How many times, especially as the years go by, do we forget the name of a friend or acquaintance, or a phone number, or a specific place, or the position of an object in the house? In general, there is no need to worry: memory problems are common and physiological for everyone, they are not always a problem that needs to be treated.
Of course, although memory decline is a part of our lives, especially with aging, it is a rather annoying phenomenon. Here is the good news: it is possible to train your memory, with some exercises and tricks. Let's see how.
How Memory Training is Good for General Well-Being
Most of the time, exercises to improve memory are talked about as a sort of “last resort”, and it is thought that they can only be useful for the elderly, or for those who have a real progressive loss of memories. Nothing could be more wrong: memory training can also be useful for health and well-being in general, and allows you to indirectly improve your daily life.
How is this possible? The fact is that memory comes into play in all daily activities. We all remember the identity and appearance of thousands of people, we know where even the smallest object of common use is in our home, we must be well aware of the streets and roads of our city.
And then, anyone who does any job must make extensive use of memory: the warehouse worker must remember the spaces and locations of the goods, the professor the names of the students and the data of his subject, the worker the layouts and mechanisms of each machine or tool... Not to mention the information that must be memorized in the long and short term, for study or work, and which requires even greater effort.
Consequently, those who have a trained memory will perform any activity better, and this entails, first of all, a notable benefit on mood and self-esteem, which in turn has repercussions on the well-being of the body. In addition, working and acting with greater confidence gives the possibility of avoiding dangers and risks due to forgetfulness and carelessness.
Starting from the quality of sleep
The first thing to know if you want to improve your memory is that you need to start with the quality of your sleep. Sleep is essential for our psychophysical well-being and sleeping for an insufficient amount of hours or in a disturbed way can reduce our ability to pay attention, solve problems, make decisions, organize ourselves and even imprint or recall a memory.
In fact, memory is heavily affected by lack of sleep. Along with proper nutrition and a healthy diet, good sleep is the main fuel for our body and mind. If we sleep little, our brain is more tired, and recovering every single thought to remember ends up being much more complex.
What to do then? First of all, it is recommended to sleep at least seven or eight hours a night. This not only allows you to wake up physically well charged, but also gives your brain the opportunity to rest sufficiently from the fatigue of the day.
In addition, we must also pay attention to the quality of sleep, not just its quantity. This means that we should make the most of our hours of rest, for example by avoiding heavy food for dinner or consuming stimulating foods or drinks (especially alcohol or coffee), or by doing some relaxing activity before sleeping. If possible, then, it is good not to break up the hours of sleep into several sessions, but to allow ourselves a whole night of silence, for a peaceful and continuous rest.
Creative Practices to Train Your Memory: Writing and Music
Many people think that memory exercises are boring, based on mathematics or repeating something over and over again. In reality, it is possible to train your memory through creative, relaxing and fun activities, even if they do not seem to be directly related to the ability to remember.
An example concerns writing: even if not everyone likes it, it is true that writing is an excellent training ground for the mind, more than simple reading. It is certainly not necessary to write a book to be published: dedicating yourself to composing stories, poems or even just short stories helps to exercise your creativity and imagination, which are very important parts of the processes of our mind.
It is also useful to keep a diary, freeing our mind from negative thoughts accumulated during the day: just a few minutes a day of writing without reservations and you will notice the results. If the mind is freer and more orderly, memory and other cognitive functions will be more fluid.
While writing may not be an activity suitable for everyone, listening to music is a more common and widespread practice. Listening to music can also improve memory: this is thanks to its function of relieving stress and improving mood, which implies greater ease of concentration. It is for this reason that the right type of music can be useful both during working hours, to enhance attention and productivity, and in moments of leisure and rest, to promote tranquility.
Train your memory with mindfulness meditation
In recent years, meditation practices of Eastern origin have become very popular in the West: it is not just a trend, but depends on the actual usefulness of meditation for the well-being of the body and mind. Although its benefits are subjective, many people claim that meditation has brought great benefits to their daily lives.
Among these, we can mention the possibility of training the memory through meditation, and especially through a particular type of it, the so-called mindfulness meditation. The latter, born in fairly recent times but rooted in Eastern traditions, has the objective of increasing the cognitive awareness and personal self-awareness of those who practice it.
What does this mean? In fact, practicing mindfulness meditation can increase your attention and concentration on the present moment and on what is truly important. This helps reduce anxiety, stress and negative thoughts, and in this way allows you not to get distracted by looking at insignificant details, but instead pushes you to consider the main aspects.
In this way, mindfulness meditation can help us better memorize what we see and what happens to us. The real benefit is not in the ability to remember better, but in imprinting memories in the mind more clearly. Mindfulness enthusiasts try to learn to focus on all the individual sensations and emotions of daily life, so as to understand them thoroughly and, consequently, memorize them in a full and heartfelt way.
How to train your memory with some exercises
In addition to the tips presented so far, we mention some exercises and techniques to train your memory effectively in the long term.
- Playing with words and numbers. It goes without saying how important crosswords, puzzles, sudoku and the like are for our mind: games based on numbers, words and their relationships are useful stimuli for the brain and, consequently, for keeping our memory trained. This also applies to some concentration exercises that we can do mentally, perhaps while we walk or do something else, for example solving double-digit multiplications or counting backwards starting from high numbers.
- Writing with the non-dominant hand. It may seem silly, but using the non-dominant hand to write a more or less long text allows you to stimulate many brain-based abilities (language, hand movement, concentration, coordination). In this way, you can train your mind and your ability to memorize will also benefit.
- Concentrate on every single sensation. When we work or are in full activity we cannot do it but, when we have a moment to do something in a relaxed way, we can try to concentrate on the sensations and conditions of the environment in which we find ourselves. An example? While we cook, we consider every single smell or tactile sensation of the food; or, taking a shower, we close our eyes and concentrate on touch or hearing.
- Use specific apps to exercise your memory. There are many of them, for all smartphones and tablets: they are often very simple games, which however require concentration and promise to prevent memory decline with age.
- Use your imagination. This is one of the most general pieces of advice, which summarizes many specific activities: you can, for example, close your eyes and imagine a complex story starting from a simple situation, giving free rein to your imagination; or, reconstruct an event from your past but setting it in another historical period. The effort to create alternative actions, experiences, images and events, clashing with our habits of thought, is a powerful stimulant of our mind, and in particular of our memory.