Imagine a back to school challenge that draws on your unique brainpower? Or a new opportunity to re-start an old habit in a fresh way, with rejuvenating mental benefits? 
All through mind-bending facts from the brain sciences, and from Dr. Norman Doidge’s Books: The Brain that Changes Itself, and The Brain’s Way of Healing.
- Planning for boredom or adventure? Both are shaped more by your daily choices than by any reality. If you find yourself bored, for instance, ask two-footed questions and you’ll look at old issues from new angles. That simply means ask a question that probes new information with one foot and engages your interest or experience with the other. An example is: What if I illustrate this topic to a child in ways that interest me and inspire that child?
- How could setting inspire new insights? Create a learning area that helps you transform problems into solutions. Here are some possibilities of a stimulating setting that benefits your brain and may help your learning efforts. As in many of these possibilities – your grow possibilities by using the suggestions and tweaking them to fit your own unique brain.
- Where can you find contentment in spite of chaos? Well-being fuels serotonin, your brain’s content chemical. The simplest actions can top up your levels for the day. Do anything to benefit all, regardless of challenges for instance, and you’ll see the magical roles that serotonin plays in daily success. Yes, learning increases with serotonin. Have you noticed how learning also shuts down without it? Discover more fun ways to increase serotonin and its benefits today in the video at this site.
- What would it take to re-cycle stress toxins? Anger, fear, or frustration fuel cortisol, your brain’s stress chemical that shuts you down. Check the dangers of toxins that come with cortisol in your brain, and discover how to prevent cortisol in your day at this site.
- How to tackle unfair dilemmas? Venting is bad for the brain and creates new neuron pathways to much more of the misery. It also increases cortisol and stores toxic responses in your brain’s amygdala. Discover here how your amygdala (sometimes called your seat of emotions) can be tamed so that you exchange venting for healthier emotional responses.
- What habit could handle a makeover? Dendrite brain cells use the outside world and take shape, or grow based on what you do. Discover at this site how dendrite brain cells are enhanced when you do things differently and change it up to improve certain practices you do daily.
- What tune could sharpen your focus? Music changes your brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter productivity. Check out what each genre of music can do to help your learning and improve focus at this site.
- What one new fact could advance one action today? Lectures work against listeners’ brains, yet applying what you learn into action works for you. Retention is lost when we listen without applying the facts we hear, or using them in some relevant way to solve a problem or create a product.
- Is your brain shrinking? They’re called Hebbian learners – who rewire their brains with ruts that kill incentives. They can literally shrink their brains. Hebbian learners do the same things in the same way and stay satisfied with the same ruts and results. Why not change one Hebbian habit today.
- How inclusive are you really? Diversity works for you mentally and offers benefits when differences add to talent mix. You can discover some of the mental skills that add diversity benefits to learning circles here.
- Snoozing rather than learning? Brain waves can bring either sleep or peak performance, based on how you activate them. Check here to see how your waves work and how they change from fast to slow and back – depending on what speed your brain needs most at any time.
- Are some skills simply too difficult to learn? Hook each difficult facts onto one thing you know and learning increases in less time. Here is the explanation for how hooked facts benefit your learning progress.
- Stuck in any ruts lately? Your basal ganglia warehouses endless facts and create ruts, while you working memory holds few facts, store none and leads change. You can see the awesome roles and benefits of working memory and basal ganglia here.
- Using your talents to shore up weaker areas? Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can gain IQ points daily. Survey your intelligences to see where your strengths lie and what you can do to grow in weaker areas.
- Do others tend to bring petty complaints to you? Cynical mindsets literally block creativity, impact talent, and stomp out innovation. See here what mental conditions fuel your best innovative results.
- Forgetting things you should remember? Memory can be outsourced to help you remember, and to free the mind for finer focus. When you create a cheat sheet and list key facts there to use in your solution or innovation, you free up the working memory to focus on applications of those outsourced or stored facts. This process, essential for problem solvers, requires you to know how to access and outsource information.
- When did you last learn something that changed you? Plasticity enables you to rewire your human brain in ways that keep it young and smarter. Plasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself based on what we do that’s different. Because of the brain’s plasticity it can learn and change well into our senior years.
- Do others see you as caring? Encouragement changes brain’s chemistry through raised serotonin well-being. See how the opposite is also true. Lack of kindness can destroy learning opportunities for many.
