I’ve read up on some of the neuroscience of ageing.
(So you don’t have to.)
Keeping your brain healthy – there are plenty of claims out there on how to do it.
Research like this is always difficult to do and difficult to read.
But…
When the research and common sense align, it’s safe to guess you’re at least on the right track there.
Common sense – filtered through the antifragile idea of you should use your brain as it evolved to be used – tells us the following activities are great for the health of your ol’ clump of neurons:
- Dancing, especially social dancing, because it combines so many useful skills. Physical movement, connection with another person, listening, anticipating, creating, celebrating beauty…
- Walking on uneven ground, like a cobblestone road. Maintaining your balance is excellent exercise for your brain.
- Turning off your GPS and navigating to somewhere new. Memorise landmarks and visualise where you are in space. Use maps, sure, but don’t use maps that tell you where you are.
And…
The body works on a use it or lose it principle. Use your muscles or lose them. Use your creativity or lose it.
And use your sentience or lose it.
If you don’t practice seeing things as other people see them, then you lose that ability. And have you been on Facebarf or SickTok lately? There’s a real dearth of that going on. If you say that She-Hulk was badly written, you’ll get folks lecturing you about why you’re wrong about gay marriage. They have one scrap of data about you and so they think they know everything about you.
It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so tedious.
And I’m sure this is creating fundamental social problems. Between the solitary confinement of the lockdown years and now the insane psychology experiment of social media, folks are forgetting how to talk to each other.
That ain’t good and it ain’t normal.
But at least you can protect yourself from this trap.
Your Story Isn’t About You doesn’t teach you social skills. What it teaches is far more fundamental than that – the lost art of seeing the world as others see it.
It’s something humans naturally excel at.
We also naturally excel at persistence hunting but, without practice, we lose that ability.
That’s good news to anyone who practices it – it gives you an easy edge over those who don’t.
Practice it when you download Your Story Isn’t About You from my email signature block. Sign up or read more about it here: