If you read yesterday’s post, Allow Yourself Time to Think, then hopefully you also read Jane McGonigal’s essay on Building Resilience by Wasting Time! (If not, please read it now!) Ms. McGonigal discusses some of the activities that helped her recover from a traumatic brain injury and yesterday I focused on one aspect–allowing yourself to time to think.
Ms. McGonigal’s recovery also included building mental resilience by strengthening your willpower, discipline, and perseverance.
If you’re up for a challenge, check out Ms. McGonigal’s online game superbetter.com. She designed the game specifically to build resilience, and even if you just go through the initial tutorial, you’ll learn a lot about resilience and simple activities for building resilience. There’s also a SuperBetter app for iPhones & iPads (free!)–I encourage you to check it out!
You may also want to check out brainconnection.com–this is another site with games to sharpen your mental skills in areas such as “Attention,” “Brain Speed,” & “Memory.” This site has a monthly fee ($10/month) but you can try a free trial, and the Brain Resources page has a lot of interesting information about the brain (for free!).
If you prefer something easier or lower tech for building mental resilience, here are a few suggestions:
- Work a crossword puzzle (builds fluency) Click here for an online crossword puzzle!
- Listen to a song and write down all the words (builds attentional focus)
- Work on a jigsaw puzzle (builds visual spatial skills)
- For the next 60 seconds, say (out loud) all the animals that start with the letter C you can think of (builds fluency)
