Memory Minders

Stimulating Enrichment Services
to Enhance Memory & Wellness

Remember to Exercise!

How do you like to exercise? Some like a fitness class with the socialization and direction it provides. Others like a more solitary pursuit. Some are more flexible in their approach while others have a firm schedule they follow. Regardless of how you do it, it’s important to remember to exercise.

There’s a wealth of information on the impact of exercise on our minds and memories as well as the obvious impact it has on our overall wellness. Those with a variety of neurological diseases and impairments find exercise increases strength, improves endurance, and minimizes symptoms. Individuals with memory concerns find it can improve overall memory as well as physical function as they age.

There’s really no reason to delay, it’s time to make exercise a priority in our lives starting now! When we remember to exercise we assist our bodies and minds to age as well as possible. The sooner we do it and make it a daily habit, the better we’ll feel and function now and in the future.

Here a few tips to help us all with our own exercise goals this #SummerToRemember:

  1. Get outside! Often exercising outside doesn’t feel like exercise, more like fun!
  2. Make it a habit. Go for a walk every morning or evening, join a regular class, schedule it into your calendar-whatever you need to do to make it a habit.
  3. Use what’s available. We don’t need special equipment to exercise-walk, do strength exercises with soup cans or your own body weight, or swim at the local pool.
  4. Get cleared and if necessary, seek professional help. If you have any medical or health issues, get the okay from your doctor to begin a new exercise regimen. If you haven’t exercised in a while or just want to have a professional get you started, seek help from a physical therapist or licensed trainer. It’ll get you started off well on your exercise habit!
  5. Listen to your body. As expected, new exercises will make us sore as we use our muscles in different ways. But extreme or continued pain, inflammation or weakness are signs to rest and/or see your doctor if not improved with rest.

Let’s remember to exercise our bodies this #SummerToRemember. It will help our bodies, our brains, our memory and all those summer memories we’re making!

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Your Future Brain Will Thank You!

We don’t think about exercising our brains as much as our bodies, but we should.

In order to age well, we not only need to take care of our bodies, but also pay attention to maintaining our brains, too. Studies have shown those who stay mentally engaged retain cognitive function longer than those who don’t exercise their minds. This week in our #SummerToRemember series, let’s explore ways to stay mentally sharp.

How do you exercise your brain? In our middle years, we have numerous mental challenges bombarding our brains all day long. We long for the day when we can physically and mental relax a bit in retirement. But that attitude can lead to golden years of lackluster cognitive function. In order to have sharp minds now AND later, we need to stimulate our minds daily, no matter our age.

Retirees may feel they deserve a break-as well they do. However, if we choose to not engage in mentally challenging activities as we age, we will lose the ability to think and function at a high level. It’s the ‘use it or lose it’ adage that applies to both physical and mental ability. When we exercise our brains, we then have more brain power to call upon when needed. It’s that simple.

When life shifts into retirement or a different season of life, how can we continue to challenge ourselves? By being creative!

Daily life offers a plethora of choices and options to stimulate our minds, but are we capitalizing on them? Whether it’s working, raising a family, juggling both children and parents, caring for grandchildren, or just managing our aging lives, we all have choices. How we choose to spend our time truly matters.

Are we engaging mentally in something that stimulates our brains or do we choose easier, more passive ways of spending our days? Are we using our time wisely or taking the path of least resistance to just get by? What we choose will make a difference in our mental capacity later in life. If we always choose the easy path and don’t challenge ourselves mentally, we’ll have less ability to do so later.

Let’s pick the road less travelled as Robert Frost put it. Let’s do simple things like take a different route or figure it out without relying on GPS. Let’s do the math in our head instead of using a calculator. Let’s create a new recipe instead of making the same old thing for dinner. Let’s try a new game, read a different type of book, join a new club or make a new friend. All these simple choices can make a world of difference in how our brain functions now and when we’re older.

The added benefit of challenging ourselves mentally is the good feelings it evokes. Trying something new or different feels uncomfortable at first. But after a while, we settle in, find our groove and eventually can take pride in even attempting something outside our box. Endorphins are released and happier, more satisfying feelings result. WIN, WIN, WIN!!

Give it whirl. Try something new, step out of your normal routine and stimulate your brain more than usual. Do it today, tomorrow and the next day so your future self will thank you.  Make it a #SummerToRemember by challenging yourself mentally!

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Identify your Memory Techniques

Long summer days and nights bring fun, warmth, and many memories in the making. Capturing these memories can be as elusive as containing a firefly on a breezy, summer evening. As we continue our #SummerToRemember series, let’s dig into which techniques are best to record all our moments.

We all have our go-to memory techniques that typically work. But what about when they don’t?  A new friend tried to recall another person’s name she thought we may both know. It really bothered her when she couldn’t remember the woman’s first name. We laughed at how we knew she’d eventually think of it and she did–about an hour later, as is often the case.

We don’t always know how our unique memory works, just that it does (or sometimes doesn’t)! Typically, we try to associate or write things down. Others capture moments in pictures for posterity and prompt recollections later. These are some of my favorites as well as verbal repetition. I too never used to think much about HOW I remembered, but now I do.

Studying memory in depth and applying specific techniques in my own life has shown I benefit from my go-to favorites but also using many techniques in tandem. I’m a visual and auditory person. I prefer these avenues of taking in information as opposed to being more hands-on and tactile. To that end, visual and auditory memory techniques like visualization and written and verbal repetition are my go-to techniques.

