Remaining Relevant

Achieving Lifelong Professional Success

Karen Lawson

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781637422526
• eBook ISBN: 9781637422533
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Successo personale

Achieve Lifelong Professional Success

Remaining Relevant is an inspirational playbook for professionals who want to remain relevant, significant, and credible contributors regardless of their age.

The book is based on research as well as interviews with over two dozen professional men and women from a variety of industries and disciplines.

Chock full of self-assessments, checklists, and activities, Remaining Relevant presents practical and concise tips to help the reader create an action plan for self-development and reinvention. Readers will gain valuable insight to help them remain at the top of their game throughout their lifetime. Chapters address how to…

• Stay Sharp – Improve mental acuity and cognitive skills.
• Communicate Clearly – Adapt your communication approach and techniques to today's environment.
• Stay Connected – Develop and strengthen personal and professional relationships.
• Update Your Image – Be perceived the way you want to be perceived.
• Get Physical – Slow down the signs of aging by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
• Seek Harmony – Enhance the spiritual, psychological, and emotional aspects of your life.
• Keep Up with Technology – Develop a working knowledge of platforms, applications, and social media.
• Reinvent Yourself – Start a new business or change your career.

CHAPTER 1

Stay Sharp

Exercise your mind the same as you would exercise your body. Practice healthy habits that will help you, empower you, and improve your perspective.

—Akiroq Brost, Author

Does this sound familiar? You walk into a room in your home, stop, and say to yourself, “What did I come in here for?” Or perhaps you can relate to some or all of the following:

• “What’s the name of that restaurant we like?”

• “Where did I put my car keys?”

• “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

• “Lately I have such a hard time remembering names.”

• “I think I’m having a senior moment.”

Don’t despair. You’re not losing it, and you’re not alone. You may dismiss or accept these incidents as simply part of the aging process. However, brain functions need not decline with age. The challenge is to delay or slow down the rate of decline. The key is to accept normal age-related changes and actively compensate for them. Maybe you will need to put a basket or hook by the door to the garage as the place you put your car keys so that you won’t misplace them. Perhaps you could keep a little black book where you jot down the restaurants you have frequented and your own mini reviews to help you remember your favorite ones.

Brain Research

Although recent research suggests that some aspects and processes change as people get older, simple behavior changes can help people stay sharp for as long as possible. The inevitable physical changes in the brain produce behavior changes. Some people have difficulty finding the words they want. Others have to work harder planning and organizing their activities. As we age, neurogenesis (the birth of brain cells called neurons) slows down in our hippocampus, the part of the brain that plays a major role in learning and memory. The good news is that we can increase neurogenesis through exercise and mental stimulation. What does decline is episodic memory, our ability to recall specific events that happen to us such as where we parked the car at the mall.

A group of researchers led by Michael Marsiske, associate professor of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida, found that short mental workouts improved performance and was sustained even five years later. For example, learn a new language or learn to play a new musical instrument. These types of activities can be helpful in preventing memory problems or developing dementia or Alzheimer’s. Take advantage of free online language-learning platforms such as Duolingo or Memrise, offering dozens of different language courses. Personally, I’m working on French and spend 15 to 20 minutes a day on a lesson.

Memory Fitness

Perhaps you remember the phrase, “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Coined by the advertising agency, Young and Rubicam, over 40 years ago to promote the United Negro College Fund scholarship program for Black students, this slogan can easily be applied to those who just stop exercising their minds. To stay sharp, you must keep your mind active.

Mental acuity or sharpness involves memory focus, concentration, and understanding. It’s an indication of how well your mind is working. Continually challenge yourself with new experiences and learning new things. One thing you should never do is to complain about memory loss. If you say you can’t remember things, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because we act on our beliefs.

Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind, supports the contention that the mind must be challenged. According to Gardner, “The mind is like a muscle. If it is constantly challenged with learning, it grows stronger; if not, it weakens.” Offering further support of the importance of keeping your brain active, Phil Bruschi, author of Mind Aerobics: The FundaMENTALSs of Memory Fitness, points out that “exercising your brain strengthens your mental abilities, just as exercising your body makes your muscles stronger.”

As noted earlier, not all types of memory decline with age. Our capacity to recall knowledge learned even at a young age stays with us throughout our lives. If you have any doubt, play Trivial Pursuit or watch Jeopardy! As a regular viewer of Jeopardy!, I am amazed and quite pleased by how many answers I get correct from my sofa. Seemingly useless and irrelevant pieces of information I learned in school or acquired from experience during my lifetime just pop into my head.

The following assessment is a modification of the original “Your Memory Profile” developed by Phil Bruschi. Its purpose is to provide feedback regarding your behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes regarding memory fitness and those that need improvement. Place a check mark beside the statements that apply to you most of the time. Be as candid as possible.

