N.B: if you are going to complain about how long this post is, don't bother, its not for you.


Why do people go to the gym? We didn’t evolve with treadmills and barbells, so why should experts recommend exercising every day?
The answer would probably be because our daily life doesn’t challenge us enough physically.
I’d like to suggest that our daily life doesn’t challenge us enough mentally. Through setting aside Time to visit the mental “gym” and organizing my life to work various
mental muscles I’ve found it much easier to think logically, create new Ideas and focus myself.

Research indicates brainpower is more
than just genes Science shows that intelligence is both environmental and genetic.
Lab rats given more toys to interact ended up much smarter than rats left without any. Even more, studies are now showing that, contrary to an earlier belief, you can grow new neurons if given a stimulating environment.

The benefits of mental fitness
The benefits of physical fitness are obvious and visual. In my opinion, the benefits of mental fitness are even more important, although they might be more subtle.
Here’s just a few benefits I’ve noticed from structuring my activities and hitting the mental gym:
-Rapid learning.
-Logical thinking.
-Creativity.
-Memory - Learning memory tools such as linking and pegging have given me new methods to store information.
-Focus - when I started meditating to improve focus over a year ago, I found it hard to control a visual scene or keep
out distracting thoughts. I’ve since noticed huge improvements so that I can hold images, ideas or focal points even with a fair degree of distraction.

Creating a mental fitness routine
There are two major ways to construct a mental fitness routine:
1. Balancing projects/activities to ensure all mental “muscles” are being worked intensely.
2. Setting aside time to hit the mental gym with activities solely for the purpose of building brainpower. You just need to ensure that you are working all mental muscles, not just one or two. Varied mental exercises will ensure you can handle all problems and ideas.

Here are twenty ideas for starting a mental fitness routine. I don’t suggest trying to implement them all. Instead either set aside fifteen minutes a day for one of these or integrate one of them into your routine.

1. Journaling – Writing down your thoughts is a great tool for problem solving. Every journal session I have, I leave amazed with the answers to tough problems I can come up with.
Journaling is your Universal Machine of the mental gym, providing good workouts for creativity, logic and focus.

2. Meditation – I’ve only recently started to find serious uses for meditation in my mental regimen. Before I saw meditation as a more spiritual than practical activity. several different meditations that work different mental muscles:
- Visualization –. eating the white apple.
Visualize a white apple and hold it in your mind. Then imagine yourself eating it a bite at a time. Experience all the sensations of touch, taste, sound, smell and sight. The hard part is keeping the mental image of your apple consistent with where and how you eat it.
- Focused Breathing – Start by slowing your breathing to about 10-15 seconds per breath. Next focus on one specific part of your body on the inhale. Select a new
focus on the exhale. You can then move this to noticing specific sounds or senses. A good exercise in focus.
- Self-Dialog – Meditation makes it easier to talk with yourself. You can invent characters that can dialog with you, helping explore ideas. I believe journaling is an easier form of introspection than meditation, but they both have their strengths.

3. Cycle Hobbies – Take up new activities regularly. This will keep your learning curve steep so your mind is always engaged at a high intensity. E.g painting, dancing, speaking, running, music, woodworking, programming, design and many others.

4. Peripheral Activities – Don’t
just take new hobbies, take ones that are vastly different from each other. Being a mile wide doesn’t just improve mental fitness, it gives you a broad base of metaphors for creativity.

5. Read One Book Per Week – I strive to read one book each week. Sometimes this can be difficult with time constraints, but the benefits are impressive.

6. Engaging Fiction – Engage yourself in movies, books or television that makes you think. Television that makes you think might sound like an oxymoron, but the medium isn’t all bad if you know where to look.
Engaging doesn’t just mean entertaining, but that it actively challenges your assumptions.

7. Puzzles – like crosswords and computer game puzzles. Solitary game playing can keep your mind sharp as long as the learning curve is steep and it doesn’t become routine.

8. Competitive Games – Games that require strategic thinking are excellent ways to boost your logic and empathizing skills. Chess may be an intellectual favorite, but newer games can hold more promise by being much more diverse, and having a deeper range of strategic options.

9. Explore Another’s Perspective
– Empathy is a mental, not just an emotional, ability. Exploring another’s perspective hones your ability to think through another’s eyes. Although empathy is often dismissed as being touchy-feely and not logical, the ability to think from another’s perspective is an advanced mental ability that doesn’t develop until we are
several years old.

10. Create Regularly – always have a project on the go and itching for a new challenge.

11. Thought Experiments – Einstein was famous for thought experiments. This kind of reasoning ability is a mark of intelligence. Ask yourself, “What if?”

