The Mental Health New Year's Resolution You Should Be Making
It’s January again...you know what that means, right? It's time to start implementing those resolutions that you swore you would finally stick to.
But come on-- you know your New Year’s Resolutions never last long before you’re going back on what you promised yourself you would do this year.
But all cliche resolutions aside, here’s one you probably haven’t considered: bulking up your brain. No, I’m not talking about making it so muscular it can’t all fit in your cranium (time to go up a size!)-- I’m talking about further developing the “muscles” it already has.
One of the coolest "strengths" of your brain is that it can learn new languages-- but if you never actualize such potential, what’s it matter?
Check out a couple of these excuses you're probably using to get out of learning a new language in 2015. And watch as I magically explain them away!
But I don't travel.
If that’s your excuse, you could be welcoming Alzheimer’s disease to be traveling your way: research from Ghent University found that “speaking a second language can delay Alzheimer's disease onset” by almost a half decade! While Alzheimer's disease symptoms typically manifest themselves in people who speak a single language just before they hit 72 years old, those same symptoms don’t reach bilinguals until they’ve hit 76 years, on average.
But I didn’t grow up speaking a second language-- so I’m destined to fail.
EHHH! Wrong. You can start learning a second language at any time and start experiencing loads of cognitive benefits, claims research out of the University of Edinburgh. Specifically, the research uncovered evidence showing that it doesn’t matter how old people are when they begin learning a new language-- just the act of learning another language helped maintain their mental sharpness and cognition awareness.
If learning a new language isn’t a good reason to look forward to your New Year’s Resolution(s) this year, I don’t know what is. Besides, your mental health will be thanking you for it later!