1. I seek out opportunities to learn and challenge my mind as I grow older.

2. I watch television game shows such as Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

3. I look for ways to stimulate my mind, personally and professionally.

4. I watch educational television programs.

5. I am open-minded to trying memory techniques, even if they seem silly or illogical.

6. I play games that exercise my mind, such as crossword puzzles, Scrabble, Sudoku, chess, and brain teasers.

7. I look for ways to improve my memory skills.

8. I read detective or mystery books.

9. I try to remember information by picturing it in my mind.

Look at those items that you checked. Consider those you did not check and use them as a basis for your self-improvement plan.

Many people believe and accept that the older you get, the more difficult it is to develop one’s memory. This just isn’t so. Memory is a learned skill, and there are steps you can take to improve or enhance your memory. Before we address ways to increase your memory fitness, let’s look at two types of memory—short term and long term.

Short-term memory (or working memory) is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, available state for a brief period. This working memory—the center of conscious thinking—has an estimated capacity of six to nine chunks or pieces of information. The information in your short-term memory will be forgotten within about 10 seconds unless it is repeated over and over, or it is transferred to long-term memory.

Long-term memory can hold millions and millions of separate bits of information over the course of a lifetime. To improve your memory, you need to increase your ability to transfer information from your short- to long-term memory. To help us remember, we need to be able to retrieve information out of our long-term memory into the conscious state of short-term memory. As we age, it does become more difficult to recall information, especially short-term memory.

When we are unable or find difficult to recall information stored in long-term memory, it’s easy to blame it on aging; however, there may be other factors that can interfere with memory. Consider the following potential barriers:

1. Poor listening skills

2. Mind wandering

3. Distractions

4. Lack of interest

5. Stress

6. Physical pain

7. Lack of sleep

8. Fatigue

9. Information overload

There are many actions you can take and practices you can incorporate into your life to improve your memory.

Memory Devices

Mnemonics

Mnemonics are memory aids based on association. Two such strategies are acrostics and acronyms. An acronym is an abbreviation made from the first letters of the words in a sequence. For example, ASAP stands for As Soon As Possible. Another example comes from my childhood piano lessons. To learn lines of the treble clef (EGBDF), my piano teacher taught me to recall the phrase, Every Good Boy Does Fine. I remember it to this day, many years later! Isn’t that so much easier to remember than five unrelated letters? On the other hand, an acrostic is a piece of writing in which the first letter, syllable, or words of each line spells out a word. I have created several acrostic job aids for my training programs. Following is an example of one I developed for conflict resolution:

Resolving Conflict

Respect the other person’s position or point of view.

Empathize by “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.”

State your position clearly and unemotionally.

Own your role in the conflict.

Listen actively to the other person.

Value the relationship.

Engage in mutual problem-solving.

Notice that the letters that begin each guideline form the key word to dealing with conflict: RESOLVE.

Chaining and Pegging

Both chaining (linking) and pegging employ visualization.

Visualization is the mind’s ability to picture an event or item. Chaining is associating one thought to another. As Phil Bruschi puts it, “When you want to remember a new piece of information, it must be associated or ‘linked’ to something you already know in some illogical way. This technique uses visual imagery to associate two or more items for remembering lists of things in sequential order.” Guidelines for chaining are as follows:

• Select the items you want to remember.

• Create a story using the words you want to remember.

• Make the story absurd to associate the items.

• The items can be larger or smaller than they really are, or they can be objects in action.

• Put yourself in the story.

Here is an example:

I want to remember the following words in sequential order: shoes, book, dumbbell, pumpkin, fan, glasses, flag, candle, towel. After my workout, I visualized myself sitting on a pile of shoes. I wanted to read a book so I used a dumbbell to smash a nearby pumpkin. Inside I found a fan that I used to cool off. To help me relax, I used my glasses in the shape of a flag to light a candle. I covered myself with a towel and fell asleep.

The second technique that uses imagination and association is pegging. Pegging uses visual imagery to associate anything you need to remember with images previously associated with numbers. Numbers are abstract, so to make them more concrete, you need to hang these new items on established images. A simplistic example that I use around the Christmas holidays is when I try to remember the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I picture these items as I go through each of the days:

1st—Partridge in a pear tree

2nd—Two turtle doves

3rd—Three French hens

4th—Four calling birds

5th—Five golden rings

6th—Six geese a-laying

7th—Seven swans a-swimming

8th—Eight maids a-milking

9th—Nine ladies dancing

10th—Ten lords a-leaping

11th—Eleven pipers piping

12th—Twelve drummers drumming

Observation

Seeing and observing are not the same.

• Seeing is a complex process involving various parts of the eye that results in signals being sent to the brain, which then interprets them as visual images.

• On the other hand, observing goes beyond the process of capturing and interpreting what the eye sees. Observing involves using all our senses and the brain analyzing data it receives from the sensory infor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Description
• Contents
• Endorsements
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Don’t Retire
• Chapter 1 Stay Sharp
• Chapter 2 Communicate Clearly
• Chapter 3 Stay Connected
• Chapter 4 Update Your Image
• Chapter 5 Get Physical
• Chapter 6 Seek Harmony
• Chapter 7 Keep Up With Technology
• Chapter 8 Reinvent Yourself
• Afterword
• References
• About the Author
• Index
• Backcover