Why You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Senior Moments.
If you are afraid of senior moments, you may mistake the genius of your brain for failure.
You may sit there and wonder why you can't think of something, but in reality, the beautiful design of your brain is helping you remember what is most important.
What do I mean? I had dinner with a friend recently, and she told the story of a senior moment she had had a week or so ago.
Now, my friend is mid-sixties, highly successful, sharp as anybody I know, working like a mad woman and she shows no signs that she even wants to stop working.
She is having too much fun.
And yet, she worried about a senior moment.
Not so long before we had dinner she had a walk with a friend in the country somewhere.
As they were walking they saw a tunnel under the road, a tunnel that is used to make sure that when it rains, the water drains to the other side of the road.
"Now, what is that called again? You know, there is a word for it.
Those tunnels, darn, what is that word? I just can't think of it.
" Not until my friend came home did she remember the word.
Culvert! "That's it.
I knew it, I just couldn't think of it.
" And she used this story to tell me that she has senior moments.
"Excuse me," I said, "do you remember the last time in the past thirty years or so, when you actually used that word in a sentence?" "No.
" Well, perhaps your brain isn't losing its strength, but it is in fact doing what it is supposed to do.
That is, your brain keeps the information that you regularly use in the front, and the stuff that you are not using frequently moves to the background.
Use our brainpower for the important stuff that you are doing.
Remembering the speeches you give to national audiences, remembering key information for the books and articles that you are writing.
I mean, she really is a successful person.
That is how the brain works.
The brain is an active organ that moves information around, depending on your use of that information.
Read that line again.
The way you use your brain determines what you will remember most easily.
And information moves to the background when you are not using it.
That is a really good thing.
That is what allows you to be successful.
That allows you to focus on what is important to you.
That allows you to focus at all.
Just think what would happen if you are memorizing all the information that you have, and it would all be equally important? You wouldn't know to turn left or right in the morning.
Everything would be of equal importance, and you couldn't make the decision to save your life.
Literally.
You are always making decisions about what is important to you, whether you are conscious of it or not.
What you think is a senior moment is really a sign that you are highly intelligent and functioning well.
It shows that you are engaged and active.
The old stuff moves to the background and that is where it should be, until you need it again.
So give your brain a break.
Give it a moment to retrieve that information that you didn't use for so long.
It likely is still there.
And your brain will have proved once again that it was designed beautifully.