When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, most people focus on losing weight or saving money. But there’s one resolution that makes everything else possible: protecting and enhancing your brain health.
Your cognitive wellness isn’t just about remembering names or where you left your keys—it’s the foundation for maintaining independence, pursuing passions, and living purposefully at every age.
The good news? Your brain is far more adaptable than you might think. Thanks to neuroplasticity—the brain’s remarkable ability to form new neural connections throughout life—brain health for seniors isn’t about preventing inevitable decline. It’s about actively building cognitive resilience through intentional, science-backed habits.
Kelly Stranburg, Vice President of Healthy Aging and Longevity at Westminster Communities of Florida, has identified three powerful memory boosting habits that can transform your cognitive wellness in 2026 and beyond. These aren’t complicated protocols or expensive supplements. They’re accessible, enjoyable practices supported by decades of research—and they’re already changing lives at Westminster communities across Florida.
Resolution #1: Cultivate Radical Curiosity
When asked for brain health habits that she would recommend for seniors, Stranburg didn’t hesitate with her first response: remain curious.
What It Is and Why It Matters
“Have a mindset of curiosity,” Stranburg emphasizes. “Asking questions, getting to know people—curiosity is the piece of the equation that gets lost in most cases.”
Most brain training programs focus on practicing skills you already have—crossword puzzles, Sudoku, word games. While these activities provide mental stimulation, they don’t create the neural growth that protects against cognitive decline. True brain health for seniors requires something more powerful: learning genuinely new things.
The Science Behind Curiosity and Memory
The famous Nun Study provides compelling evidence for the protective power of curiosity. Researchers followed 678 Catholic sisters for decades, eventually examining their brains after death. The remarkable finding? Many nuns showed physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain tissue, yet they had never exhibited symptoms during life.
“When they died, they found that these nuns had Alzheimer’s signs in their brains, but they didn’t have any symptoms,” Stranburg explains. “The new neurons they were building prevented the symptoms.”
What protected these women wasn’t avoiding pathology—it was building cognitive reserve through continuous learning, teaching, and intellectual engagement. Each new skill, language, concept, or perspective creates new neural pathways that provide alternative routes when others become damaged.
How Does Westminster Support Curiosity?
Westminster Communities partners with OSHER Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI), programs affiliated with colleges and universities that offer courses specifically designed for older adults. These aren’t simplified versions of college classes—they’re sophisticated educational experiences covering everything from art history to current events, literature to science.
“We have an exorbitant amount of lifelong learning programs,” Stranburg notes. “I have been working with OLLI programs for years, and these programs are proactively helping people learn new things.”
Westminster Communities also provides education and support around technology—one of the most effective ways to challenge your brain with genuinely novel information. Staff members help residents master smartphones, navigate wifi, understand artificial intelligence, and stay connected with family through digital platforms.
Practical Tips for Getting Started
Looking for ways to stay curious? Here are a few tips:
- Ask One New Question Daily: Challenge yourself to learn something about a neighbor, a topic, or your community that you didn’t know yesterday.
- Enroll in a Course on an Unfamiliar Subject: Choose something outside your expertise or comfort zone. The discomfort means your brain is growing.
- Learn a New Technology Skill: Video calling, social media, digital photography—these aren’t just practical tools, they’re memory-boosting habits that create new neural connections.
- Approach Conversations With Genuine Interest: Every person you meet knows something you don’t. Curiosity isn’t just polite—it’s neuroprotective.
Resolution #2: Move Your Body, Boost Your Brain
Instead of making a resolution about exercising more simply because you think it is what you ought to do, do it for your brain.
What It Is and Why It Matters
“You have to move,” Stranburg states simply. “You need blood flow to the brain.”
Physical movement isn’t just about maintaining mobility or preventing falls. It’s one of the most powerful memory-boosting habits available, with effects on cognitive function that rival those of any pharmaceutical intervention.
The Science Behind Movement and Memory
When you exercise, your heart pumps more blood to your brain, delivering the oxygen and nutrients your neurons need to function optimally. But the benefits go far deeper. Physical activity stimulates the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that acts like fertilizer for your brain cells, promoting the growth of new neurons and strengthening connections between existing ones.
Both cardiovascular exercise and strength training contribute to brain health for seniors, though through different mechanisms. Aerobic activity improves blood flow and oxygen delivery, while resistance training has been linked to improved executive function and memory. The most effective approach? A combination of both, Stranburg suggests.
How Does Westminster Support Movement?
