If 5 Ways to Improve Your Brain Health in Under 30 Seconds inspired you to care more for your brain in the coming year, click here to learn about our course, Tiny Habits for Brain Health. If you’re ready to plant some new seeds today, try one or more of the habits below.
These habits may seem simple, but don’t be deceived. Every one of these actions can have lasting long-term effects when they become a part of your everyday life. But you don’t have to wait until your senior years to reap the benefits. The habits that support long-term brain health will also help you to feel healthier and happier while you’re still young. For information on our brain health course, click here.
Like a thriving coral reef, a healthy brain is the product of millions of tiny units and connections. Every minute of the day you’re making choices that either strengthen that network or tear it down. Exercise, sleep and a nutritious diet have a big impact on brain health, but many brain-boosting behaviors take less than a minute a day.
Over time, these small acts can make a big impact on your brain health. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our groundbreaking new course, Tiny Habits for Brain Health. This course combines the Tiny Habits method with powerful, practical recipes for keeping your brain sharp now and throughout your life.
If only your brain could get a sunburn.
Most of us have neglected the sage 90s advice to “Wear Sunscreen” at least once in our lives. However, a single searing, skin-peeling sunburn is often all it takes to inspire a lifelong commitment to protecting our vulnerable flesh. The lesson may be painful, but it is immediate and effective.
When it comes to our health, most of the negative consequences of the choices we make are not so immediate. If you choose to eat a cheeseburger, you’ll probably feel full and happy afterward. You will not feel the excess fat clogging your arteries and clinging to your midsection or the sodium boosting your blood pressure. A single cheeseburger won’t destroy your health, but if the majority of your meals come wrapped in paper, you’ll feel the effects eventually. Unfortunately, by that time the damage is done and can be difficult to reverse. If the results of an unhealthy habit were as swift and painful as a sunburn, making healthy choices would be much easier.
We now know that our brains change throughout our lives. While the most drastic development occurs in childhood, our brains retain the capacity for growth and change for as long as we live. Our habits can support our brain health or stymie it, but, unlike a sunburn, the consequences may take years and even decades to manifest.
At Tiny Habits Academy, one of our biggest priorities is helping people to build healthy habits for a lifetime of physical and mental wellbeing. If you have a brain and are getting older (and we’re pretty sure that covers all of our readers here) then you are making choices every day that may determine whether you become one of the 5.3 million people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease each year.
Doctors and scientists are still working to understand Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts one in nine people over the age of 65, and over half of seniors over 85. However, they have been able to pinpoint a number of contributing factors, including:
Some of these risk factors are beyond our control, but many are not. A healthy brain at 65 (or 85) is the product of a lifetime of heathy choices. Over the next few weeks and months we’ll feature blog posts and special webinars to help you build the kinds of habits that act as heavy-duty SPF for your brain, protecting it from damage now and in the years to come.
Want more brain health tips? Join our groundbreaking new course, Tiny Habits for Brain Health. This course combines the Tiny Habits method with powerful, practical recipes for keeping your brain sharp now and throughout your life.
Having worked with clients for over 20 years in the art of improving memory I noticed that there were a number of common problems people shared:
So when I first discovered the Tiny Habits® Method it sparked my interest. I had a feeling it could perhaps be a solution to overcoming some of these key problems.
One of the simplest ways to demonstrate how Tiny Habits can help improve your memory is to pick a specific problem countless people deal with, in this case, Remembering Names.
The steps to remembering a persons name, for the most part are quite straight forward, in summary you need to do 5 different things:
Each one of these steps use part of what I refer to as creative memorisation and initially this can feel like a lot of things to do, although in real-life steps 1-4 all happen in about 3-10 seconds depending on the name.
Imagine being able to walk into a room with 20 people and walk out remembering everyones name. Depending on what line of business you are in, this can be a very valuable strategy, especially if you can meet someone a month later and still remember their name.
The biggest challenge I’ve observed is making all of this automatic and not getting caught up in old habits. This is where the Tiny Habits Method excels and makes it all feel super easy.
One of the things I love about Tiny Habits is that the ‘recipes’ for new habits are so simple to create, here’s an example of how to take the first 2 steps of remembering names and turn them into a simple tiny habit.
After I sit down on my train into work (you replace this with your own anchor, a habit which already exists in your life)
I will choose a person and ask myself, “what is interesting about them?” while I breathe, look and listen
Woohoo! (celebration)
If you did nothing else and just this for the next 7 days you would notice your ability for remembering names start to improve. Once this habit becomes automatic it starts to permeate into other parts of your life. You walk into a meeting and your brain is already primed to notice the people in the room and be ready to listen to their names rather than your mind being diverted or wondering about other things.
If you have any challenges with remembering names and you’re looking for a strategy that not only gives you a way to remember names on the fly, makes them stick and makes it all happen on autopilot then I’ve created a free 7 day email course to get you up and running over at memoryschool.com
For the next week, you can check in with me everyday on how your habits are going and I will give you some personal 1-1 email coaching.
It’s as simple as that!
You can get started at anytime, just pop over to memoryschool.com and sign up for the 7 Day free email course.
If you want to improve your memory Tiny Habits is the simplest and most effective way to create those key behaviors. Imagine if you could use this strategy to not just remember names but remember anything?