I’ve Lost All Sense of Direction

December 22, 2008

Did you get a GPS system for your car for Christmas? They’re pretty popular and I bet a bunch of you have received them. I’ve had a GPS in my car for the last few years, and I must admit I have lost all sense of direction. When I’m walking in the city or in a car without GPS, I have enormous difficulty figuring how to get around. Don’t ask me which way is North?! And I have irked more than a few passengers when I relied upon the robotic voice in my car rather than theirs in driving them to a destination. Afterall, if the car doesn’t tell me to turn nowadays, I don’t – doesn’t matter if the passenger has traveled a different route successfully numerous times!

I wonder if losing sense of direction is simply the next element of our lives becoming fully automated. Do you remember people’s phone numbers? Or do you simply store them in your phone? If you lost your phone, would you be able to call certain key numbers from memory? And when was the last time you actually did math in your head???

As we get older, we actually need to use our mental faculties more rather than less frequently to avoid early dementia. Remember, if you don’t use brain cells, you lose them! Just like we are talking about exercising our bodies as part of National Body Challenge, we need to exercise our brains too!

So to keep your mind nimble, I suggest the following exercises:

1. At least once a day, try doing some math in your head. Maybe it’s calculating the grand total of goods in the grocery store. Granted, that’s more difficult nowadays since there’s no prices actually listed on products, but you can make an attempt nonetheless. Or read the food labels and tally the total of calories in several products. That can actually be something to do with the kids, teaching some nutritional guidelines at the same time.

2. Try learning either a new word every day (now there’s a use for the word-a-day calendar) or better yet, take up a foreign language. Some studies have demonstrated the grey matter of the brain is larger in persons who speak more than one language. You don’t need to become fluent – just learning some basics cam build mental acumen. And use your new language skills to make new social connections!

3. When was the last time you played a board game or a hand of cards? I’ve been playing Monopoly lately with family members, and I got to tell ya, it’s a lot of fun. Maybe Yahtzee is your game or even chess. Try playing these at least once a week. You might be surprised the “upgrades” to many of these games, since we were kids. Most importantly, there’s good data that shows playing board games can reduce rise of early dementia by nearly 50%.

You might even turn off the GPS sometimes!

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Comments

[Bhawna]

The info is great. I am myself suffering from this type of thing. It will be helpful

[motorcycle games]

well directioon is incredibly hard to awallow.