Memory Improvement – Tips For Better Remembering
Memory improvement is helpful for anyone at any age. Improving your memory makes life easier by reducing the number of lists and papers you need to keep track of. A better memory can also mean less embarrassment when you have difficulty remembering the names of people you have met. Fortunately, memory improvement is easy when you follow a few simple guidelines.
Believe It or Not
The most important step in improving your memory is to believe that you can remember. If you have already convinced yourself that you have a poor memory, then that will be true. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think that you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Believe you can improve your memory and you will do it. You remember things every day, even when you may not realize it.
Exercise Your Mind
Exercising your mind will help you to improve both your memory and your mood. Puzzles are an excellent way to challenge and exercise your mind. You should also try to learn new skills whenever possible. Take a class on pottery or a foreign language. Spend as much time exercising your mind as you would your body, about 30 minutes each day.
Exercise Your Body
Physical exercise also helps your memory by increasing blood flow to the brain. In addition, the endorphins released from exercise make you more alert and relaxed, allowing you to remember things more easily.
Reduce Stress
Vow not to let stress take control of our minds. Learn to recognize that worrying does not influence the outcome of your concerns. It only interferes with the proper functioning of your mind and body. When you simply refuse to accept stress in your life, you prevent it from blocking your ability to think clearly about a given problem. Letting go of worry and reducing stress will help your mind function more clearly and your memory will improve.
Eat Well
Brain Games
You can also improve your mind by playing brain games designed to improve your recall of lists and other data. Simply create wild, memorable images in your mind, associated with each item. Visualization helps you remember things more easily. Instead of remembering milk by picturing your child drinking it through a straw, instead, picture the milk trying to drink your child through a straw.
There are an endless number of brain games you can play by associating wild imagery with the items you wish to remember. Practice these along with healthy exercise and eating habits to improve our memory.
Free Games That Improve Your Memory
It Takes A Some Practice
Whether you realize it or not, you use your memory every day. You place information into your short-term memory all of the time in order to complete the tasks of the day. You remember a phone number to dial or you read a recipe and remember a few steps in order to make dinner. You make use of long-term memory every day as well. It is important to remember a new route to work that shaves ten minutes off of your commute. While it may seem endless, our capacity for memory is limited.
Certain people can remember more or more clearly than others and this capacity for memory can greatly influence our performance in school, work, and life. Some of this capacity is determined by our genes but we can also train our brains to improve memory. One way to do this is to take advantage of free games that improve your memory.
Classic Memory Games
There are a staggering number of free games that improve your memory online. While most are designed to be amusing distractions, they can also help expand the capacity of your memory. Perhaps the most well-known game that can improve your memory is the game called concentration.
While various free versions exist online, the game can be played with a regular deck of playing cards. Concentration (sometimes called Memory) can be played alone or with opponents and can be made simple or complex. The object of the game is to identify pairs of cards that are randomly placed face down. On each turn, the player gets to turn over two cards. If the two cards are a pair, they are removed from the field and the player continues.
If they do not match, all players see the location of both cards, and they are again turned face down. The players take turns turning over cards and identifying the location of each type and pair. Over time, the opponent with better memory and recall performs better and wins by accumulating the most pairs.
Computer Memory Games
Computers have facilitated an explosion of free games that improve your memory that go far beyond a table and a pack of cards. With graphical browsers, mouse-controlled cursors, and color screens, our memory can be challenged in any number of ways. Some games test spatial memory and sequence by requiring the player to remember the location of objects in space and in a specific order. Other games require memory for tones, colors, or patterns.
Just a Search Away
With the large number of free games that improve your memory available online, often users will gravitate toward the games that they are better at. Unfortunately, games that people find too challenging can make them frustrated and they may not pursue them for very long.
On the one hand, it is useful to test the limits of the type of memory for which you have an aptitude. On the other hand, it is useful to challenge your memory in ways that it is not necessarily strong in order to improve that type of memory. You cannot anticipate when you may need a certain type of memory in real life.
By expanding different types of memory through free games, you can develop an increased capacity to create and recall memories when it is truly needed.
