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Have you reached the “reading glasses” years?
Are you always forgetting where you put those glasses?
Surveys show that one of the biggest fears people have about aging is loss of mental faculties.
Many people believe there is nothing they can do to work on improving memory instead of losing it. When we’re over fifty, and we forget a phone number or we forget where we parked the car – it’s so easy to start thinking that it’s game over for mental alertness.
These are questions that now directly affect my life just as they are starting to affect the oncoming wave of aging boomers. I was born during WW II, and so I’m a little older than this wave. Which means these questions are definitely not theoretical any more.
I started seriously asking what we could expect as we entered the second fifty years of life. The common wisdom is that we will start to fail, and that many of us will lose our mental alertness.
I wanted answers!
- Is loss of mental functioning inevitable?
- How much loss can we expect?
- When can we expect it?
- At what rate will we deteriorate?
- Is there anything we can do to slow the deterioration process down?
- Is there anything we can do to become mentally more healthy?
- Is there anything we can do to improve memory instead of lose it?
Well, what I found is much happier than the common wisdom. The truth is, common wisdom is wrong on this point.
Loss of mental faculties is not inevitable.
See some great tips on keep a sharp mind here
There is plenty of information available to understand how our memories work, and why we don't need to panic when we forget our glasses or a phone number.
And yes, we can work successfully at improving memory. Yes we can work at maintaining mental alertness throughout the second fifty years of life.
And yes, just like we can expect improvement with physical exercises, we can expect improvement when we do our mental aerobics as well.
Information is the first step to understanding and compensating. See this page about understanding memory.
Set up your own brain gym
In your brain gym you can do mental aerobics to improve memory and keep mentally young.
There are plenty of handy mental aerobics tips and exercises available online and in bookstores - brain gym games, exercises and books on these topics:
- Mind and memory tune-up exercises to keep your mind in gear
- Tips on improving your memory for everyday tasks
- Take fun tests that show your learning styles and preferences so you can maximize your learning efficiency
- Run through checklists to help assess the significance of any memory lapses you might be having
- Learn to adapt your habits and learning environment
- Run through tips on helping to decide if someone should still be driving
These tips work for us and the generation older than us too!
You can also use these handy tips if you have concerns about people in the generation older than you, perhaps people you are helping to care for, like elderly parents. The happy news is that people in their eighties and nineties are finding them helpful along with people in their fifties, sixties and seventies.
And that bodes well for your mental alertness far into your future!
Would you like some specific memory tips to help you remember those glasses and keys?
Go to my Memory Tips page for specific tips for improving memory
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