Friday, 26 January 2018

Memory Enhancing Foods - Diets That Improve Memory

Memory is an activity which is related to our mind. In this activity there is recalling of information that you have experienced or learned. Memory can be of short term or long term. In short term memories your mind stores information for few seconds or for few minutes. In long term memory, you retain information for long time.

We must always work in the direction to improve memories. There are some basic things, which are very helpful in improving the memories in addition to exercising your brain.

1. Be attentive always. 
2. Acquire information which adds to your learning style. 
3. Involve as many senses as possible to improve memory. 
4. Relate information to what you know. 
5. Organize information 
6. Understand and be able to interpret complex problem. 
7. Rehear the information and over-learn it. 
8. Be motivated and always keep a positive attitude.

Food also plays an important role in enhancing your memory. There are some important foods which are responsible for improving your memory. These foods are having the qualities of memory boosting and they are with high nutrients. These foods will definitely improve your brain and memory.

1. Eat More Fish - Fatty fish are rich in omega-3 fats and it is very helpful in enhancing your memory. It is having the qualities to reduce the inflammation of the cell which is responsible for decline in memory. Fatty fish like sardines and salmon are excellent source of boosting memory as they are the source of Omega-3 oils. You must eat at least 3 servings of fish in a week for improving your memory.

2. Eat more and more vegetables to improve your memory.

Dark leafy vegetables - You must have at least a cup of dark leafy vegetables. You can take these vegetables after cooking or boiling but don't overcook as it will take away its vitamins and nutrients.

Spinach - Spinach is very effective in improving memory as it contains high content of folic acid.

Onions - Long term memory can be improved by taking onion regularly as it contain fisetin, a naturally occurring flavonoid.

3. Berries are also responsible for improving memories. Both blueberries and strawberries are responsible for improving memories. Blueberries in addition to improving of memory protect us from other disease also like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Whereas strawberry is responsible for improving long term memory.

Other fruits and vegetables are also effective for improving memories like tomatoes, oranges, apples, peaches, grapes etc.


Thursday, 25 January 2018

Values Are Caught and Not Taught

According to some people, values are caught not taught. It means that values or behaviors are learned from the people who practice them, instead of being told. We catch these values by seeing them lived by example. The values that we actually live are caught rather than merely taught.


Factors affecting values formation of a person include:


Home

Parents have the greatest influence on a person's life. From the moment that we were born, they became our role models.When we toss values out for our children, we should keep in mind that these values must be sound and well-thought. Usually what happens at home shapes a person's values and traits. For example, if at home the children have a high respect for their parents, then outside, those children might have a high respect for authority too. Whereas, when at home the parents are always fighting and arguing with each other, the tendency is children will become bully when they are outside. Thus, children caught either positive or negative values without even taught.

School

Schools are usually seen as more than just knowledge providers. They are required to teach students honesty, fairness and equality inside the classroom despite diveristy of culture. But this is easier said than done because teaching morals to students involves more than just cognitive (knowledge) level.

According to Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains, there are three realms of educational activities:

  • Cognitive: mental skills - knowledge
  • Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas - attitude or self
  • Psychomotor: manual or physical skills - behavioral skills



Skills in the cognitive domain revolve around knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking on a particular topic. The affective domain typically targets the awareness and growth in attitudes, emotion, and feelings; and the psychomotor domain focuses on change and/or development in behavior and/or skills.

Often than not, we focus a lot on the knowledge aspect of character. The cognitive level is also important, but in the field of education, teachers should focus on how to help the learners consistently put values into action by:

  • showing a good example to them,
  • living what they preach, and
  • doing what they talk.


Society

Aside from the parents and teachers, values of the people also might become affected by the people around them like their peers, relatives, neighbors, and others. Whatever the environment generally accepts, people think of it as right even though sometimes it is wrong.

Media

The media also provides a great influence in shaping up a person's values and traits. From the telenovelas, to celebrities, to music icons, people tend to copy what their idols are doing. In this case, people are not taught but rather caught the values portrayed on TV.

People often say that character is developed when it is both caught and taught. It would flourish best when we accurately teach the skills needed to put values into action. Yet, these skills must also be lived. They need to be part of our everyday life because if we merely talk about the values that we have, without enacting them, most likely, values are caught and not taught.

Thus, values cannot just be taught in a formal sense because the application of these sets of values for one to personally adopt must be acquired or caught through modeled and observed behaviors outside of oneself.