- Say exactly what you mean? Meta-messages destroy relationships through implications different from words you speak. See examples of common meta-messages here.
- Do you use more hard or soft skills? It often takes an integration of hard and soft skills to solve new era problems brilliantly. Here at the Mita International Brain Center we call these integrated skills smart skills and we show how smart skills are essential tools for problem solving that requires solutions from both sides of your brain.
- Feel stressed? Stress literally shrinks the brain, and poor tone in communication acts as silent stress killer. While stress may seem like the new normal in learning settings, see how stress tanks talents and injects dangerous toxins into learning circles where it is found.
- Why use people’s names? Greet a person through speaking that person’s name, for a spike in personal awareness. See what relation names have to mental progress here.
- Looking for a mentor? Inspire creativity and invention through teaching others at the same time you also learn. See how retention fits into a vibrant and creative work areas where people teach one another.
- Why propose a solution whenever you name a problem? Create new neuron pathways each time you propose a solution to problems you encounter. See how each action you do creates a new neuron pathway for more of the same.
- Getting most from both genders? Gals’ and guys’ brain differ biologically and intellectually in ways that few optimize. See a humorous video and detailed facts here to illustrate many interesting ways that gender brains differ.
- Does your curiosity factor rock? A healthy dose of wonder prompts us to chase new ideas in ways that change us. You can stir curiosity for any topic in much the ways that Einstein played with ideas and questioned them to find solutions. He asked, for instance – What would it be like to ride the arc of a rainbow? Through that question Einstein’s curiosity stirred and he developed the theory of relativity.
- What will you teach somebody today? You retain 90% more by teaching peers or others at the same time you learn yourself. See how retention fits into a vibrant and creative work areas where people teach one another.
- Holding onto a grudge? Find a way past unforgiveness and your brain opens delightful new opportunities. Learning can be deeply hampered by problems of forgiving or letting go of hurts. Pre-occupation with resentments or grudges – tends to replace that space in your working memory where focus and new learning take place.
- Encounter a bully in you or others? Mental equipment of bullies differs from that of kind or supportive people. Compare the mind of bully and the mind of encourager at this site.
- Feeling stuck while others move forward? Without your choices for change and new actions – your brain defaults to ruts. See why your brain has a habit of defaulting to poor habits or ruts that hold you back.
- How are you smart? Notice I asked, How are you smart? … not How smart are you? Then expect awesome illustrations from your multiple capabilities. See how we’ve been asking the wrong question, and seeing more limitations than mental strengths.
- Are you viewed as peacemaker? Your brain uses tone skills to turn gunners into givers. How so? Disagree by building goodwill among all who differ. See how tone acts as the body language of communication.
- What treasure did you learn from a small child and from a senior today? When all learn and all teach – all benefit more mentally through awesome change and growth. See how the process of mind-guiding (or mutual mentoring) works to build curiosity for growth at all ages and developmental stages.
- Could you build a unique learning culture? Build brain-friendly opportunities together and learners can benefit from mental possibilities that follow for all. See key mental components of a learning culture that optimizes mental equipment that most learners bring to any circle.
- What are you laughing at? Enjoy enormous learning benefits come from a brain on laughter that starts with laughing at yourself. See the many benefits of a brain on laughter that many miss in learning circles with poor humor that excludes others, or no humor at all.
- Sad or discouraged? Working memory is brain’s tiny sticky note that holds few facts at a time. Fill it with sadness and it can no longer hold facts. See how your brain can heal the broken-heartedness that too often fills a learner’s working memory and prevents learning.
You’ll find ready-to-roll resources to teach, track and test each of these brain based discoveries at my TpT site. A year-long planner – with daily brain boosters – complete with guide to apply boosters in ways that advance your unique capabilities.
In addition to the above main sources – you’ve likely noticed backup posts linked to every question with further suggestions for how these brain parts work as an aide to learning. No need to follow all the links – they are there for those who wish to follow one or two through as a way to see further examples or applications. Try the ideas in each post that interests you, help learners to tweak them, and enjoy only those that help you and others to leap ahead and enjoy more hidden or unused capabilities. I hope you enjoy the challenges, and find fun hidden in many of the new learning opportunities presented here to learn with the brain more in mind.
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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset