Social Strategies to Boost Your Brain
1. Keep in Touch
Our connection with friends and family is one of the easiest ways to maintain a complex and novel environment for our brains. Friends and family provide opportunities to communicate, interact and share experiences. They also provide necessary motivation to stay mentally active and involved.
Sustaining a social network can seem difficult or daunting, especially as children leave home, retirement sets in or a spouse passes away. But keeping in touch can be as easy as picking up your phone. If you’re having trouble getting started, how about trying these 4 simple steps…
Your Game Plan for a Strong Social Network
- Open your Address Book – Search your brain, book, or smart phone for a list of friends and family.
- Pick Your Priorities – Categorize your contacts into 3 groups; close friends being the first and casual acquaintances being the third. (Don’t worry, you’re the only one who needs to know this ranking!)
- Make a Plan to Connect - Based on your priorities, determine whether you want to connect weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly and mark a reminder in your scheduler.
- Follow Through. - Call (or email) on the date you’ve set aside. If they’re not there, leave a message.
- Reschedule - If your friend or family member can’t make it, plan another day to reconnect.
Tip:
Get a portable phone and answering machine or voice mail. A portable phone means you won’t miss calls and can multi-task if necessary while talking. An answering machine means you don’t have to worry about missing people when they call you back.
