12 Surprising And Productive Brain Exercises

Dorothea Brande was an American writer and editor, well known for her books Wake Up and Live and Becoming a Writer (a useful resource for writers, by the way).

In Wake Up and Live, she suggests twelve mental exercises to make your mind keener and more flexible. These exercises are meant to pull you out of your usual habits and to put you in situations that will demand resourcefulness and creative problem-solving. Brande argues that only by testing and stretching yourself can you develop mental strength.

Even apart from the goals of creativity and mental flexibility, Brande's exercises make sense from a happiness perspective. One thing is clear: novelty and challenge bring happiness. People who stray from their routines, try new things, explore, and experiment tend to be happier than those who don't. Of course, as Brande herself points out, novelty and challenge can also bring frustration, anxiety, confusion, and annoyance along the way; it's the process of facing those challenges that brings the "atmosphere of growth" so important to happiness. (It's the First Splendid Truth: to be happy, you must think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.)

I have to confess that I've tackled just a few of Brande's mental exercises - #6 and #10 - and only because they come naturally to me, which is hardly in the spirit of the exercises. I keep toying with the idea of trying the others. Maybe I'll do them for Happiness Project II.

Here are Dorothea Brande's twelve mental exercises. Note: she wrote these in 1936, so you need to adapt of few of them.

1. Spend an hour each day without saying anything except in answer to direct questions, in the midst of the usual group, without creating the impression that you're sulking or ill. Be as ordinary as possible. But do not volunteer remarks or try to draw out information.

2. Think for 30 minutes a day about one subject exclusively. Start with five minutes.

3. Write a letter without using the words I, me, mine, my.

4. Talk for 15 minutes a day without using I, me, my, mine.

5. Write a letter in a "successful" or placid tone. No misstatements, no lying. Look for aspects or activities that can be honestly reported that way.

6. Pause on the threshold of any crowded room and size it up.

7. Keep a new acquaintance talking about himself or herself without allowing him to become conscious of it. Turn back any courteous reciprocal questions in a way that your auditor doesn't feel rebuffed.

8. Talk exclusively about yourself and your interests without complaining, boasting, or boring your companions.

9. Cut "I mean" or "As a matter of fact" or any other verbal mannerism out of your conversation.

10. Plan two hours of a day and stick to the plan.

11. Set yourself twelve tasks at random: e.g., go twenty miles from home using ordinary conveyance; go 12 hours without food; go eat a meal in the unlikelist place you can find; say nothing all day except in answer to questions; stay up all night and work.

12. From time to time, give yourself a day when you answer "yes" to any reasonable request.

If you'd like to read a more lengthy explanation of the twelve disciplines, or about Brande's explanation for these exercises, go here and search for Chapter 11 - Twelve Disciplines.

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you'd like to take a look at Gretchen Rubin's personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email her at grubin, then the "at" sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than "Resolutions Chart" in the subject line.

Comments

[DynamicMentalFitness]

Wonderful article - throughly enjoyed it! PRICELESS advice.

It brings to mind one brain training exercise I use that is both a face-saver and self-controller at the same time, and not to mention quite revealing when it comes to sizing up the odd little impulses rising and falling inside us that make us want to blurt things out, step over others in conversation, and speak things we immediately wish we had the power to have avoided speaking out loud.

I call it the 3 Second Pause (or longer if you want a real test of will).

For a whole day, consciously pause 3 seconds before answering anyone in a conversation, or even initiating a conversation. That brief pause gives room enough to consider whether a thing should be said, the motivation for saying it, the possible outcomes and results of doing so, and to consider the value of not saying anything at all.


T. Lavon Lawrence
Mental Fitness Trainer, Author
www.dynamicmentalfitness.com

[ruthinking]

go through the rest of your life without saying "no problem" and say "you are welcome" instead,.

[copperblaze22]

I can do the list in about a week, but the real question is is how many of these things are possible with parents with children?

[VikingKing]

Renewing the mind is mostly a matter of faith!
http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/grab-a-box-of-kleenex/

[hark]

And the empirical studies that confirm the effectiveness of these suggestions can be found . . . where?

Not to be entirely negative. I would expect that if you spend a fair amount of time engaged in critical thinking that your brain will respond with greater ability to think.

