bodner088

When your brain is absorbed in a problem-solving task which requires a great deal of visualization, imagination and innovation, it is operating on "all of its cylinders." But if you can consciously convince your brain {which behaves like a small child sometimes) that the tasks which it is undertaking are games (the "gamification of problem-solving"), your brain will be even further stimulated as it perceives challenges without consequences for failure. When your game plays games, it is not being nudged by your subconscious mind about past failures or the possibility of additional failures. There is a wonderful website which I'd like to share with you in order to assist you in getting your brain to light up with sheer pleasure. My suggestion is to play games from this site (you might wish to bookmark it or make it a favorite) whenever you are faced with an uncooperative, exhausted mind. It just might be the tonic that you need to reboot your brain into productio...

Memorizing and being able to repeat certain types of sentences does more than build up your facility for rote memorization. The improvement in simple recall is actually the least of it! Memorizing the sentences which follow will strengthen your ability to visualize, organize and to think creatively. Memorize each of the seven sentences (or groups of sentences) which follow, one at a time. Then recite each one aloud several times. Get smarter, make more associative connections and have a bit of neural plasticity on the house! Ahoy, Braintenancers : 1) Let me repeat your order. You bought twenty apples, thirty oranges and fifteen bananas which you paid for using your Discover Card. 2) The parties agree that due to the many variables surrounding each business transaction that will occur because of this agreement, the commission to be paid between the parties may vary. 3) Contrarians don't generally agree with veterinarians who refuse to treat planarians with microscopic plantar wart...

One of the keys to eliminating anxiety, depression and distraction is the meditative exercise of living in the moment. Doing this requires that you focus intently on all of the myriad sensations which you are experiencing in a single moment of conscious living. This is a challenge for most individuals, who are more accustomed to ruminating over the past or anticipating the future. Even the most intelligent persons (and certainly all followers and dedicated practitioners of Braintenance ) are preoccupied with thoughts which are "out of sync" with the living, full-sensory experience of the present moment. While the meditative exercise of present-moment living will not, per se , increase your mental magnitude and specific sets of thinking and problem-solving brain skills, it will indirectly benefit your thought processing mechanisms by allowing your overly-conscious mind to take a brief vacation from excessive cerebration. The mind, as any other muscle, needs its rest. Try to t...

The conscious and subconscious mind crave orderliness and organization, with each item of data clearly recorded in multisensory detail, and filed in its most appropriate and accessible place. This is why we have routines, rituals and recurring cycles of thought (which sometimes haunt us and which sometimes help us). Look at the picture above. At first, it appears as a meaningless bunch of letters -- but as we study it consciously, it becomes a plainly-worded statement of fact. In fact, when we look at incomplete pictures or have "blind spots" in our foveal or peripheral vision, our minds tend to fill in those blanks for us. This effect is responsible for many optical illusions. And what we see (or think that we are seeing) is a significant input into what we will be thinking. Peripheral vision plays more tricks on us than foveal vision, but our foveal vision can be made to play tricks on us as well. Let's get ourselves some definitions of these two types of vision from Wi...

By the way, the two fellows mentioned in the last post were 15 and 18 years old, respectively. Are you partially "Brain Blind ?" Is it far easier for you to recite the alphabet forwards than backwards? Much harder to count backwards down from 100 than up to 100? A struggle for you to carry on a present-moment conversation when you hear a favorite song playing in the background? Seemingly impossible to remember the names of three individuals to whom you've just been introduced? Very tough to remember the names, in order of seven or more random items within two minutes after you've had them, recited to you? Painfully difficult to recite the names of seven random items mentioned to you...even if reiterated three times in a row? You're not alone. We are, each of us [even those who faithfully read The Braintenance Blog ] handicapped to some extent when it comes to doing things with our minds which we would think to be easy. This is really a function of how we learn, ...