When you are reading, there is a lot of information to remember—from characters' names to the sequence of events in the story. You may even be reading a mystery that has you trying to interpret or decipher information on your own, requiring you to remember everything that has happened in the book from start to finish. People who read literature also have an edge when it comes to interpersonal skills. Aside from the fact that reading will give you something to talk about in conversations with other people, studies have shown that people who read have more emotional intelligence than those who don't.
Reading improves your ability to pick up on other people's facial cues because it provides you with a larger reference point to decode another person's expressions. Also, reading gives you a chance to subconsciously practice empathy. So not only does reading make you smarter, it can also make you a better person.
To learn more, here are 17 benefits of building the reading habit and here are 47 great books you can grab for free through the Kindle Unlimited program. A lot of people think they have to be up-to-date with all of the latest news—usually to feel like they know about everything that is going on. However, any knowledge that is acquired through chaotic consumption when your brain is on information overload rarely adds value to your intelligence. Subscribing to filtered news services gives you a better perspective on current events and topics only in areas of your interest.
Don't waste your time taking in irrelevant information just so you don't suffer from FOMO. Make sure you are spending your time learning material that you can apply and benefit from in the long run. There is an advantage to surrounding yourself with like-minded people. But if you want to get smarter, hang out with people who are more intelligent than you are.
Create connections with people who inspire you, and those you deem to be exceptionally successful. The diversity of opinions and expertise sharpens your brain. In order to improve yourself, you have to be exposed to environments that are challenging for you, and that give you the opportunity to grow and learn.
Stop wasting your time with people who hold you back or make you feel bad about yourself. Being selective about who you spend your time with becomes increasingly strategic with age, as it has been said that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. If the people who surround you impact you so deeply, you should learn to attract others you admire, and phase out toxic relationships in your life.
You can implement this idea by finding people online who share a mutual desire for self-improvement. To get started, here are three articles you can check out:. Doing something new every day will give you a wide range of perspectives to pull from in your small, everyday areas of specialization. For example, people with naturalist intelligence like to analyze, and manipulate the things in their environment.
Doing new things helps you learn, which then makes you more readily adaptable to new circumstances. Having a wide range of knowledge of unconventional situations promotes innovation by inspiring you to think outside of the box and giving you examples to follow. Doing new things deepens your character and makes other people look up to you as being an inspiring person.
Knowing you have the ability to do more things will also make you more confident. Doing unfamiliar tasks will stimulate your brain and make you smarter. Here is a list of over things to learn beginning today. From to , a pair of researchers studied 31 middle school special needs students.
Sixteen of the students were given their typical math instruction, while the remainder of the students went through a week chess training program in addition to their regular math instruction. This suggests that playing games keeps your brain sharp and helps you comprehend new information better.
This type of list-making boosts your happiness and confidence, which are two components of intelligence. Intelligence is often seen as a predetermined trait, which limits people's motivation to try to change their own level of intelligence. However, studies have shown that there is a link between IQ and happiness beginning in childhood and spanning across one's life. When it comes to confidence, if you have a healthy self-esteem, you will be more accepting of yourself.
Other people will be able to see this confidence, and will give you more credibility when you are talking about any given subject. Making a list of the things you have completed can act as a reminder of how far you have already come in whatever you are working on. This can keep you motivated to keep moving forward with your work and continue to learn. Scientists have proven that being bilingual boosts your intelligence. This means that learning a new language will improve your cognitive abilities.
It can have a significant effect on your brain, even improving your intelligence in areas that are not related to language and shielding you from dementia in old age. In fact, knowing two languages has been shown to delay the onset of dementia by five years, and knowing three languages delays it by 6.
Knowing four or more languages delays the onset of dementia by nearly a decade. When you learn a new language, you are exercising your brain in a way that uses every form of memory that you have. Think about it—when you learn a new language, you have to essentially learn a new dictionary of words, and the grammatical rules to put all of these words together.
You also have to use your muscles and motor skills to speak with the correct pronunciation—and you have to be able to do it quickly, instinctively, and without having to stop and figure out each translation. You need to know the words and understand the relationships between them. Once you are equipped with this knowledge, studies have shown that you will have an improved attention span, a better memory, and more self-control. When learning a new language, make sure to take on a growth mindset.
Pursue the challenges and aim to stretch beyond your capacity. To get started, here is a review of the 7 best language learning apps and software. This is one key step in the Feynman technique , a way to learn something faster and more efficiently. Researchers have found that students who are enlisted to tutor others work harder to fully comprehend the material, recall it correctly, and apply it to real-life situations better.
