Daily Mental Exercise
For the past few decades, health authorities around the world have exhorted us to find 30 mins (or more) a day to exercise our bodies. For very good reason. All other things being equal, we’ll each live a longer and more physically satisfying life if we engage in that exercise.
So, what about mental exercise? I would like to see an equally focused effort placed on intellectual exercise from the mental health authorities. In this case, it would involve a mass encouragement for us to stretch our intellect for 30 mins every day. The implications of not doing so are, in many ways, even more profound than the lack of physical exertion.
Now, some would say that their brain already works endlessly throughout the day, and thus it does not need to do anything further. Yet surely that also could be said about the body. Most of us need to walk around for much of the day, yet this hardly constitutes quality exercise.
So, what would worthwhile intellectual exercise really involve??
You could start with the plethora of technology that is presently being marketed around this theme. Lots of online and offline brain exercise devices abound, and some of them thankfully go much further than just moving coloured dots from one place to another. It’s worth having a look at some of them.
If you’re that serious about training your brain, what would be some of the cheaper (and in most cases) more effective ways of intellectually exercising your Self??
Well…let’s see. Reading books that challenge your longheld beliefs. Listening to people who have markedly different viewpoints to you. Studying a topic that is just a little bit beyond your present intellectual grasp. Learning a new language. Developing a different skill. The list is exhaustive.
The Ridiculous Key
However, here’s one of my consummate favourites. Just challenge the status quo, on almost everything. No, make that everything. And here’s a simple process for doing this. I call it the Ridiculous Key.
This is one of my twenty Thinkers Keys. And during my own lessons, it’s often proved to be the one that stretches students’ thinking the most. It works like this.
Make a totally ridiculous statement about some issue. And then set out to demonstrate how it could be done. You need to make the statement as over-the-top and as outlandish as possible. Here are some examples:
All mobile devices (eg cellphones, online mobile laptops) need to be banned during daylight hours. Without exception.
Some justifications:
- People would get more creative about sending messages to others eg they’d start using carrier pigeons, they’d actually write love letters on paper, they’d ask someone else to pass the message on, they’d rediscover morse code
- An underground movement called Let Us Decide (the LUDs) would build up around the world, protesting about this latest intrusion on privacy, and creating a sense of collaboration never before seen in society
- There would be fewer traffic accidents, especially with drivers who previously were not focusing on their driving while talking on their mobile
- Not as many people would be injured when walking into lamp-posts while texting someone
- Fewer teenagers would go into debt with their mobile phone contract
- More people might actually talk with each other in real life
- It would allow authorities to fine people who persist in using their mobile devices in the day, and thus boost the funds in the public purse (hopefully to be used for educational expenditure)
Now it’s your turn. What type of justifications could you find for the following Ridiculous statements?
1. All schooling is to be provided online by 2010, without exception.
2. Advertisements on TV must feature in a single full hour from 7pm to 8pm each night. No other ads will be allowed at any time.
3. No one, anywhere in the world, can ever again complain about anything. Instead, every conversation about an issue must focus exclusively on solutions.
Enjoy your intellectual exercise.
Awareness
What does it mean to really LIVE?? To dance as though nobody’s watching (or maybe, as though everyone’s watching, for that matter??)
I mention this for a very direct reason. The great teachers / facilitators are those who have tasted the joy of life, and have the capacity to somehow share it with others.
I’ve watched several superb teachers in action over the past week or so, and while they each had specific characteristics that contributed to their efforts, they all had one thing in common: Each had a passion for what he / she was offering to the students.
Is it possible to somehow discover this deep passion during the course of your life, or are you perhaps born with it?? You can read thousands of books / articles / blogs about this concept, though it probably comes down to this: It’s what YOU choose to do in the everyday moments of your life.
I love books that challenge me to fully experience this joy of life. These texts do it for me. My shelves are full of them (including one that was written in 1692!).
And out of all of them, here is one of my all-time favourites. And I’ve even read it twice. For someone as time-poor as me, I can tell you that this is a significant effort.
It’s called Awareness. Written by a Jesuit priest called Anthony De Mello A fascinating character, I assure you. Died back in 1987. Yet his thinking was way beyond that of many people then (or perhaps even now). Especially within the Catholic hierarchy, bless their hearts. They essentially banned him, and I can see why. However, he didn’t just challenge only them. He challenged everyone.
In Awareness, he claims that most people are always asleep. They never really wake up to life. They sleep at night, and they sleep during the day.
So how do we wake up? According to de Mello, by developing a profound awareness and understanding of the various aspects of your life.
Just to give you a taste of this guy’s thinking, here are some excerpts from Awareness. Keep in mind that specific quotes such as this will invariably be out of context with the book’s flow of text. However, I still find magic in these words, even when I reread them in isolation.
If you teach some forward-thinking philosophical students, see how they respond to the first quote:
* There’s only one reason you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.
* When you fight something, you are tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.
* Negative feelings are in YOU. No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy.
* It’s only when you’re afraid of life that you fear death.
* We see things not as they are, but as we are.
Enjoy your week (that’s my comment!!).