I ran across an article in the Kansas City Star that surprised me.  Without our help, our brains begin “getting old” even at 25.  This isn’t saying that your brain starts decaying.  It just begins to go on autopilot.  The personal development cliche for this, I believe is “hardening of the categories.”

Not a Computer

Your brain is not a computer.  It’s an organic “muscle” that has some computer like qualities.  I say that to set up a sort of analogy .  For a moment think of your brain AS a computer, your computer.  You probably set your computer up to do some things automatically – things like spell check, fill in the bland sorts of things for web addresses – we train our computers to  guess what we want to do next.

Lazy by Necessity

Our brains do the same thing for us; it lives in a mode of productive laziness in order to save energy.  So some of the things we do become habits.  They start to happen below the level of awareness, and unfortunately, the creative, novel muscles  of our brain atrophy over time, just like physical muscles atrophy when they are not used.  The brain is the ultimate use it or lose it organ.

Brain fitness industry boggles the mind – Kansas City Star.

Stay tuned for tips on keeping your brain fine tuned throughout your life.  Take a look at some of the brain fitness programs advertised on this site.

Thanks for reading,

Mike