Eight Ways to Exercise Your Brain!

8 Brain Work Outs

 Put the months of the year into alphabetical order.

 Name as many of Shakespeare’s plays as you can (there are 37!).

 Write your name with your non dominant hand… backwards.

 Recite your three times table up to 100 and then count backwards from 100 in 3s
       
 Read a newspaper article and underline every ‘the’ in the article.

Put your socks/tights/stockings on in the morning the other way round. Most of us always start with a particular leg so try the other one (women, if you get yourself in a twist correct it before you leave the house because I can tell you that twisted tights are not brain enhancing!)

 Take up a new skill or teach yourself to programme that new DVD recorder

 Read the type of newspaper which is contrary to your views, and get to the end!

I hope you find some of these useful. I use many of these techniques when training and people always find then fun and refreshing but doing them regularly will also be of huge benefit in keeping your brain working to its best capacity. Try one now!

Give Your Creativity a Quick Boost

Try this very simple exercise next time you find yourself stumped by something.

1) Go to a stationers and buy a beautiful set of coloured crayons. Get the best that you can afford and choose ones that feel good to hold.

2) Next find a mug that you particularly like ,or that has special meaning for you, and pour all your gorgeous multi-coloured pencils into it. You now have a bouquet of colour on your desk. Enjoy it!

3) Next time you feel ‘stuck’ stop trying to solve your problem. Have a glass of water, take a coloured pencil or three and simply doodle on a plain sheet of paper. Try and ‘draw’ whatever your dilemma is. Don’t use any words at all, just doodle. It’s only for your eyes so don’t let any old ideas about not being able to draw spoil this. Just doodle away.

4) Now walk away from your desk or table for at least ten minutes and get some fresh air, particularly if your working environment is air conditioned.

5) Return to your issue and try again.

This simple exercise will help you tap into your subconscious by accessing your creative ‘right’ brain.  You could even just use different coloured pencils to make entries into your diary, when taking phone messages etc. If nothing else it will brighten up your working space but it’ll probably do a whole lot more!

Women’s Jobs Take a Hit

This item caught my eye and I thought you would be interested. Note particularly the quote in bold!

LONDON (Reuters) – Women in Britain are being hit harder by the current economic downturn than by any previous recession, unions said on Wednesday. More women are employed nowadays and job losses are spreading into the areas where they traditionally work.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) said the redundancy rate among women over the nine months to September 2008 had risen by 2.3 percentage points, almost double that of men. In the last recession in the early 1990s, the rate of female unemployment was much lower than the male rate.

“This is going to be an equal opportunities recession,” said TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber. Official figures are expected to show that unemployment in Britain rose by 85,000 people last month, the biggest jump since the last recession.

The TUC said the current economic slowdown would be worse for women because more were now in work than in previous recessions, and more households now depended on a woman’s wage. Furthermore, there will be job losses across the economy rather than in male-dominated sectors.

“Job losses in sectors where men predominate such as manufacturing and construction are now being balanced by job losses in retail and hospitality where more women than men work,” Barber said. “But job losses among men are still more likely to hit the headlines as women tend to work in smaller workplaces where redundancies go unnoticed by the media.”

The TUC said it was too early to say whether the recent job loss trends would continue, but figures suggested women’s jobs would be more at risk than before. It called for the government to take specific action to help unemployed women get back into work.

Reuters