Kick Start Your Brain

Are you trying to kickstart your brain into high gear for school, a new job, a personal business, or just because? Here are some things I've found to work very well when trying to train my brain for the next adventure in my life. They don't work for everyone and sure I could go deep into a scientific explanation of the cognizant behaviors of learning, but honestly, none of us have time for that. So try these below and I promise you won't be disappointed.

I want to enhance my artist skills:

1. Pick an item in your house and draw it from all angles, experiment with shading, coloring, and detail. (Examples: A soda can, a hat, a cleaning bottle etc.)

2.Go to #HobbyLobby or Michaels and fill a basket up with random unique items. Then use a photo from #Pinterest or instagram or anywhere really to draw inspiration to create whatever your brain conjures up. Don't be afraid to grab items you don't use around the house to add to it.

I want to get ready to learn a difficult topic for work or school:

This one is my favorite. I often find myself looking for new challenges, so when that happens I need to be able to prepare my mind for absorbing large amounts of information daily. Some people are note takers so they can simply jot down everything and retain it. I don't understand the phenomena, but whatever works for you!

Personally, I've used my creative side to help me better prepare for learning new technical skills:

1. Learning a new instrument, or playing an instrument if you already somewhat know how. Recently I picked up the violin and it hasn't disappointed me in the "challenging" department. Growing up I learned how to play the piano. After a while I started playing by ear, but I pretty much stopped after elementary school. Now, I have chosen to learn the violin, an instrument that requires me to focus and multitask.

2. If you are like me and possess a smidgen of rhythm, try learning a new dance. Thanks be to god for Youtube, you can search for the choreography to a song you like and slow the video down to teach yourself the moves. Practice each week and train your brain to visualize/remember the dance without moving your body.

3.Learn a new language! I started learning Russian in college and had to stop once my physics courses started to overlap. The wonderful thing about learning a language paired up with the sciences is that you are training your brain on understanding unfamiliar characters.

Lastly, Practice makes perfect! So keep going!