Wednesday, 24 January 2018

Memory: Discover the Missing Component of Recall

Memory is everything; without our memory we have nothing. We must have an ability to recall information in order to learn and develop. Today brain research has uncovered fascinating discoveries relating to memory, yet we have only just begun to understand this mystery of the mind.

Most researchers focus on the brain and how the different parts are related to memory. This understanding is very important if we are ever going to truly understand ourselves. I find neuroscience to be a fascinating subject that has helped shape my understanding of the human condition however I don't want to look at the brain in regards to memory.

I instead want to focus on the mind and how it utilizes information in regards to our memory. I want to share my theory on how the two different minds (conscious and subconscious) work together to provide us with the ability of recall.

Most people know about short and long-term memory; and how these two systems work together to give us the ability of recall. I believe there is a third type of memory that I call temporary memory that helps fill in the gap between short and long-term memory. I want to go over each of the three types, show you how they work, and explain how the two minds are related.

Before we can remember something we must first take in the information to be stored. Our DNA does contain some information but for this topic I will be focused on information we have obtained from outside sources; meaning our five senses.

Everything we experience in life is the result of information coming in through our five senses. Without these senses we would have no experience of the world or have any information to be processed into memory. This incoming information is first sent to the subconscious mind.

The reason the subconscious gets the information first is because it's the survival mind and is much faster at processing information. We need it this way to allow us to react to events that involve an immediate threat to us such as being attacked or touching a hot stove.

After the subconscious mind determines if any action is needed or not; it sends a small amount of the information to the conscious mind were it becomes what we call our conscious awareness. We are only aware of a small part of what is going on around us. This is why two people can have the same experience yet have two different views of what happened.


The thing to keep in mind is just because the information is not consciously known doesn't mean it's lost. This information is still sitting there inside your head just waiting to be used. At the same time this information is not yet a part of your long-term memory. All this incoming information is stored in what I call temporary memory and is controlled by the subconscious mind.

If information is stored in temporary memory; how do we get it to become long-term memory? My theory is the subconscious mind processes this information and converts it to long-term memory when we sleep, specifically REM sleep. To me this is one of the reasons we have dreams. Dreams are nothing more than us becoming consciously aware of temporary memory being converted to long-term memory.

One way the subconscious processes information to be converted to long-term memory is by using emotional "tags". This means if an event has caused us to feel a strong emotion it gets linked to that emotion. When this information is converted to long-term memory it is arranged in such a way as to be easy to recall. In other words the more emotion involved the more the memory will be put at the "front of the line" and information with no emotions will be move to the back. This makes it easier to recall emotional events which are important when it comes to survival. This is why the subconscious is in control of this system.

Just because the conscious mind does not have direct control over this information, it can access it through a process of requesting information from the subconscious. When the conscious mind requests information the subconscious first looks in this temporary memory because it is smaller, easier to process, and most likely to be more relevant. If it can't find it in temporary memory then it will expand the search to long-term memory which can take longer to find because of the massive size of long-term memory.

That's why you can be trying to think of something and then forget about it, but later the answer will just pop into your head for no reason. Your subconscious continues to search without any conscious awareness of what is going on.

The subconscious also uses the information in temporary memory to influence our decisions and actions. This influence is the basis of subliminal programing and can be very powerful if used correctly. Subliminal programing doesn't turn people into walking zombies but can have a real effect on a person's conscious thought process.

As you can see the subconscious mind is very involved with our memory by working with both temporary and long-term memory. The concept of using temporary memory to hold information before being converted to long-term memory is a wonderful system that allows us to utilize information as its being taken in. The problem is temporary memory is a fixed size and this causes problems.

Have you noticed how you get mentally tired if you don't get proper sleep? A lack of sleep causes the temporary memory to become full which can lead to issues with being able to recall the information we want. Sleep is so important in maintaining a strong memory.

Lack of sleep is not the only thing that can cause issues with temporary memory; there is also what environment we find ourselves in.

I skipped over one of the steps in how information is processed because I felt it was too early in the flow of this article. When the subconscious first receives information it looks for any copies of that information in our long-term memory. If it finds an exact copy it will simply reinforce the long-term memory instead of sending it to temporary memory.

This is why we have better recall of something if we can look at the information from different angels or give the information more details. These things cause more copies of the information to be put into temporary memory that will then be converted to long-term memory. If all we do is look at something one way we only reinforce a single long-term memory; and memory is all about the number of links we create. So how is our environment involved in memory?


