on autopilot when trying to master a new skill or venturing off into the unfamiliar. Breaking with routine to undertake new tasks instantly wakes up dormant areas of the brain that can be useful far beyond the task at hand.
Use it or lose it. Your brain is a muscle like any other. It will atrophy without use.
So, if I’ve convinced you of the benefits of lifelong learning, what are some examples of the types of activities you should seek to incorporate? A exhaustive list would be endless, though to get your mind jump started I have included a few rather simple ideas you may want to consider. The key is to pick out activities that you are not currently doing so that you can stimulate your mind in unfamiliar ways. You can:
1. Study a new language
2. Read a book
3. Take up a musical instrument
4. Start a blog
5. Play word games or puzzles
6. Play Sudoku
7. Choose to become more observant of the world around you
8. Write poetry
9. Take up dancing lessons
10. Travel to new places
12. Do things with your non-dominant hand
13. Try adopting the opposite point of view you normally take in arguments
14. Study martial arts
15. Paint, sculpt, or draw
16. Take a road trip
17. Go hiking in nature
18. Start a journal
19. Try a yoga class
20. Attend a live sporting event that you don’t know anything about.
As I said, there is really no end to a list like this. By simply making a commitment to exercise your mind and continuing to expose yourself to new ideas and concepts, you may be able to delay or even ward off the effects of the aging process on your brain. Your mental reaction time will improve, your focus will be sharper, you will become more interesting, life will begin to seem more vibrant, and you may even give up the urge to watch old Star Trek reruns or to hang the toilet paper backwards.
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Something that fascinates me is how we go about translating our experiences from the events that take place to the words we use to express these experiences linguistically and code them in our minds. Sounds like a simple thing at first glance, doesn’t it? I saw a red ball, so I tell somebody “hey, I saw a red ball”. Quite often this works fine and nothing more needs to be said about it. It is when this process goes astray that people can experience challenges in living the types of lives they desire.
One of the best things about doing change work with coaching clients is being able to witness people going from internal states of frustration and feeling “stuck” because they perceive there to be little or no satisfactory choices available, to helping them decode their representations of experiences so that they perceive a greater array of choices and therefore a greater ability to impact their world and make their dreams a reality.
Language is the means by which we code our experience, both to ourselves and to others. An awareness of how and why transformations occur between actual experience and the labels we place upon our experiences is one of the most important skills required of people involved in change work.
Ways we Filter our Experiences
When something happens, we filter it through our 5 senses. The data we process is necessarily incomplete, but the process works well when we select data that is optimal for the task at hand. Remember the last time you had a conversation in a crowded room? Your ears were able to perceive a variety of sounds, yet the ones you chose to focus on and record in memory were probably those of the person you were most interested in listening to. A primary step in filtering reality is the decision we make of what we choose to record through our senses. Actually this is the second step, since we only perceive through our senses a very narrow band of what takes place in our environment. Don’t believe me? Consider a dog whistle or radio waves. Dogs can hear the whistle but you can’t, and your radio can pick up signals broadcast over the airwaves that you can’t perceive but are most definitely out there. Oh, and there’s also gamma rays, ultraviolet rays, the Cubs winning the World Series, and all those dust mites living on your pillow…(yecch, I’ll stop now)
Anyhow, buy the time information reaches our brains, our neurology has filtered it to the extent that we are able to perceive it. We then we filter that information through our past experiences and our opinions in order to make quick and efficient decisions. We then attach meaning to new events through the language we choose to describe them, both to ourselves and to others.
Labeling Limits Choice
If we are afraid of snakes and see one in the yard, we may label the experience as “I saw this really big, ugly snake!”. That sentence was not the reality of what happened but rather the label we chose to apply to it. From there we then may go on to formulate an opinion that “all snakes are dangerous”, and depending on the intensity of the experience we might even come to the assumption that “backyards are dangerous”. We have gone from the reality of there being a snake in our yard to the assumption that all backyards are dangerous.
As we begin to believe statements like these, our choice of available options become limited (we can’t go out in our backyard) and our representation of reality becomes skewed from how it actually is. The snake may have been harmful or not - more information was needed before deciding never to venture out into the backyard again. Yet the language we used to code the experience results in self limiting the amount of choices we have and can reduce the amount of enjoyment we get out of life (no more backyard barbecues).
When people limit their choices due to how they represent experience (consciously or otherwise), they can experience frustration in living the type of life they desire or in achieving the types of goals they would like to achieve. Some other choice limiting statements that I’ve heard are:
People don’t like me.
I regret my decision
I don’t know how to impress people
Conflict is painful
She never listens
Changing is difficult
Decoding the Process
A very interesting part of what I get to do is that I help people step backwards through this process from labels of experience to the actual experiences themselves. Often, as they begin to decode how they’ve labeled their environment they begin to see other options and choices available - choices that they had missed because their labels of experience had kept them from being aware of them. From these new choices spring fresh opportunities for them to experience the types of lives that they desire.
When Coaching can Help
If you reach a point in life where you find yourself unable to achieve an important goal, nurture your relationships or overcome self limiting beliefs, you may want to consider working with a professional coach who has a background in linguistics. There are a number of good coaches, myself included, who are trained in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and who possess the knowledge and tools required to assist you. The key part is selecting a coach with whom you can relate well and who has the skills required to help you get where you want to go in life. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, you can check out my coaching programs for ideas regarding how I may be able to help.
Words are indeed powerful, and if the Cubs ever do win a Word Series I’m probably going to hear a few choice ones from the fans of those “lovable losers”.
Its the 4th of July holiday here in the states, so I’m heading out to my backyard (to hell with the snakes), to enjoy a wonderful barbecue and then downtown for some fireworks. Happy 4th everyone!
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