by Rachel Kobin
There are many
factors that play into keeping the brain healthy, including regular physical
and mental exercise, a nutritious diet, positive social engagement, and stress
management. The sixth factor is keeping your mind engaged throughout your
lifetime. The mental stimulation of activities like reading books and magazines,
learning a foreign language, doing crossword puzzles, and writing can play an
important role in preventing memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s. The
focus of this newsletter is how anyone—writers and non-writers—can use writing
for fun and brain health.
Writing for Non-writers
You don’t have
to have any talent, understand grammar, or even have a large vocabulary to write
for your brain’s health. Below, I’ve included a few of the many easy ways to expand
on writing you may not even realize you’re already doing that could help you continue
to experience the joys of what your healthy brain can do.
Using Lists to Write Regularly
Many of us keep
to-do lists or shopping lists, but list-making can be a fun way to challenge
yourself to do a bit of writing every day. Lists can evolve into journal
entries and even become what’s called a “list poem.”
All of these list-making
exercises can be done on paper, in a notebook, on your computer or laptop, or
on your phone. You can even email yourself while you’re commuting on SEPTA. The
“right way” is the one that works for you. Keep in mind that these are
exercises for your brain. No one else ever has to read what you write, and
you’re not trying to get published or even impress yourself, so withhold
judgment and let it rip!
The Gratitude List
Reminding
ourselves what is going well is a reliable way to boost your mood at times when money is tight or you’re feeling blue. Every
day for one month, write down at least seven things for which you’re grateful. You
might feel the only good thing that day is your cup of tea or coffee. That’s
okay. Start there and look around. What or who else do you have in your life? If
you’re having health problems, you may have to write down the parts of your
body that are working rather than the
ones that aren’t. What is going right rather than wrong? Keep going beyond
seven if you can, and if you find it helpful, keep this up beyond a month. It’s
perfectly okay to repeat items from day to day.
The Gratitude Poem
A sub-category
of The Gratitude List, The Gratitude Poem uses the same first few words for
each line of your list. For each thing you feel grateful, begin the line with
“I love the way…” or “I have…” or start with a few words of your choice. Here’s
an example (Okay, I’m going to just switch the last word of the last line to
give it a tiny bit of pizazz, but I promise, I didn’t dwell on this!):
I love the way
the breeze wafts over me.
I love the way
my sheets feel after a long day of work.
I love the way
my housemate laughs so loud at TV shows.
I love the way the
cherries wait at the bottom of my yogurt.
I love the way
my glasses make these letters bigger.
I love the way
the children laugh on their trampoline.
Today, I love
the way the sun shines.
The Daily Life List
Take a
three-hour period of your list and jot down a list of what you did with no
embellishment. Then, think back, and add details. If the first thing you wrote
down was “1. Woke up,” try to remember if you were dreaming before you woke up.
Do you remember what the dream was about? What did the room look like when you
opened your eyes? Did you feel warm or cold? Could you smell food or coffee
from the kitchen or did you have to do the cooking? How were you feeling about
the day to come at that point? This can easily become a daily practice. Keep
asking yourself to include more and more details about how things sounded,
tasted, looked, felt, or smelled, and write down how you felt about as much as
you can.
The People List
Keep a list of
observations about the people you encounter as you go about your life, perhaps
a school crosswalk guard or the supermarket checkout person. What do you
notice? What details show up when you start paying more attention to those
around you? Does your checkout person have thick glasses or move a bit slowly?
Write about what that person’s life might be like because of something you
observe. This exercise might even increase our compassion for others.
Writing Letters and E-mails
Another way to
incorporate writing into your life is to write yourself a letter or email regularly
or every day if you can. What do you want your older self to be able to look
back on and remember? What words of kindness do you have for yourself?
Might there be a
friend or loved one who would start an e-mail correspondence with you, one that
doesn’t demand an instant response, but would include more of an in-depth
interaction than what we get from Facebook, messaging, or texting? Before the
advent of e-mail, we wrote letters to our friends and family who lived far away.
It was expected that some time would pass between our responses. In fact, enough
time elapsed between letters to allow for more to happen in each correspondents’
lives, which allowed for more surprises. You could use e-mail similarly to
snail mail and promise not to expect an instant response, or you could even
write letters on paper and send them through the mail. Imagine how nice it
would be to receive a personal letter rather than a bill!
A Word About Writing Exercises and
Prompts
You are in
charge of your writing, so never feel penned in, pun intended, by a prompt or
writing exercise; change it to suit your needs. You can change the wording or simplify
it, using only one part at a time, and if it’s simply not working for you, try
freewriting. Freewriting is the act of letting whatever is on your mind spill
onto the page. Keep scribbling for as long as you can. In her famous book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
recommends writing like this for three pages by hand on paper, if you are physically able to do so. Writing by
hand has been found to free us from criticizing our writing. This form of
writing has a long-standing history of helping people get started with their
day or get to sleep because it helps to clear our minds. No matter how you
choose to integrate writing into your life, have fun with it!
Rachel Kobin has over twenty years of
experience writing in a variety of professional settings. This July she
attended a twelve-day writers’ conference where she attended a TV writing
workshop, panel discussions and lectures about fiction, non-fiction, poetry,
and publishing. As the founder and director of The Philadelphia Writers
Workshop, she leads creative writing workshops at The Resiliency Center, and
works with authors privately as an editor to help them make what’s on the page
as brilliant as the ideas originally in their minds. To learn more, visit www.phillywriters.com or email her at Rachel@phillywriters.com.