Westminster Communities offers comprehensive fitness programming designed to support residents’ cardiovascular and strength needs. Using the Senior Fitness Test (SFT), staff members assess each resident’s functional fitness across six key areas: lower- and upper-body strength, aerobic endurance, lower- and upper-body flexibility, and agility with dynamic balance.
These assessments aren’t just numbers on a chart. They provide the foundation for personalized exercise programs that meet residents where they are while challenging them to build capacity. Whether someone is training for a 5K or working to maintain the strength needed for daily living, Westminster’s fitness professionals create appropriate, effective programs.
The community’s well-rounded fitness offerings include group classes, personal training, aquatic programs, and specialized classes designed for various fitness levels and health conditions.
Practical Tips for Getting Started
Adding more movement to your life doesn’t have to be a major life change. Let’s take a look at some meaningful tips for adding more movement to your routine.
- Start Where You Are: If you haven’t exercised regularly, begin with a 10-minute walk. Consistency matters more than intensity when you’re building a habit.
- Combine Cardio and Strength: Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity weekly, plus two or more days of strength training. This combination optimizes brain health benefits.
- Make It Social: Exercise with friends or join group fitness classes. Social engagement provides additional cognitive benefits while making movement more enjoyable.
- Track Your Progress: Consider taking the Senior Fitness Test to establish baselines, then retest periodically. Seeing improvement is powerfully motivating.
- Think Beyond the Gym: Dancing, gardening, swimming, Tai Chi—anything that gets you moving counts. Choose activities you genuinely enjoy.
Resolution #3: Never Stop Learning
It sounds simple enough, but continuing to learn and challenge yourself can have a big impact on your brain health. Let’s learn more.
What It Is and Why It Matters
Curiosity asks the questions; learning provides the answers. While these two memory-boosting habits overlap, learning deserves its own focus because it represents the active work of building new neural pathways.
“Continuing to learn new things—curiosity leads to learning new things,” Stranburg explains. “The only way to build new neurons is to learn something new and do it.”
Those last three words matter: “and do it.” Passive consumption of information provides minimal cognitive benefit. True learning requires effort, practice, and application—the struggle that signals your brain is creating new connections.
The Science Behind Lifelong Learning
Every time you learn something genuinely new, your brain physically changes. Neurons form new connections, myelin (the insulation around nerve fibers) thickens to speed signal transmission, and entire networks reorganize to accommodate new information.
This neuroplasticity continues throughout life, but it requires the right stimulus. Reviewing familiar material or practicing existing skills maintains current pathways but doesn’t create new ones. The challenge level matters when you are discussing brain health for seniors. You need to venture beyond your comfort zone into territory where you’re a genuine beginner.
Research consistently shows that cognitively stimulating activities—particularly those involving learning new skills—are associated with lower dementia risk and better cognitive function in late life. The protective effect appears strongest when learning is sustained over time rather than occasional.
How Does Westminster Support Lifelong Learning?
Beyond OLLI partnerships, Westminster Communities implements Total Brain Health, a comprehensive program offering various brain training activities that support everything from focus to short-term recall. Unlike simple brain games that exercise existing skills, Total Brain Health challenges residents with progressively more difficult tasks designed to build new cognitive capabilities.
The communities also host lectures, discussion groups, book clubs, art classes, music programs, and workshops on topics ranging from finance to history to current events. This variety ensures that every resident can find learning opportunities aligned with their interests while also being encouraged to explore unfamiliar territory.
Technology education represents a particularly valuable learning opportunity, Stranburg says. For many seniors, digital devices and applications represent genuinely novel territory—exactly the kind of challenge that promotes neuroplasticity. Westminster staff provide patient, ongoing support as residents master these new skills.
Practical Tips for Getting Started
With the importance of lifelong learning clear, here are a few tips to help you get started on your lifelong learning journey.
- Choose Something Completely New: If you’ve never painted, try watercolors. Never played an instrument? Start piano lessons. The novelty is the point.
- Embrace Productive Struggle: Feeling challenged means you’re learning. If everything comes easily, you’re not building new neural pathways.
- Make It Regular: Learning once a month won’t create lasting change. Aim for regular engagement—daily if possible, at least several times weekly.
- Apply What You Learn: Knowledge becomes truly embedded when you use it. Take that language class, then practice with native speakers. Learn digital photography, then document your community.
- Join a Learning Community: Group classes and study circles provide social connection alongside cognitive stimulation, multiplying the brain health benefits.