When you are in an environment you are familiar with you take in more "copy" information because you already have knowledge about what is around you; which causes less information to be stored in your temporary memory. When you are in an unfamiliar environment your temporary memory will fill more rapidly causing you to become mentally fatigued. This is why you feel mentally tired when on vacation or when trying to learn something new.

The final piece of this memory puzzle is of course short-term memory. The conscious mind uses short-term memory to process information it receives. Because of the highly analytically nature of the conscious mind it can only keep track of a very small amount of information. Short-term memory is the only form of memory that is controlled by the conscious mind.

If all of this seems confusing or overwhelming let me offer you a metaphor on how all this works that will make it easier to understand.

Your mind is like an office. Information comes in and first goes to the inbox (temporary memory). From there some of the paper work gets move from the inbox to the desk top (short-term memory).

With any desk top there is very limited space so you must work on just a couple of things at a time. You can move papers back and forth from the desk top to the inbox but can only work with a few things at a time.

Just as with temporary memory an inbox can only hold so much before it becomes a disorganized mess. To keep the inbox from getting too full papers are moved to a filing cabinet (long-term memory). From time to time we do move papers from the filing cabinet to the desk top as we need them (consciously becoming aware of something from long-term memory). However it can be hard and time-consuming in finding just what we are looking for.

I hope this metaphor helps with understanding how the three parts of memory work together to give us this amazing ability of recall. Memory is still a mystery yet we are moving in the right direction.


Jeremy T. Jordan is a dynamic Speaker and Personal Life Coach that specializes in the areas of Success, Happiness, and Fulfillment. 


Monday, 22 January 2018

Video gamers have an advantage in learning

Neuropsychologists of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum let video gamers compete against non-gamers in a learning competition. During the test, the video gamers performed significantly better and showed an increased brain activity in the brain areas that are relevant for learning. Prof Dr Boris Suchan, Sabrina Schenk and Robert Lech report their findings in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
The weather prediction task
The research team studied 17 volunteers who -- according to their own statement -- played action-based games on the computer or a console for more than 15 hours a week. The control group consisted of 17 volunteers who didn't play video games on a regular basis. Both teams did the so-called weather prediction task, a well-established test to investigate the learning of probabilities. The researchers simultaneously recorded the brain activity of the participants via magnetic resonance imaging.
The participants were shown a combination of three cue cards with different symbols. They should estimate whether the card combination predicted sun or rain and got a feedback if their choice was right or wrong right away. The volunteers gradually learned, on the basis of the feedback, which card combination stands for which weather prediction. The combinations were thereby linked to higher or lower probabilities for sun and rain. After completing the task, the study participants filled out a questionnaire to sample their acquired knowledge about the cue card combinations.
Video gamers better with high uncertainties
The gamers were notably better in combining the cue cards with the weather predictions than the control group. They fared even better with cue card combinations that had a high uncertainty such as a combination that predicted 60 percent rain and 40 percent sunshine.
The analysis of the questionnaire revealed that the gamers had acquired more knowledge about the meaning of the card combinations than the control group. "Our study shows that gamers are better in analysing a situation quickly, to generate new knowledge and to categorise facts -- especially in situations with high uncertainties," says first author Sabrina Schenk.
This kind of learning is linked to an increased activity in the hippocampus, a brain region that plays a key role in learning and memory. "We think that playing video games trains certain brain regions like the hippocampus," says Schenk. "That is not only important for young people, but also for older people; this is because changes in the hippocampus can lead to a decrease in memory performance. Maybe we can treat that with video games in the future."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Ruhr-University Bochum. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:
  1. Sabrina Schenk, Robert K. Lech, Boris Suchan. Games people play: How video games improve probabilistic learning. Behavioural Brain Research, 2017; 335: 208 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.08.027

Saturday, 20 January 2018

Is Your Life Out of Control - Use Energy By Design

Do you feel like you are in a constant race with the clock - and the clock is always winning? Do you feel like your home - which should be your sanctuary from the outside world - is filled with so much chaos and clutter that you don't know where to begin? Does the same apply to your office? Do you feel you are running faster and faster - only to find you are falling further behind?

Are you really in control of your life or are you stuck on a non-stop roller coaster and you're just along for the ride. If you are calm, clear headed and in control all of the time, this article is probably not for you. However, if you are almost frantic tying to keep pace with the demands of everyday life where everything and everyone else in-control - this article is for you.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Feeling overwhelmed is not a state of mind but rather a reality many people live with day in and day out. It is the reality of life controlling you, not you controlling your life.

