Let’s do a little test. Read the following set of numbers: 6, 5, 2, 9, 6, 4, 3, 5, 9, 3. Now close your eyes and see how many you can recall in the right order. How did you do? The average person may remember around six or seven, with the exceptional few getting them all. Yet sadly there are a lot of us who stumble after only two or three. One recent study demonstrated our lack of memory power by giving 500 people 2 minutes to draw their representation of a bicycle. Judging by the results, you’d think the participants were primary school children. But again sadly no, a lot of people just have bad memories (although some people just cant’t draw). I used to be one of the those people. Things like names, bicycles, dates, appointment times, and deadlines would never quite manage to sink into my memory but instead bounce off my eardrums and back into thin air. Thus my notepad, laptop, and smart phone functioned as my memory bank. I’d often get lost in a sea of sticky notes when simply trying to find out what time a dentist appointment or school class was. This is likely familiar to a lot of you. Growing up in the digital age, we don’t need to rely on our memories as much as we used to. We have search engines to help us recall facts, Facebook to remind us of birthdays and events, GPS systems to give us directions, and many other apps and devices to outsource our memories to. Even recalling personal memories like the name of your favorite high school teacher or where you left your keys will soon be able to be retrieved with memory search engines. There’s no doubt all these things are of huge benefit to those who suffer from memory impairments, but for the majority of us they do more harm than good. Outsourcing out memory using external devices can be the difference between having a rich life—learning from and reminiscing on past experiences, experiencing deep and loyal relationships, having high levels of productivity and satisfaction—and a mediocre life—not gaining the full respect of others, forgetting your partner’s birthday or your anniversary, and chugging along at a slow and steady rate of performance. The chances are that because you’re here, you already know this and therefore want to take a more concerted effort to improving your memory and not having to rely on external devices. So engage your brain and allow these six top memory boosting tips to be absorbed into the depths of your hippocampus.
Learn a New Skill
A study published in the journal Psychological Science by neuroscientist Dr. Denise Park showed that keeping your brain active by learning new skills, for example digital photography, can bring significant improvement in memory. Dr. Park’s research also found that not all activities are equal, with the greatest improvements coming from taking on the most challenging skills. Find an intellectually demanding activity you’ll enjoy learning, whether it’s learning to paint, dance salsa, or in particular play an instrument, and watch as your memory grows.
Use The Memory Palace
A technique used by the world’s greatest memory athletes, The Memory Palace is considered to be one of the strongest ways to remember something. It uses four fundamental principles of recall—imagination, association, absurdity, and location—to securely cement new information into your brain. The technique essentially works by visualising a journey through a place you are familiar with, e.g. your home, school, or office. Along the way you associate the words, phrases, or numbers you want to remember with specific locations and events for example, a humongous frog in a suit at the breakfast table could represent the word ‘business’.
Mix Up Your Routine
Memory, like muscular strength, requires you to either use it or lose it. Therefore going through the same routines day in and day out, encountering the same stimuli and problems, causes your brain to stagnate, switching to autopilot and failing to make new neural connections. More connections equals more ways to process information, and therefore an overall stronger brain. And a stronger brain means a far greater chance of memories sticking around. Make an effort to challenge you brain by breaking free from well-worn trails, seeking new sources of stimulation, and carving new mental pathways.
Break A Sweat
Exercise seems to have benefits for just about everything. But one place where it doesn’t get its due credit is in bolstering memory. For example, in a study by neuroscientist Art Kramer at the University of Illinois it was found that just 45 minutes of exercise three days a week can increase the volume of the brain. One of the ways it does this is by boosting production of certain proteins in the brain. In a Harvard Medical School study, one such protein called FND5 was found to be present in higher quantities in the hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory) in a group of mice who took part in regular exercise.
Have Healthy Relationships
It turns out healthy relationships are not only great for emotional health, but also our brain health. In fact, some researchers believe interacting with others may be the best kind of brain exercise. For example in another study from the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers found that people with the most active social lives had the slowest rate of memory decline. This doesn’t mean all introverts have terrible memories, but rather volunteering, joining a club, seeing or speaking to friends more often, or even having a pet, can do its bit for safeguarding those precious memories. Want to learn how you can put these techniques into action before your day has even begun? Grab a free copy of our new eBook: MORNING MASTERY: The Simple 20 Minute Routine For Long Lasting Energy, Laser-Sharp Focus, and Stress Free Living. Joseph is a freelance writer, and the co-creator of Project Monkey Mind—a new blog for the 21st century solopreneur and young professional who wants to lead a more free and fulfilling life.
