If we keep practicing mental skills it is likely we can strengthen neural connections and make new connections.

When we had to survive on our wits, gather and kill our food from scratch and be more at the mercy of our environment than we are today, we probably had enough challenge to keep our brains healthy.

People tend to slip up and go along the old road before they realise what they've done and climb out of it again.

The extreme of flexibility is chaos and the extreme of being structured is rigid and staying sane, or indeed using your creativity, is about being aware of these extremes and steering yourself to areas where you work best which usually tend to be more in the middle than at either extreme edge.

It seems whether we have a tendency towards being flexible or structured affects how we create, how we parent, how we work.

I think there is probably something evolutionary in that we are drawn to the easiest option. But in our age of convenience, cars, ready meals and off the peg mean that we are in danger of being mentally under stretched.

If you start from a position of I'm a no-hoper, in a paradoxical kind of way you are not risking being vulnerable.