In a world where you are bombarded with more than 4000 messages daily via e-mail, snail mail, telephone, internet, television, newspapers, magazines, advertisements and everyday conversations, it is easy to be distracted. In this multi-wired, multi-tasking world today, a person, a parent, the bread winner, an after school chauffer or a volunteer, it is impossible to find time for you.

Energy-by-Design Solutions

Creating energy by design is the application of Feng Shui principles to your surroundings, activities and thoughts. You can take control of your life by realizing you control the positive and negative energy that surrounds you.

Everything in your world has energy and it affects you either positively or negatively. For example, a home or office filled with clutter is also filled with stagnant negative energy that can be distracting, discouraging and depressing. Or, the colors painted on the walls in your home can be too bright, too dark or simply wrong for you energetically and create the feelings of anger, anxiety and aggravation.

Start taking control of your life by making an Energy by Design list. Use a yellow tablet and list all of the things that provide you negative energy and make you feel out of control, distracted or anxious. List everything - include clutter, activities, events, people, thoughts and things in your home and workplace. Once you have your list complete, rank them in order of importance, making the worst one No. 1 on your list. Simply by acknowledging that there are many things in your life contributing to you feeling out of control will start to shift the energy from negative to positive.

Next, focus on the first three items on your list. Evaluate each one and determine if you can actually change something about each one to make it provide you positive energy instead of negative energy.

If long distance driving to work or running children constantly to school activities is a problem, consider carpooling to your workplace or having your children share rides with other parents to their activities. If certain rooms in your home are depressing change the colors of the walls to lighter more pastel colors, make sure the furniture is comfortable and the pictures hanging on the walls are of joy filled scenes, things and events.

You may find one of the first three items on your list cannot be changed. Acknowledge it and move on. By evaluating and acknowledging the item, you are in-control.

Finally, take action. You can start changing your life today by taking action. Once you have taken care of one of the first three items on your list, move on to the next one. By working on one item at a time you will see progress, you will be removing stagnant negative energy and will be enjoying the benefits of the new positive energy entering your life in the form of being in-control of your life. The results are a calmer, more focused more productive you.

You take control of your life by controlling the positive and negative energy that surrounds you. By doing so you relieve stress and anxiety, bring balance into your life and create a peaceful harmonious environment in your home, your workplace and yourself - and you will be back in-control of your life. That's the use of energy by design.



Friday, 19 January 2018

A Simple Guide on How to Find Purpose in Business

Enterprise is a term that refers to basically beginning a business. A business person must have an unmistakable vision without restrictions and utilize that vision to fabricate something completely new, bringing whatever knowledge of the world is out there. The truth they need to make sets a whole new challenge, the truth that every opportunity gives rise to new ways of earning money. The vision must influence others.

How would you "discover" mission and vision deserving of your opportunity, vitality, and judgment? Wouldn't you be able just to hold up to unearth an alluring open door?

In case you're as of now attempting to find your entrepreneurial calling, your main goal, consider the procedure I'm explaining beneath. It's basic and clear, however, requires devotion. I trust you'll concur it merits investing at any rate as much energy in your "life look" as you would on a pursuit of employment, experts program, or another entrepreneurial preparing.

End is the Start 


While deciding your basic purpose for existing, you have to comprehend what is most critical to you. Consider not only your present needs but rather what is probably going to stay imperative to you for the following 50 years. What do you think that your trust in business needs to change in this very world? Of course, it has to. What part would you be able to play in evolving it?

I frequently hear individuals say that they don't know how to Start Something as long as they can remember, maybe from their childhood. However, that reaction is deficient and requires more investigation. The entrepreneurial reasoning depends on managing vulnerability and pushing ahead in spite of equivocalness. You might not have everything about out right now, but rather you ought to have a decent feeling of your esteems and standards and what makes your life worth living.

How to Do it, eh?


To enable you to decide your definitive objectives, begin by addressing everything. Converse with everybody you trust and respect, the individuals who you consider fruitful, and ask what they esteem most in life. Meet with individuals in their eighties and ask them what they love most about their lives. Discover what appeared to be vital en route, and what they observed to be imperative after a lifetime of hardworking and business success. Ask about their most noteworthy delights and failures. As you investigate their triumphs, disappointments, and recollections, you will discover the point of view for yourself. Read incredible abstract works and books on logic. Invest energy alone in a peaceful place. In case you're religious, reconsider the essentials of your conviction framework. The thought here is to solicit a considerable measure from questions, inspect your suspicions, call your particular feigns, reflect, and question once more.