You’ve read 5 Simple and Effective Ways To Improve Your Memory Today, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Learning a new language is a big deal.
You’re learning a completely new form of communication, and it enables you to communicate with people you never could have before.
But there’s benefits to learning a language that you didn’t expect when you started the journey. I’ve personally experienced this having learned 3 languages in my life (Korean, English, Spanish).
Think about the effect that losing weight has to someone’s life. While most people go into it for a healthier lifestyle, there are surprising benefits like increased confidence, being more outgoing, and increased mind clarity.
Same thing applies to language learning.
In this article, we’ll share the 12 surprising benefits you’ll experience when you learn a language.
1. Learn anything faster
Learning a new language is mental agility training at its best. The exercise in cognitive problem solving can without a doubt be applied to almost any problem we want to solve in other areas.
Your memory retention is also improved when learning a new language. Absorbing and retaining more information can significantly shorten your learning curve, because you can spend more time learning new information instead of re-learning something you’ve already learned before.
But it doesn’t stop there. Once you learn a new language, not only are you able to learn other languages faster (simply due to understanding the process), but you’ve already retained several other languages without even knowing it.
For example, if you recently learned how to speak Spanish, you’ve automatically entered the world of languages from the latin root, such as Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian. In fact, between these languages there are over a thousand words that are exactly the same, if not very similar to each other.
Notice the similarity of the words between these languages.
2. Improve your math skills
For those of us who didn’t grow up with natural talents in mathematics, no need to fear.
A study was done at Massachusetts in 2007, where The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages stated that:
“Children who study a foreign language, even when this second language study takes time away from the study of mathematics, outperform students who do not study a foreign language and have more mathematical instruction during the school day.”
In another study published in the University of Michigan’s Language Learning journal (Armstrong and Rogers, 1997), students who studied just one semester of a foreign language for just 90 minutes per week scored significantly higher in maths and language arts.
If you think about it, it makes sense. Learning a language involves a structural and logical process, which is the same type of thinking that makes you thrive in mathematics.
3. Become a better listener
This is a skill set that comes in handy for any situation throughout our lives.
If you’re trying to build a real connection with anyone, there’s nothing better than intentional listening without interruption. This is one of the key elements taught in Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
When learning a language, there’s no choice but to train yourself to listen carefully, because you’re trying to make out every accent, pronunciation, and tone used by the other person. And if you’re just starting out, you’re forced to listen because you can’t speak the language!
Most importantly, learning a new language helps you step into the shoes of people different to yourself and see the world in a completely different perspective — therefore developing empathy for others.
4. Enhances your focus
In a study, published online in the journal Brain and Language, individuals who spoke more than one language were observed through an fMRI, while performing word comprehension tasks.
Results showed that multi-lingual individuals were better at filtering out competing words than one-language speaking individuals. This ability to tune out competing words benefits in blocking out distractions to focus on the task at hand.
As your listening skill improves, it only makes sense that it enhances your focus as well. Just like learning any new skill, learning a language requires you full, undivided attention. One slight distraction can mean the difference between one meaning and a completely different one.
Over time, your brain will be trained to maintain this level of focus.
5. Boost your confidence
When we set out to achieve something and find success, it boosts our confidence levels — no matter how small the progress.
Even being able to carry a 30-second conversation with a native speaker can significantly make you more confident, because you know it’s something you wouldn’t have been able to do before.
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” — E.E. Cummings
I still remember the “A-HA” moment I experienced when I was living in Medellin, Colombia. I was living with a roommate who couldn’t speak a word of English when I first moved in. After a few months of using Rype to learn Spanish, I was able to get to a conversation level of fluency.
It amazed me how I was suddenly able to speak to someone that I couldn’t have fathomed speaking to before.
Needlessly to say, as the language barrier disappeared, our perception of each other increased dramatically, and so did our friendship.
This confidence boost only pushed me to learn more, engage with more native speakers, and it translated more confidence into every aspect of my life.
Author of Lean Forward, Eric Holtzclaw, states that even “a tiny change in your perspective that pulls you out of a funk and gives you the boost you need to take on that next challenge.”