Physical, mental exercise - they do seem to work. You get better at mental activities when you spend time doing them.

[Trinite]

Thought, thinking, is good. The food of the brain.
Silence, no thought or idea, breaches the barriers of being and opens the soul to the Transinfinite, the Absolute Ground of Being, the Undivided Instant of Wisdom of the Super-Intellect which delivers to the soul the Experiential, Instantaneous Knowledge of all things.

[afgail]

No thought or idea leads to...... instantaneous knowledge of all things? What a load of hooey.

[BannedInBoston]

13. From time to time, give yourself a day when you answer "no" to any reasonable request....

[VikingKing]

http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/the-dying-art-of-thinking/

[MiddleRoadLiberal]

Some of number eleven seem a little unhealthy. Twelve is similar to the new "Yes Man" movie. One of them should be to do the exact opposite of what you'd normally do for one day, like George in that "Seinfeld" episode.

I will definitely try some of these.

[waitforme]

(See Part I below.)

In particular, I have been noticing, then watching, an increasing reliance on certain 'tonings', not words but the ways words are toned. Take the super-popular use these days of making a statement sound like a question. I heard it initially as a demand for reassurance -- it seems to ask that the listener respond, 'Uh, huh', 'Yeah, I know' or 'I am listening'. (Are people more afraid these days that the 'listener) has gone away in spirit? ARE people, as listeners, in fact more distracted?) Nowadays it sounds more like a way to be part of a pop trend in speaking. (Does this come from the Valley Girl shtick? -- Ah, Frank Zappa, late excellent musician?, but if I could only get my hands on you? now?, for popularizing it? Y'knowwhatImean?)

(I actually saw a comment on a blog the other day, with a STATEMENT at the end of which the writer had added a question mark, just as if it belonged there; that was the first time I had seen pop sound -- which I'd thought was mostly unconscious -- translated into writing.)

[waitforme]

(My first part of this comment is missing for some reason. I wish I knew what I said so I could add it again. -- Since it was just as brilliant and useful as the second. Oh well, maybe the world will get along without my pearls.)

[Eric-in-the-Red]

My pet peeve word is "like", which I use too often. I hear it more in the conversation of younger people, but often enough in people of my age, to the extent that I believe I'm in a sea of stereotypical "Valley Girls." When I listen to Barack Obama, he rarely uses this word. As do many accomplished orators.

[woodcut]

In my Italian family, we often talked over each other, or all at once!
2 years ago I noticed I interrupted people a lot, so I set about to change. It worked.

Her ideas are good, & the process also teaches that we control our brains, not the other way around. That takes your self to great places.
GOOD LUCK TO ALL.

[magicmary]

Interrupting people should be classified as a mental disorder. The person being interupted feels as though the person they are talking to doesn't give a crap about what they are saying. This may be true, but you still should be polite and find a way to just excuse yourself from the conversation or wrap it up. People should practice remembering the point they would like to make and then make it at the appropriate time. I think my mom has ADA and so I'm particularly sensitive about this.

[research]

sometimes the group wants someone to interrupt.

Some people will bore everybody to death.

[DragonMama]

I dare you to try this with someone with Aspberger's Syndrome sometime. See you sometime next decade.

[NoToGOP08]

here is just one exercise - use it well [brain]

[ManWithGoldShoes]

I try to make predictions of coworkers behavior based on their previous actions and the mood. I'm usually spot on. So I have to find another game to play. So i started reading and posting on this website.

[aweissnet]

Hope that works out for you. Are you getting smarter?

Maybe you'll become clairvoyant, and you can begin to predict responses to articles ... and then onto one of the psychic lines and make $20 a minute (I was amazed to see what they charged). That's online too. You'll never have to leave your computer :-)

[mathme]

I have to admit that I say, "I mean" quite a lot. It does work well as a simple transition to a clarification, though. Maybe I'll start saying "to wit" instead, that will make me seem smarter, too.

[lechatnoir]

Thanks a lot for this!

"The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we can see, we cannot think." Thomas Merton, as quoted in Adbusters.

[magicmary]

I'm a pagan but love Thomas Merton! Also, I agree. Though I'm addicted the internet has so much info you can dig into so fast that it has added to the chaos and clutter in my brain.

I like to sit with my eyes closed and think of No Thing. That helps!