Playing Those Mind Games Forever

When I think of health I think of three parts of the puzzle. Mental, physical and spiritual. If you have strength in all three, then you are well on your way to a healthy life. One of my favourite things to do is exercise my brain. That can be by doing something as simple as reading or a little more difficult as trying to memorize something. Sweet Roast spends a lot of leisure time studying or doing crossword puzzles. When I’m in a puzzle-solving mood, I lean towards Sudoku or Logic Puzzles. Exercising the mind is very important. There are a lot of foods that are known to be good for the memory as well as a whole series of vitamins but I prefer to do it the old-fashioned way. I’m currently doing the play-by-play for our local hockey team online. I thought at first it would be a huge challenge, but I have since found it a lot easier than I expected. Memorizing all the players’ names and matching them to their jersey numbers I thought would be a big chore. So far, the home team has been fairly easy for me to remember, but I have used a couple of memory short cuts. The player wearing #20 is O’Brien. The zero reminds me of the O. The fellow in jersey #22 is Cecconi. The 22 reminds me of the double ‘c’ in the middle of his name. Other tricks I’ve used include #11 is Brechmann – the two one’s remind me of the two n’s at the end of his name and others I just remember. Another trick I have found that helps me remember things is to purposely write it down. Say I have a list of three things I need to do, I’ll jot down the key words and memorize them to remind me of what I’m supposed to do. For example a list that reads 1) Check the mail, 2) pick up laundry and 3) pay the mortgage becomes mail, laundry, mortgage – a lot easier to remember. Sometimes just writing down mail, laundry, mortgage helps to reinforce the points to remember. Even if I lose the list, I should be able to recall the three words that’ll tip me off to what the three tasks were. I don’t use post-it notes (keep forgetting where they are), text message reminders (can’t recall my pin code) or portable tape recorders (never can remember to re-charge the batteries) so I’ve adapted to using methods that actually work for me. Now if I could remember what I was trying to write about everything would be just fine.