If you are anything like me your brain will have been on ‘idle’ for the last week or so – occupied with eating, drinking, socialising…and if you are anything like me, it now needs waking up – the metaphorical stretches that we do before exercise to make sure our muscles are warmed up properly. Anyone who has ever done yoga or other forms of exercise knows that unless we use and stretch our muscles regularly they tighten and weaken. Well, the same applies to our brain. Just imagine what your brain might be like if it was NEVER challenged and stretched from childhood – it’s the challenge and stretch that helps us learn and keeps our thinking gear fit and able.

One of the exercises we often challenge our coaching clients to complete is to do something different(ly) every day. It might simply be to read a different newspaper, or travel to work via a different route or mode of tansport, it might be to brush your teeth with the ‘wrong’ hand or to spend 10 minutes just watching the birds instead of the television…there are thousands of ‘differents’ that you could think of and do and any one of them offers the prospect of some learning and certainly keeps the brain agile.
So our Level 1 exercise is simply to do something different every day.
Level 2 is to record it and consoider what you learned about yourself or the world as a consequence of the action – and there is always some learning.

Go on, have a go – do something different every day for a week and record your feedback as comments on this article.