Maintaining your mental health is a huge part of healthy living; keeping your brain sharp can help you at work, home, school and through a myriad of everyday functions. The best part is that keeping your mind active is often easy, and there are many free, challenging and sometimes fun brain exercises available.
Switching Hands
Most people have one dominant hand for daily activities such as eating, brushing teeth and writing. The right-dominant people have a well-developed left brain and the left-handed folks have a stronger right brain. Using your non-dominant hand will help you develop the motor skills of the other half of your brain.
Computer Games
While they may seem childish and distracting at first, online strategy games can help develop and exercise your brain. Titles such as Bookworm and Text Twist tap into your language arts skills, while Bejeweled and Jewel Quest focus on logic, pattern, planning and organization skills.
Board Games
If you don't have it, borrow it. Or play online. Classic games such as Scrabble and Boggle develop your word skills as well as your ability to mentally organize random items into patterns, while games such as backgammon, checkers and chess put your strategic skills to the test.
Puzzles
Puzzles such as crosswords, word searches, and sudoku are great ways to exercise your brain. All focus on observation, logic, reasoning and deduction. Crosswords and word searches can also help you develop your vocabulary.
Use Your Senses
Stimulate your brain by depriving it of a sense or by using multiple senses at once. Perhaps try getting dressed with your eyes closed or using only visual cues, rather than vocals, to communicate with another person. Combine your sense of hearing with your sense of smell by simultaneously listening to music and smelling flowers. Combine sight and feeling by observing something--clouds, trees, animals--and molding clay at the same time.
Break Routine
Force your brain to think a little more and organize a bit differently by straying from your usual routines. Take a different route to work or school, rearrange your morning or evening schedule or shop at a different grocery store to teach your brain to adapt to new situations.
