15 October 2009

How To Keep Mentally Alert

Have you recently noticed that your mind tends to wander no matter what you are doing? Do you walk into a room only to forget why you even came in? You are not alone. This sort of absentmindedness plagues a huge percentage of the world’s population. It can be very frustrating, and so you should try to do your best to keep an alert mental state. There are many ways to do this, and if you are not taking advantage of any of them then you should start today. Read on to find out about some of the most common and popular ways to maintain mental alertness.

Exercise is the one that you will hear the most. It is easy to get caught in a rut of going to work and then coming home and relaxing. Instead of sitting in front of the TV all night, why don’t you lift some weights or go for a run? Exercise releases just the right chemicals into your brain to make you more alert, not only during the exercise, but for the rest of the day until you go to sleep. This is why so many people like to start off their days with a good run through the neighborhood. The type of exercise you choose will depend on what options are available to you.

Another way to increase mental alertness is to stimulate your mind at least once per day. It is very healthy to always teach yourself new things. Whether you sit down and read a science fiction book with interesting scientific theories, or you read a college textbook and discover new things about biology, there is everything to be gained from learning new things. Not only do you get to keep the great knowledge, but you also will sustain higher levels of alertness due to the effort that it takes to learn all of those things. So go to the library today and find a book that piques your interest.

A good amount of sleep is crucial to being mentally alert. If you are only getting 5 hours of sleep per night and you are complaining about being forgetful, then you should slap yourself in the face right now. The answer is very obvious. All you need to do is regularly sleep more. If you don’t give your mind enough time to recuperate, then you can expect to see poorer performance. If your job requires you to get up early, then go to bed earlier. If you have too much to do, then all you need to do is plan your days out better so that you get things done more efficiently and leave more time to sleeping.

Ultimately the best thing to do is to combine these three methods to remain as mentally awake as possible. If you start to utilize all 3 of these, you should start seeing improvements in a matter of days. Hopefully you will stop losing things, stop forgetting important dates, and generally stop being so absentminded. If the problem persists, then you should talk to a doctor or a shrink about any stressors that could be causing you to mentally stray away from other areas in your life. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but you shouldn’t ignore the possibility.