Five simple ways to help us think better

Neural pathways are like highways in the brain. They provide information flow and response by creating routes throughout the nervous system. The routes that we use more frequently, to sustain habits or perform repeated tasks, feel more comfortable because the signals travel along well-established pathways.  Signals flash through them easily like cars racing down the autobahn.

But, what we’re should be after are ways to stimulate new connections, to develop new neural pathways that will expand our brain, enhance our cognition, creativity and overall well-being.

Creating these new connections though can feel more like fighting through brush along a new mountain trail rather than speeding down the autobahn – after all our brain is expanding into new territory and finding new routes. With time, those pathways become smoother and more familiar, but the ongoing process of creating new brain connections can be interesting and enlightening.

Here are five ways to foster cross-talk in the brain and start building new neural pathways.

1. Use your non-dominant side. Move the mouse to the other side of your desk, hold your phone to your non-dominant ear, (seriously, we all have a favorite ear) sign your name with the opposite hand. This feels awkward sure, but is a good way to create new connections.

2. Move eyes back and forth. In a study led by Elizabeth Shrobe shifting your eyes back and forth for 30 seconds was shown to boost creativity by encouraging cross-talk between the brain’s hemispheres.

3. Blaze a new path. Change how you physically move through your life and it will change your brain. Drive home a new way from work. Move the furniture around, try a new exercise, hop on your non-dominant foot, sit in a new spot and look at the world from a new perspective. We are creatures of habit because habits come easy, they are familiar, but they do not help us grow. Do familiar things a new way and you’ll create greater connections.

4. Be unpredictable. Buy new foods at the grocery store, or cook the regular ingredients a new way. Travel – or at least get out of the hood every once-in-awhile. Try something you’ve never done. Read a book from a different genre. Learn a new language. Try things that stretch you a bit and you’ll be stretching your brain too and have a richer life experience.

5. Sharpen your senses.  Taste food with your eyes closed. Spend an hour listening and intuiting, but not talking. Close your eyes and walk around your house or outside (in a safe place or with a companion for safety) and relate only through your sense of smell and hearing. Many of us pull most of our information through our sight – literally how we look at the world influences how we live in it – but when we challenge ourselves to interact with the world through other, often under-utilized senses, we strengthen and cultivate new neural pathways.

I tried this exercise this a.m. by sniffing my way around the house. It was a fascinating  – and at times smelly — experience. When you try this one or any of these practices life become a bit bolder and more interesting, and you’ll even feel your brain getting stronger.