“I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.” Dr Seuss

There’s nothing like the feel of cardboard underneath your back as you whirl around in a circle. Yeah, breakdancing was popular back in the day and I was into it. Totally into it. I was my-belt-is-actually-a-bandana into it. You get the point. My breakdancing career took off just after my parents had just bought some new appliance. My friend and I took the cardboard it came in and laid it out in my front yard. With Rockit* blasting on the old school boombox, we practiced. We also hired a neighborhood kid to teach us for $.50/lesson. These guys here:

Image by stroinski

we looked nothing like them. But we could do the worm, the caterpillar, the wave, and the backspin. Fortunately, this phase didn’t last too long. It was replaced by skateboarding, then mountain biking, and then guitar, and on and on.

My wife likes to joke with me about my I tendency to jump from one hobby to the next. It’s not that I lose interest quickly, it’s just that life is too short and there’s so many things to learn in this world! As an adult I’ve learned to decorate cakes, make fancy chocolates, tie bow ties, and picked up computer programming and some web design. My pattern is to find something that I’d like to learn, focus on it, work until I feel comfortable at it, and then move on to something else. Currently, I’m in between hobbies, so any ideas in the comments area would be appreciated… (By me, probably not my wife.)

Image by svilen00

I feel fortunate to have my job at a university. For half of my job, I get to share what I have learned. The other half, I get to learn. It’s quite an amazing deal–I get paid to do what I love: learn. I believe learning is one of the great joys in life and something that everyone should be constantly doing. It’s important to never get in a rut or be comfortable for too long. Exercising the mind is just as important as exercising the body. And by exercising the mind, I don’t mean just taking up sudoku, crossword puzzles, or playing brain games on your smart phone. I mean learning something new. Challenging your mind to develop new neural pathways. It was once thought that the adult mind was set in stone, but over the past 20 years or so, we have found out that the adult brain can still change. This is called neural plasticity. It happens with things like:

• Learning a new hobby
• Discussing or exposing yourself to others who may have a different viewpoint than you do
• Reading a book and then discussing it with a friend or book club
• Taking a free online course through YouTube EDU or iTunes U
• Being creative or learning art (like breakdancing–woo hoo!)

What do you do to exercise your mind? Be sure to leave suggestions below.

*I’m not going to lie, when I started listening to this song, I found myself getting ready to dance…