6. Prevents potential brain diseases
Improving our health is something that should be a priority for every one of us, no matter how old we are. Most of us consider improving our health in a few major areas, like our physical appearance. But we tend to miss out on the most important part that runs our entire body — the brain.
We are nothing without the vital functions of our brain, and we need to prioritize its health like we would with any other vital organ in our body.
When it comes to the brain, learning a new language can prevent or delay Alzeihmer’s disease and dementia by 4.5 years. This is a far more powerful than the best drugs which only delays the symptoms by 6–12 months.
The American Academy of Neurology has performed studies showing that speaking more than one language increases the amount of neural pathways in the brain, allowing information to be processed through a greater variety of channels.
7. Improve your English (or native language)
We discussed how learning one language can help you pick up not only other languages, but familiarize yourself with languages originating from the same root.
What most people don’t mention enough, is that it can also help you improve your native language.
According to the Impact of the Second Language Education, studying a second language alone will significantly improve the grammar, reading, vocabulary, and speaking skills of your first language.
This makes sense because learning a new language allows you to understand the structures and breakdowns of a language, whereas this is something you intuitively picked up when you learned your native language.
8. Increase your creativity
Language learning is a lot like putting together the pieces of a new puzzle.
You understand several, but not all of the words that are thrown at you, so you have to force yourself to be creative and fill the missing gaps on your own.
This research concludes that bilingual individuals have a more “out of the box” thinking approach than monolingual individuals.
While most creativity training occurs in waves (meaning on and off), there’s no taking breaks when you’re having a conversation with someone. You either have to force yourself to become creative in your interpretation and speaking skills, or you’ll need to face up to the awkward silence that follows.
9. Culturally knowledgeable
Language learning is not only about communicating in a foreign language, but it’s about experiencing a new culture.
The first reason is that meeting foreign people is embedded in the core of language learning. In order to practice and improve your new language, you’ll need to work with a language teacher (or a coach on Rype), use conversation exchanges, or attend language meetups. This is similar to how you need to just ride the bicycle instead of watching videos about it, its just part of the process.
The majority of conflicts between people in the world comes from lack of understanding the other side. Studying a new language not only helps you understand where the other person is coming from, but the cultural knowledge you gain can help others feel more connected to you.
10. Open up new career opportunities
In the past decade, we’ve experienced a rapidly growing trend of globalization. With the Internet era, there is no such thing as doing local business. Nearly every business that opens up today is an online business, and has the ability to reach a global market in seconds.
We’re incredibly fortunate to lead this global movement at Rype, with professionally trained coaches working in 5 different continents, and members learning from over 37 different countries around the world.
Big corporations are working fast to expand internationally to Asia, Europe, and South America, and understanding a foreign language will become as standard as knowing Microsoft Word.
Irene Missen, a language specialist at a top recruitment agency, Euro London, says that languages can open doors for you, and estimates a language can add between 10% and 15% to your wage.
When it comes to advancing your career, it’s critical to leave no doors closed. Learning a new language takes time, and it’s far better to learn it before you need it than to be unprepared at your next job interview.
11. Experience a new way of traveling
This is a big one, and often one that’s hard to understand unless you know another language.
For example, learning how to speak Spanish before you visit Spain for the first time, will give you an entirely different travel experience versus not knowing the language. When you can speak the language of the place you’re traveling to, you’re no longer dependent on the typical tourism tips that you’ll get from Tripadvisor.
Instead, you can build relationships with the locals, and discover restaurants, hot spots, and excursions that tourism websites will never be able to share with you.
You get to experience the new culture from the eyes of a local, instead of a tourist.
12. Deepen your relationships
Almost everyone who comes from a different cultural background can probably empathize with this point. With my limited ability to speak Korean, I struggled growing up with Korean family members.
Luckily, I was able to improve my skills over time (surprisingly, from learning Spanish). But I constantly see people who struggle to have that connection with their family members, friends, or even life partner, because of this language barrier.
As we shared in this post, the majority of the world’s problem comes down to communication problems. And there’s no bigger barrier to communication than the languages we are able to speak with each other.
Over to you
Which of these surprising benefits did you resonate with the most?
What languages will you try to learn?
If you are trying to learn Spanish, we’d love to help you out.
Your first 3 lessons are on us!
You’ve read 12 Surprising Benefits of Learning a New Language, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 