12. Break Routines – Try consciously breaking one of your habits, just for a moment. Eat a different breakfast. Take a different route to work. Sleep in the opposite direction.

13. New Cultures – Expose yourself to different worldviews. I found going to University and meeting people from vastly different cultures to have a big effect on my own ideas.

14. Learn Outside Your Interests
– Don’t stick to what you like. As People told me I was an introvert who wouldn’t make a good public speaker. I just finished my Competent Toastmaster and Competent Leader awards from the Toastmasters program.

15. Friendly Debate – Discuss, don’t argue. When you are in a debate you should try to persuade, but welcome opposing ideas not as attacks but opportunities. Debating forces you to examine your opinions.

16. Teach - I was often surprised at how much better I understood a material through teaching it.

17. Practice New Skills – Mastery may be useful, but I don’t think it is as valuable to mental discipline as just getting the
basics. Unless a skill is useful to you, I’d suggest trying to learn different skills just to adequacy and then moving to something
different. It can take six months to understand 80% of a subject and sixty years to understand 95%.

18. Force Constraints – Try washing yourself with your eyes closed. Cooking without sauces. Reading upside down. Extra constraints make problems more challenging, ramping up the mental intensity required.

19. Interlink – Holistic learning is about linking ideas together. Spend some time to explore a subject and ask yourself how
the pieces fit into other information. This will organize your thinking and improve your understanding.

20. Increase Mental Intensity - Force yourself to use your brain more. All these ideas are just specific implementations to increase the mental intensity you face. Focus, strategy, logic and creativity are just a few of the mental muscles you should be exercising more regularly.

www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/06/30/20-tricks-to-boost-iq-and-build-a-mental-exercise-routine/

This must be for a total mumu

Thanks, have learnt something new

Very educative..thanks Op..this should be on frontpage pls

Cc:lalasticala

ademega:
This must be for a total mumu

After taking an online free IQ test, my IQ was 95... I'll try all this, wanna increase desperately.

Tanx op.. This is front page material

Pinkiedearie:
Very educative..thanks Op..this should be on frontpage pls

Cc:lalasticala

you mean to write backpage?

Kinkale:
After taking an online free IQ test, my IQ was 95... I'll try all this, wanna increase desperately.

Tanx op.. This is front page material

mine was 98%

very nice article at least I learnt something new.

ademega:
This must be for a total mumu

I swear those 20 tricks no go do you. Chai!

Iaz93:
I swear those 20 tricks no go do you. Chai!

;
Would they be enough for you too ?

Happy new month

Thanks for sharing OP

Nice write up

This is very interesting. I guess intense practice is required.

Good one

If u had kept quiet,no one wouldav known u were a nitwit..watz d point of ur comment

ademega:
This must be for a total mumu

uzoexcel:
If u had kept quiet,no one wouldav known u were a nitwit..watz d point of ur comment

See finishing
Its oky sha .
No argument .
But it would have Been better for you to have kept calm .

Mods
Pls, abeg,biko, ejo, danla make this post front page. This post is so inspiring. I was thinking of gathering this work and post here but joavid just murdered it. Thumbs up bro

HIT LIKE IF U LOVE THIS POST!!!

castro316:
Mods
Pls, abeg,biko, ejo, danla make this post front page. This post is so inspiring. I was thinking of gathering this work and post here but joavid just murdered it. Thumbs up bro

HIT LIKE IF U LOVE THIS POST!!!

Well, the mods don't want to move it front page because of something he tried explaining and I still don't understand.

Joavid:


Well, the mods don't want to move it front page because of something he tried explaining and I still don't understand.

Aw! Don't worry m lucky I found it while browsing thru nairaland. Anyways not everybody will laud ur write up and shld be kept secret from foolish people. U need to search for wisdom to ger it. Its somewhere in proverbs.
You can mail me. Let's chat. Ok chao!

castro316:


Aw! Don't worry m lucky I found it while browsing thru nairaland. Anyways not everybody will laud ur write up and shld be kept secret from foolish people. U need to search for wisdom to ger it. Its somewhere in proverbs.
You can mail me. Let's chat. Ok chao!

Its not my write up. I included my source.

Joavid:


Its not my write up. I included my source.

Ok this is my email. Chat me up

It is dachefdominion2014@yahoo.com

Joavid:
N.B: if you are going to complain about how long this post is, don't bother, its not for you.

I like that...Nice one

*repeated post, deleted

nice. front page stuff.

nice topic!!

This is why i love you joavid, always going after intelligent stuffs

hope your IQ has increase op