Your Voice Of Freedom, Risk Compatibility, the desire to Challenging Business Ventures and a real effort to put a solid foundation under your dreams can find the Real Purpose in business as well as Life for you.


Thursday, 18 January 2018

Take Control of Your Life During a Crisis

You won't take control of your life by screaming in other people's ears. Sometimes a whisper can amount to a "loud" voice in the workplace; especially during a crisis..

Let's put it another way-it's not how loud you say it, it's what you have to say and how you say it.


Suppose you work on the twenty-first floor of a building and a fellow employee races into your office and screams, "The building is on fire!"

Suppose again that you are on the same twenty first floor of a building and the fellow employee calmly walks into your office and says, "A fire has broken out on the first floor but the fire truck is on the way. As a precaution they are evacuating the building so we should use the emergency stairwell."


Well, you might not feel good either way but don't you think the second scenario was a better example of how your fellow employee took better control over the situation?

Taking control is often about making the most of a bad situation. Consider how you would respond (in a calm, pointed and meaningful way) to the following crises:

  1. The boss calls you into the office after receiving a customer complaint.
  2. During a group meeting the subject of a design flaw (on a project you worked on) comes up.
  3. After a "fender bender" involving several cars the driver at fault claims you caused the accident.

All three of the examples above beg for more information but before you proceed you need to confront the root of the problem: Did I cause the customer complaint? Was my design work involved in the flaw? Is there any way I could have been at fault in the accident? Don't blame and don't shift the responsibilities; take responsibility.

Once you have established your position (in your heart) take control by asking pointed questions in a calm manner, designed to uncover the facts. If it was something you did that caused the root problem be prepared to admit it, discuss a solution, and get on with your life (people will forgive a mistake but not when you try to hide it).

Taking control of your life involves many things and this article has touched on one aspect of it.


Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Lucky People Live Life Driven by Purpose

"If you don't know where you are going, any path will do." Lewis Carroll


If you have read Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", you will probably recognise the quote above and the following excerpt from the book:

"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

Lucky, fortunate people usually have a clear purpose in life and they look for signs steering them in the right direction. Unlucky people on the other hand, often complain about not getting anywhere in life. They respond in a similar way to confused young Alice when asked about where they actually want to be or go.

How clear are you about the following questions:

What is your purpose? Who are you? Where are you going? How are you planning on getting there?

Having a clear sense of purpose may serve to attract more luck into your life. If you know where you are heading, it will be a lot easier for life to present the signposts that will help you get there.


Inner Drives, Passion & Dreams


If you are uncertain about your purpose in life, pay attention to the things that inspire you; notice the things you love; be aware of what gives you joy in life; what evokes your passion for life? What motivates and drives you? What do you value in life? What are your dreams?

For example, do you value freedom or security? If you value freedom rather than security, life may support you in travelling around the world independently but your plans to buy a house, on the other hand, may not be so successful. Some things may fall into your lap easily and effortlessly and others fail to materialise despite your hardest efforts and struggles. Perhaps the former are in alignment with your values and the latter, on the other hand, conflict with your highest values. If you value truth more than success, you will fail to get the job or stay for long in a job that compromises your integrity. It may seem a stroke of "bad luck" that you didn't get the job or you got made redundant, but in fact, life is supporting your true values even though you may not be fully aware of them.

Your dreams must be your own dreams and not the dreams of your loved ones, which is one of the reasons that our most cherished dreams fail to materialise. We have to learn to create our own dreams. A mustard seed will never grow up to be an oak tree, regardless of how well it is nourished or how many years it has grown. Lives are often wasted trying to be someone else; living someone else's dream and comparing our lives with the lives of others when there is no real comparison to be made.

How do you know that your dreams are your own? Who do you compare your inner life with? How does this help or hinder your own journey through life?

Some of your goals and ambitions will naturally be inspired by external circumstances and the environment in which you have lived. If your parents lived in poverty, you may be driven by the need to have a better standard of living and you may define your purpose in life to establish a life of comfort for your children.

One of the differences between lucky, successful people and those who consider themselves to be unlucky or unfortunate is the capacity to think and plan ahead. Those who invest in their own education, clearly have a different strategy for expressing their purpose in life.

What do you hope to achieve in your lifetime?

How will you be remembered?

What legacy do you intend to leave?

How will you uncover your deepest purpose, passion and driving force in life?

By living a life driven by purpose, like lucky people do, you will increase your chances of finding the signposts guiding and directing you to where you believe your destiny to be.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3502960

Jesvir Mahil is the author of "You're So Lucky!"