The Purpose Connection: When Brain Health Meets Meaning
Brain health for seniors and purposeful living aren’t separate pursuits—they’re deeply interconnected. Cognitive wellness provides the foundation that makes purposeful engagement possible, while purpose-driven activities build cognitive resilience.
Harvard research on purpose and longevity found that individuals with a strong sense of purpose showed better cognitive function and lower dementia risk. The relationship works in both directions: purpose motivates the learning, movement, and curiosity that protect brain health, while strong cognitive function enables the complex thinking, planning, and social engagement that purposeful living requires.
“Purpose goes a lot deeper than simple goals,” Stranburg notes. “It is something that drives us intrinsically. I know why I want to wake up in the morning.”
When seniors engage in memory-boosting habits not just for cognitive preservation but also in service of meaningful goals—volunteering, mentoring, creative expression, community contribution—the neurological benefits amplify. The brain responds particularly well to activities that combine multiple elements: learning, social connection, physical activity, and emotional meaning.
This synergy explains why comprehensive senior living communities like Westminster prove so effective at supporting both cognitive wellness and purposeful living. The same programs that challenge your brain—fitness classes, educational opportunities, volunteer coordination—also connect you with your purpose.
Every new skill learned might become a way to contribute. Every fitness milestone maintained might enable continued service. Every curious conversation might spark a meaningful relationship.
Making It Stick: Beyond January’s Good Intentions
The most effective memory-boosting habits aren’t temporary projects—they’re lifestyle changes sustained through consistent practice. So how do you maintain these brain health resolutions beyond January’s initial enthusiasm?
Community Accountability and Support
Westminster Communities’ approach centers on relationship and consistency. “Help them stay consistent and do the work. Encourage them,” Stranburg says simply.
This support takes many forms. Fitness instructors who know your name and notice when you miss class. Learning program coordinators who check in on your progress. Fellow residents who save you a seat at lectures or invite you to join their walking group. The dense social fabric of community living creates natural accountability that’s far more effective than willpower alone.
Tracking Progress and Celebrating Wins
Measuring improvement provides powerful motivation. Westminster’s use of the Senior Fitness Test allows residents to see concrete evidence that their movement habits are working. Similarly, mastering new technology skills, completing educational courses, or achieving learning milestones offers tangible proof that your brain health efforts are paying off.
Communities celebrate these wins—not just major achievements but incremental progress. Completed a semester of OLLI courses? That’s recognized. Improved your balance score? Worth celebrating. Helped another resident learn to video call their grandchildren? That contribution matters.
Building Sustainable Routines
The key to lasting behavior change is integration rather than addition. Instead of adding three new tasks to an already full day, Westminster helps residents weave brain health practices into the natural rhythm of community life.
Morning fitness class becomes your social hour with friends. Afternoon lectures satisfy curiosity while providing mental stimulation. Evening technology tutoring sessions create connections across generations of residents. When memory boosting habits align with existing values and relationships, they become sustainable.
Brain Health as a Lifestyle, Not a Project
Your brain doesn’t care about New Year’s resolutions. It responds to consistent patterns of stimulation, challenge, and care. The three habits Stranburg recommends—curiosity, movement, and learning—aren’t temporary interventions but permanent practices that should characterize your approach to life at every age.
The beauty of brain health for seniors is that it’s never too late to start, and there’s no upper limit to benefit. Whether you’re 65 or 95, your brain retains the capacity for positive change. Every walk you take, every question you ask, every new skill you master creates tangible neurological benefits.
Westminster Communities of Florida provides the environment, programs, and support that make these memory-boosting habits accessible and sustainable. From Total Brain Health programming to OLLI partnerships, from comprehensive fitness offerings to technology education, the community infrastructure exists to support your cognitive wellness journey.
But the real magic happens in the intersection of brain health and purpose—when cognitive wellness enables meaningful contribution, when learning serves community needs, when movement supports volunteer efforts. This is where brain health transcends personal benefit and becomes part of a larger, more purposeful life.
Experience Brain-Healthy Community Living at Westminster
Your 2026 brain health blueprint isn’t just a plan—it’s an invitation to a different way of living. At Westminster Communities of Florida, residents don’t pursue brain health in isolation but as part of a vibrant, engaged, purposeful community experience.
Curious about how our programs could support your cognitive wellness goals? Ready to explore what brain-healthy senior living looks like in practice? Westminster Communities across Florida are welcoming new residents who understand that protecting and enhancing brain health is the foundation for everything else.
Schedule a visit to a Westminster Community near you and discover how curiosity, movement, and lifelong learning can transform your next chapter. Your brain—and your future self—will thank you.
