NEW ARTICLES EVERY MONTH
February 2010
The power of mind
A hard-won victory, the joy of a well-earned success – these are the moments that make a person’s hard work pay off. However, your mind has to be at its best to turn in an outstanding performance. Whether in your career, in sports, in your free time, what counts is mental fitness. And the mind needs exercise to keep fit.
Improve your concentration and memory to remain fit for the long term. Mental exercise is the most effective if it’s also fun. Many modern video games combine concentration tasks with movement and visual feedback to make for an all-inclusive challenge. Sounds like a welcome excuse for an active session playing video games. If this is too virtual for you, then arrange a real driver training session, like those an automobile club might offer. You can test your nerves and vehicle-handling skills under realistic and even precarious driving situations. Of course, concentration training can also be done with good old classic games like chess and scat. An additional challenge in these games is the human factor – your opponent.
Memory gets a good workout when you learn something by heart. It’s true that this works with lists of football squads on the sofa. But when physical movement and intellectual stimulation are combined, the brain becomes more intensively challenged. One such example is learning a few new songs on the guitar and singing them. Air guitar counts, too! The more often you stimulate your grey matter, the better it functions. Repetition is essential for a good memory.
To achieve goals, it is important to maintain distance and see the big picture. Learn to relax. A brain that does not take a break cannot see the forest for the trees. Take time to focus on one thing at a time. Continuous multi-tasking weakens your output and performance. After all, you don’t always need to have music on without interruption or mobile phones constantly ringing, do you? It’s better to play a quiet game of darts. Or enjoy a session of Japanese archery where the highest level of concentration is required. Calm body control, quiet breathing and the certainty of success are the keys. The goal of Japanese archery is not to hit the target rather to reach “Zaiteki”, which means “the arrow exists in the target even before it is shot”. So when your mind is mentally fit, the joy of success is present even at the beginning of a new challenge.
