5 Creative Exercises To Flex Your Brain Muscles

When you work in an environment as creatively demanding as a digital marketing or design and development based company, your ‘creative juices’ tend to dry out quicker than you’d like or expect. After all, coming up with new ideas to implement in projects isn’t always as easy and fast a process as we’d want it to be, even if we are motivated to complete the task before the given deadline. Our brain needs as much rest and refreshment as the rest of our body. Research shows that powerful brain exercises not only help stretch your brain muscles but also save you from a bunch of physical and mental health problems.

In this blog, we take a look at 5 different creative exercises you can do to flex your brain muscles so that not only your creativity is refreshed, but your health also benefits.

1. Come up with New Ways to Perform Old Tasks

Sometimes all we need to do is change our creative lens. Choose a different route to performing a familiar task. Make a checklist to motivate you to do things, brainstorm your own ideas on paper before researching new materials on the internet before writing a blog, take a different route to work, ask for people’s opinions before implementing your ideas. Just bring a novel change to perform previous activities that make your brain think differently than what it usually does.

2. Socialize

Talking to new people or catching up with old friends is a good way to give yourself some break from your never-ending routine. Having strong connections with different people can give you a mental and emotional boost. Studies show a direct correlation between isolation and depression. A good social life indicates sources for social support, combating depression and stress, and stimulates intellectual and creative thought processes.

Besides, meeting new people always results in learning in one way or another. Experts report that people who have a good social circle suffer from lesser memory problems later in life. Hence, you need other people in your life to keep your mental health intact.

3. Take a Break from Social Media/Play a Game

As useful as it is in this modern world, social media also has an equally negative impact on our health especially that of our brain. It’s important that you take regular breaks from your ‘socials’ as you progress toward a healthier lifestyle. Instead of this, you can engage in brain-stimulating games, read a fictional book, try out a new activity, or just take a nap.

Reports show that doing puzzles or playing board games can be a productive way to refresh your mind. But even if that’s not the case, there’s no doubt it will be fun and once you do have fun your brain will automatically feel better.

4. Research and Learn New Things

When you’re tired of focusing on the same demanding tasks, close your browser tabs, keep your phone away and search for new topics and research on them. Challenge your brain to learn new things. The more you learn, the more your mind opens up and the better your ideas become the next time you get to work. Save reading materials regularly and take time out from your routine to focus on them.

Try out your hand at cooking by exploring new recipes, adding new ingredients to old recipes, making a new dish, or creating a new dessert. The culinary world is one of the most creative and innovative fields out there and it might just be the inspiration you need in your life.

5. Bring Active Changes in Your Life

Sometimes all we need is to change our routine to make ourselves feel better. Following the same checklist, every single day can start feeling suffocating after a while. Introduce something different in your life. Introduce simple exercises such as walking, jogging, yoga, or a bike ride can make your nerve connections stronger, making your brain sharper and better able to perform difficult tasks. Moreover, with exercise our heart rate increases which ends up pumping oxygen to our brain. This process also results in brain flexibility and the release of hormones; the former encourages new connections to form between cells in important cortical areas and the latter provides a great environment for cell growth.

Moreover, you can clean up your room or your workspace, eat something different from your usual preferences, invest in getting a new wallpaper, go for walks in the park, start that blog you’ve been delaying for so long, or just do something as tiny as changing the color of your sticky notes. As long as it’s different and feels good, you must be doing something right. And even if it doesn’t feel good, you will have a good idea of what you don’t want to do in the future.

Change should be an active part of our lives. When we get out of the habit of doing something repeatedly, we become motivated and excited to perform tasks. Bringing new and novel changes in life is what stimulates our brain to do things differently.

While our body freshens up with resting, our brain freshens up after being challenged. And performing all the tasks mentioned above can do wonders, not only for your creativity but also your long-term mental health. Make sure you’re implementing most of these, if not all, and bring a positive change to your lifestyle.