Tag Archives: self help

Is Brain Training Effective For Improving Your Memory?

When you are researching for strategies to improve your memory, a clear and really interesting option is to participate in brain training games. These are created not only to assist with improving memory , but also to boost your other mental abilities, such as problem-solving. Whenever you play, you definitely get speedier and more accurate and get much better scores in the games. The question that is not often asked is whether or not these game-playing skills are consequently relevant to other elements of your daily life.

You might be forgiven for thinking that all the brain training games have been designed taking the ever-increasing body of brain science into account. Indeed, a lot is already known about the neurological underpinnings of how memory is laid down in the first place, and then improved. Maybe they have been designed this way, but where is the evidence of how successful you can be using these exercises?

Well, recently the very revealing results of a large UK study into the effectiveness of brain exercises on improving memory etc. have been published, and they are probably not what you would have predicted. BBC television conducted this research in conjunction with the British Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society.

The research team recruited 13000 adult volunteers to take part in their rigorous experiment for six weeks. The purpose was to check out whether exercising the brain on several activities intended to employ different areas of the brain (such as the temporal lobes for memory and the parietal lobes for mathematics), would boost brain abilities, such as memory and problem-solving abilities.

The volunteers were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The first group did a broad range of brain exercises, including ones for improving memory , for ten minutes every other day for six weeks. Since the tasks were internet-based, the control group just used the internet for the same amount of time. At the end of the trial period, the brain training group was retested on the brain exercises and was found to be 33 per cent better at performing the brain games they had trained on.

This sounds great; but were these enhanced mental skills transferable from the mind exercises with which the group was already familiar, to general core intellectual abilities, like problem-solving and remembering number sequences? Both groups of subjects were tested on these skills both just before the trial and afterwards. The average score for the two groups at the start of the experiment was the same.

If you believe that brain training games can play a part in improving memory, then you might find the results a little surprising. There was actually a small improvement in the performance of both groups and what’s more this improvement was virtually identical in the two groups. So even though there was some improvement, the lack of statistical significance between the two sets’ results means that this could not be attributed to the training.

So if you have been playing these brain training games with the intention of improving your memory, is it time to give them up and put them out to pasture? Well, that is entirely up to you, but do bear in mind that studies, no matter what their size, can be flawed and that what does not work for some people could work for you. If you really care about improving memory , then there are many other memory strategies you can explore, such as playing sports, taking a look at improving your diet and even going to the odd concert.

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Make Contact With Your Ex After A Break Up

If you’re trying to get your ex back you probably already know that making contact with them isn’t easy. People often contact their ex in the wrong way and make the situation worse. You need to be subtle in your initial approach to them. To begin with give them space and leave it a few weeks before contacting them.

This will give time for any animosity in the relationship to pass over. The best way to make the original contact with them would either be a simple email or text message. People often miss or don’t read emails so I think a text message would be better. Most people check their phone much more often that their emails and this is why a text message is better.

Keep the message simple, just ask them how they are. If they reply then just take things as they come and when you feel the time’s right, ask them to meet as friends. If they don’t respond to your message then wait a day or two before sending another. If you send too many messages you will look needy and this isn’t attractive.

When some people don’t get a response within the first hour they lose the plot and start sending more messages. Once your ex finds the one solitary message from you on their phone it’s enough for them to realize that you want to speak to them. Lots of messages will tell them that you’re desperate.

If after a week you’ve sent a few message and your ex still hasn’t answered you need to make a phone call. This should be your last shot at trying to speak with your ex. If you don’t get hold of them and they don’t call back then you should take the hint that they’re avoiding you and move on gracefully. there’s no point in putting yourself through the pain of continually contacting your ex, it would be better to just accept that it’s over.

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NLP Skills: The Way To Anchor Valuable Resource States

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) supplies a whole range of approaches and methods for effecting change in both your life and the lives of loved ones and everyone else too. If you exercise your NLP skills ongoingly, then you will begin to find that the quality of your relationships and your interactions with other people will improve significantly. Additionally, your NLP skills will help you to be equipped to do things much better and faster.

The subject of this article is resource states, as talked about in the context of NLP skills. Imagine you could wave a metaphorical magic wand and feel any way you wish to feel, as soon as you like. How good would that be!

There are probably countless instances when you would like to be in more effective control of your emotions, but as yet you have not been able to master this skill. For example, a lot of people are very scared of public-speaking. We do not even have to be in the situation. Simply thinking about it can easily bring us out into a cold sweat. We recall occasions when we have been anxious in front of others previously, and we might also use our imaginations to think about all the things that might go awry. And you know what, we are not wrong.

Actually, this is a great example of how skilled we are at state induction. It is something that we have practised over and over, and have got it down to a fine art. However, the resource state we produce is counter-productive.

So, what kind of emotional state would be useful in this circumstance? You would probably like to be peaceful and self-confident. Well, you do already know what it is like to be like this. All you have to do, as previously in negative situations, is to recall all the times when you felt peaceful and self-confident and make it as real as you can. Recall everything about it, from how you was standing, how you were breathing, how you felt, what you noticed and what you heard back then.

Now, if you are imagining that you can’t do this because you have not felt this way previously, then envision how a person who is calm and self-confident would stand, breathe and feel. Maybe this is a person you admire for being this way. When you have achieved the desired state, ramp it up to make it as vivid and appealing as possible. This is where one of your other NLP skills comes into play. This is called anchoring. In this case, an anchor is a trigger for the state change. So, when you are fully experiencing the state such as calm and confident, that you want to re-induce in the future, you could, for example, scratch the back of your neck or squeeze together the thumb and index finger of your right hand; it is your choice. In this way, the chosen action becomes part of the calm and confident state. So, when you do the trigger action again, for example, as you think about or enter the situation where you would previously have been nervous, you naturally enter the desired resource state.
You are almost certainly now recognizing the importance of practising the NLP skills of creating resource states and anchoring. These are NLP techniques that you can apply to all areas of your life. Of course, the benefit of perfecting these skills is that the resulting states will greatly boost your communication skills and have a good impact on the other people that you come into contact with.

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