Derived from cerebrum, the Latin word for “brain”, “cerebral” is a term that refers simply to the brain and its intellect. But when someone is described as cerebral, the term takes on a much deeper meaning.
Someone with a cerebral outlook on life relies on their own intellect to make decisions. They aren’t easily swayed by outside influence, they don’t overreact or create drama, and they don’t let their emotions take over. Typically more interested in intellectual pursuits like reading and writing, a cerebral person is analytical, favouring logic and reason over gossip and drama.
Depending on the content, being called cerebral can be a nice compliment. There are certainly aspects of a cerebral outlook on life that are aspirational for many. In this article, we’re sharing a few strategies for developing that cerebral outlook.
Train Your Brain
Like the muscles and joints that power the body, the brain also requires stimulation and training to remain in peak condition. “Use it or lose it” is an accurate expression and a great mantra to live by. With a healthy well-trained brain, you can retain your critical thinking skills, quick wit, memory and creativity long into your old age.
There are a number of ways to train your brain. Reading and writing, the oldest known intellectual activities, are excellent ways to keep the brain sharp. And we have so much more at our fingertips these days, in physical form and digitally. There are board games like Scrabble, card games, puzzles, and other games like Sudoku, chess, crosswords, Wordle, and many more.
In order for an activity to truly train your brain, Harvard Medical School recommends three guidelines for brain training:
- Challenging. If it’s too easy, your brain isn’t getting the stimulation it needs. That’s why finding something new and tackling it head on is one of the healthiest decisions you can make for your brain.
- Complex. Aside from being challenging, the activity should be complex. That means your brain will need to employ its problem solving and critical thinking abilities.
- Practice. By choosing an activity that is easily repeatable, you’ll be able to practice and gradually improve over time. That steady improvement will work wonders for your mind.
Invest Your Spare Time
An honest audit of your spare time may be eye opening. How much of it is spent on non-productive activities? Not only that, how much of it is spent around toxic energy, content and people?
If you want to develop a more cerebral outlook on life, you’ll have to make better choices around the content you consume and the people you surround yourself with. It will be difficult to develop this outlook on life if your time is spent doom scrolling your social feeds, betting on sports, and binging reality TV. There may be a time and place for all of that, but if these activities are occupying hours of your every day, don’t be surprised when your attitude, mood, and general outlook are negatively influenced.
Thanks to the internet, there are plenty of opportunities for bettering ourselves, learning, and consuming interesting content. There is an endless amount of educational and interesting podcasts out there – start by finding one that appeals to you and invest more of your spare time in it. Not to mention the millions of online training programs, blogs, research studies, YouTube series, and educational apps.
Lastly, it will benefit you to create some separation with reactive, over-emotional, hyper-sensitive or toxic people. You don’t need to cut people out of your life, just start by being mindful about who and what type of energy you surround yourself with on a daily and weekly basis.
Nourish Your Brain
Just like training your brain, you can preserve the health of your brain and promote cognitive function by giving it proper nourishment. This nourishment will help you retain your memory, learn new things, remain socially active, and challenge your mind well into your older years.
They key to nourishment is the food we eat. If we fuel our bodies and mind with high quality nourishment, we can expect better performance, mood and energy. Along the same lines, a low-quality diet filled with processed foods and simple carbohydrates will contribute to issues like dementia plus other cognitive disfunction and chronic disease. You are what you eat.
There are number of diets that come and go, along with a ton of noise that just tends to complicate things. The best approach to overall health for the mind and body is to stick with real food. If you’re eating real foods, it will be very hard to go wrong. We’re built to metabolize real food – food our cellular biology agrees with, so cut the crap (the processed food).
Try Cheeky’s ‘Cerebral’ Cannabis
Cannabis has a long history as a medicinal product, and these days, studies are being done to measure the efficacy of cannabis in treating conditions like epilepsy, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, multiple sclerosis and others. We’re learning more every year, and there’s no doubt that that the psychoactive element in cannabis can positively impact the brain.
But you don’t need to have a health condition to reap the benefits of cannabis. Certain strains of cannabis, like our Cerebral line of CBC cannabis, is designed for slowing the mind down and allowing for deep thought, focus, and critical thinking. Cannabis has a way of putting the brakes on everyday stresses like work, school and relationships, creating space for our brains to let loose a little. It will never be easier to spark curiosity embark on a deep dive of information of some educational topic than with the help of certain cannabis strains.
To try our CBC line for developing a more cerebral outlook, visit us in Maple Ridge or Kitsilano and talk with our friendly staff. If you’d rather stay home, browse our online cannabis menu.