I also benefit from a heavy dose of visual association. When traveling, I like to see the map. I recognize visual landmarks and can typically remember where I was and who I was talking to when visually recalling a venue. All of this plays into my strengths and aids in making memories.

My daughter has a great memory for the golf courses she plays. Since I’m often watching her play, we’ll discuss various holes and I recall them best by visualizing the landmarks of each. First, I need to pay attention, but as we go over it, she’ll mention a visual cue and then I know what hole she’s referencing. I don’t remember like she does, but the visual cues help. If that doesn’t work, I refer to the notes I take as she plays. The different techniques blend together and ultimately, assist my memory.

How do you best remember? Is it by visual cues or associations? Do you like to hear things, take notes or pictures? This week, let’s dig into HOW we remember.

Your challenge for this week is to think about how you best like to receive information because then this will be the best way to also recall information. Are you more visual, auditory or tactile? Do you like to see, hear or do things to remember? Once we identify this about ourselves, we can use memory techniques that fit with our strengths and remember more this #SummerToRemember!

For more in-depth resources on memory, check out the Academy subscription service or contact me for a memory wellness presentation for your group in the future!  Let’s pay attention to how we remember and capture more of our memorable summer moments!

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Capture Summer Memories

It’s a year of firsts and lasts for us with two growing teens and an aging family, causing me to hold onto all those memories. Wanting to enhance my own memories and help educate others on memory issues are both part of the impetus behind our #SummerToRemember series. No matter our season of life, we all want to capture our precious memories. But how?

When asked for memory tips my answer is always the same: pay attention. It’s as easy and as complicated as that. In a society where instant gratification and multitasking are praised as virtues, remembering well relies on honing the skill of focused attention.

Nothing we experience can ever move from short term to long term memory correctly if it isn’t paid attention to in the first place. How many times do we catch ourselves wondering or asking for something to be repeated because we missed it the first time? It happens to me WAY more than I’d like to admit! But it does happen.

Our attention span has shrunk to mere single digit seconds. If we don’t get our point across quickly, we’re either interrupted or put on the back burner of someone else’s attention. I’m guilty of this too. But I also try to be cognizant of when it’s happening. Now, I not only catch myself but others’ lack of attention. Once we’re aware of our waning attention we see in others, too.

So what’s the magical path to focused attention and preserved memories? This, my friends, we each need to find on our own. Some (today’s entire generation under 30) use pictures to chronicle their lives. This is fine but it can cause us to miss the presence of a moment by attempting to get the perfect pic. Some try to hone their attention by practicing mindfulness-a process of being still and mindfully paying attention to the world around us while not attempting to manipulate it. Others use meditation; seeking to forge a higher sense of concentration and stress relief. Still others pray, seek help, or practice focus building with a combination of the above or another way entirely.

There is no one universally applicable path to honing our attention. Over the last few years, I’ve purposefully chosen to be more present in everything and with everyone. I’ve had good and not so good moments with this process, but it has brought an increasing awareness to my attention span (or at times, lack thereof).

I tend to move and desire to get things done quickly. But I’ve learned to slow my pace, take life in and not try to control things so much. I try to be aware of when my mind begins to wander, my pace quickens or am attempting too many things at once. It’s a bit outside my comfort zone, but it’s helped me focus on what is important in any given moment and also remember more.

Last week our challenge was to identify what was valuable that we wanted to remember most this summer. This week’s challenge is to identify what’s influencing or hampering our attention span.

Are we multitasking more than we should? Easily distracted by too much in your environment? Let’s use what we identified as valuable last week to help identify what gets in the way of paying attention to said thing or person. How can we shift our focus from what’s not important to what is?

I challenge us all to think about our attention and create strategies to focus on the important each day. It’s the next step toward making this a #SummerToRemember!

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Coming Soon…

It’s almost here, can you feel it? Maybe it’s something we aren’t happy about…the impending loss of a loved one, or an unwanted life change. Or maybe it’s new and exciting…a wedding, graduation, or move into the future we’ve been anticipating and planning. Often the waiting and build up can be full of worry, eagerness, and frustration, but one thing life always brings is memories.

How to make and keep memories in each of these anticipated moments can be lost in the experience itself. Often big events can happen so fast or are so full of emotion we miss making memories in the moment. Let’s not miss these memories, because it’s these little and big moments of life that make each of us unique. Even if all you’re anticipating is a relaxing summer, let’s not miss any of our upcoming memorable moments. Let’s instead make it a Summer to Remember!

On the blog this summer, we’ll discuss all those moments that may be coming (or even some that may have already passed) and how to remember them well. It will truly be a Summer to Remember! We are all at different stages of life. Some of us have aging parents or spouses, growing and busy children, or both! But we all have aging brains and memories, too. It’s my goal to encourage all of us, no matter our stage of life, to capture and remember our moments well.

But I would love your help, too!

Please give me some feedback on what you need and would find most beneficial from our #SummerToRemember blog series. Reply to this email or leave a comment on how we could help you the most. Some ideas are:

  • What bothers you the most about your or a loved one’s memory?
  • What additional resources could you use to make it a summer to remember?
  • What memory encouragement do you wish for?
  • Any other ideas on how we can assist you in making your moments memorable?

Life is full of moments. Some are mundane and routine. But even in the small moments of life, we can garner nuggets of memories. Even more important are the big, anticipated moments we want to hold onto. I look forward to sharing some simple strategies and encouragement in the next few months to cause us all to make it a summer to remember. Please chime in here with a comment or reply, on Twitter, or Facebook with how we can make it most beneficial for you.

Let’s grab hold of all our memories, make them truly memorable and a #SummerToRemember!

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