Development of the Mind

Here is a subject that is sure to get you thinking hard about, as developing the mind is one of the surest ways to a better life in every possible way. After all, it is the mind that controls everything the body does and since we can only create our own life using our physical body and the intelligence back of it, it makes sense to focus our efforts in that direction before all others.

So what exactly is development of this fabulous mind that so many of simply take for granted? What do we need to do and how long will it take?

Questions, Answers and More Questions

There are plenty of questions that need to be answered and unfortunately, the more questions we raise concerning our mental capabilities, the more questions we create. That's because we don't have all the answers yet!

But what we do know is that the mind is in some ways like a muscle in the body in that when we exercise it, just like a physical muscle it gets stronger. To exercise the mind entails using it to do more than we already do with it.

That generally means we have to discipline our thinking process (see: DisciplinedThinking.com) so that we start using all that mental power for our own good in stead of allowing the outside world to do our thinking for us. So if you spend most of your free time sitting in front of the TV letting all that junk flow into your head, you're effectively letting your mind get as out-of-shape as your body is probably getting!

Instead you need to challenge your mental faculties and make them work harder. That means doing things like solving difficult problems like doing puzzles, learning a new language, memorizing things like long lists of items or text from books or learning new skills.

The Practical Side of Mental Exercise

Of course it probably won't be very productive of your time just memorizing things and doing useless puzzles. There has to be an end result or goal you should aim for to make all that effort worthwhile in a physical sense as well as in a mental growth sense.

Memorizing lists has no great use unless you give it a purpose, such as learning to memorize a shopping list for example. That way, your effort has a purpose in developing your memory faculty while also making your shopping trip more fulfilling because you don't need to carry a written list and you still don't forget what you went out to get!

Leaning a new language can bring you a lot of satisfaction along with a vastly expanded vocabulary that you can use if and when you take your next vacation to a country where that language is spoken. This is an exercise that greatly enhances the mental capacity because it is literally learning a whole new set of communication rules and skills that you didn't have before.

Doing aimless puzzles may not have much use, but trying to figure out how to repair a broken appliance all by yourself is the kind of puzzle that can save you money while prolonging the useful life of a useful piece of equipment.

Likewise, doing aimless arithmetic calculations may serve no useful purpose, but applying them to doing your personal and household (and even business) accounts certainly has a highly meaningful purpose!

More Reading

So you can see that there are many ways in which to increase the mental capacity and capability by doing things that tax your mind to the extent that it is forced to learn new things and in doing so expands its overall abilities. This section of the site has several related articles that cover aspects of mental growth, so check out the titles below.