If you are learning not only for your own sake but to be able to explain the lessons to someone else, you need to have a firm grasp on the material. This may be why studies have found that first-born children tend to be more intelligent than their subsequent siblings, because they spend time teaching their younger siblings lessons they have already learned themselves. Also, getting feedback from a student further enhances one's learning.
A student's questions can inspire teachers to consider and explain t he material in ways they had not previously thought about. What's more, watching a student solve problems lets the teacher see their knowledge being put to use.
Mindfulness is the capacity to focus on the current moment without judgment. It is cultivated from daily meditation—doing some deep belly breaths brings more oxygen to your brain, slows your heart rate, and allows you to release thoughts of the past or future, bringing your entire self into the moment. Practicing mindfulness boosts your ability to make smarter decisions. When you are not present in the moment, you may be tempted to multi-task—and studies have found that people who allow themselves to get distracted by incoming email or phone calls at work had a to point decrease in their IQs.
What's more, multi-tasking can actually damage your brain. Those who switch their attention quickly from one thing to another have a lower brain density in the area of the brain that is responsible for empathy and cognitive and emotional control.
Check out this post for the right way to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life. Research shows that when people write their notes longhand, they retain information longer and can better grasp new ideas. Yes, it takes longer to write out notes instead of typing them, but taking this time to digest the material is critical. This means that students who write their notes rather than type them gain a better understanding of lesson materials.
When you are typing your notes, you are likely to record almost everything you hear without considering the meaning behind the words or processing the material. You're simply mindlessly transcribing what you hear, which does not require a lot of cognitive activity. Alternatively, when you take handwritten notes, you are unable to write down every word the teacher says. This forces you to listen, summarize the information, and list the key points.
Your brain has to stay engaged during this process of comprehending the new material, which helps you remember the information better in the long run. A neuroscientist revealed that people who play video games in moderation have better decision-making abilities and improved focus. Playing action video games helps improve your probabilistic inference, which is the ability to quickly infer the probability that an answer is correct when you have limited evidence.
This is a key factor in making decisions. This ability is used in several sensory and perceptual tasks, so people who play video games can transfer this skill to other areas of their lives.
Also, cognitive flexibility is not a fixed trait. It can be improved through fun learning tools such as playing video games.
Playing action video games in moderation can increase your performance in both sensory and perceptual tasks, even in ways that greatly differ from the tasks required in the game play. If you're really fond of games, here are memory games for adults that can help train your brain.
As the most commonly used stimulant in the world, caffeine has been recognized to help you become smarter. I've noticed that the more I focus on my mental development that I attract the same type of people. I carry books with me everywhere and that becomes a topic of discussion.
I go to escape rooms where I use logic to solve problems and find people interested in developing their mental capacity. I even find people online through Quora, and network with cold emails. This shouldn't be surprising, but many people underestimate just how much reading can influence and improve the mind. Well-read people aren't just articulate--they also have a vast pool of knowledge and an always-evolving mind.
Reading improves your vocabulary, expands your communication skills and develops your analytical abilities. You don't need to stick to self-help books or dry, scientific tomes either. The lack of sleep, relaxation, and excessive stress can diminish your brain's capacity.
The brain requires plenty of energy to function, so if you're exhausted all the time, your mind simply won't have the ability to learn and improve. Yes, there is such thing. Food is fuel for the body, but it does matter what kind of fuel you are using.
High nutrition foods work well to power up your brain. Walnuts are a great source of brain food, so is fish; tuna, mackerel, salmon contain rich, fatty acids that have been proven to help neurons function. Harvard did an amazing study on this exact topic titled, ' Nutritional Psychiatry: Your Brain on Food.
Your brain needs to face challenges to make progress. Once the brain realizes it's good at something, it stops trying, just like any one of us. The trick is to use your full potential and push your limits. Try brain games like memory games, Sudoku, word puzzles, and problem-solving games.
I love escape rooms that make you think on the fly, and under a timeline. These games will increase your pattern recognition, logic, and ability to process thought quickly. What might seem like playing and wasting time may be a thought workout for your brain. Taking notes or only writing down things or ideas is creating an extension of your mind. Your thoughts will be recorded, and the routine of writing them down will enable you to think more thoroughly and improve your way of thinking.
Intelligence is not just simple genetics. It's possible to train your brain and help it functioning at a more efficient level.
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