Train your brain and live longer.*

“A body at rest tends to remain at rest”,the old saying goes.  The same can be said for the brain.  When you do the same thing over and over again, it affects you.  Falling in to a disliked or boring routine can render you brain-dead, an automaton who lives for Fridays and hates Mondays.

What kind of existence is that? I don’t buy into that psychology.  Every day is a gift, to be heralded, valued and used.

I keep my brain active by being on the lookout for learning something new.  “Oh, Dahlia,” you might say, “as a woman of a certain age, with children and a husband, you’re much too old and busy to learn something new.”

Oh, but dear reader, how I disagree.  It’s a pleasure to wake up in the morning with a new skill under your belt.

Knitting, crocheting, bracelet-making, origami, WordPress, sewing, gardening, fantasy football, re-upholstering dining room chairs – these are all skills that you can learn and have fun doing so.  Why not take some time out of your busy television-watching schedule (where you are viewing other people’s creativity) and do some creating for yourself?

But learning something new?  That takes work, time, dedication.  It also puts your brain into high working gear, which in turn may give you the joie de vivre that we a  look for.

For example, earlier this year, I worked with my daughter on making bracelets.  They were pretty simple things, a little plastic rope, some beads and a dab of super-glue.  Not quite so simple and easy if you needed to figure out a pattern that wouldn’t render the bracelet too large or too small. Or to tie a knot that wouldn’t slip apart when you stretched the bracelet to slide on your arm.  Even the “look” of the bracelet:  did you make something you would want to wear?

Between the online tutorials and our experimentation, I think I learned quite a bit.  Now I can add “bracelet-making hot mama” to my list of “hot mama” accomplishments.

What have you  accomplished today?  Make a promise to learn something new this weekend…and put it in the comments.

Keep that brain working. Learn something new everyday.

*may or may be true, but if it is…you don’t want to miss out, right?