Our emotional map is laid down mainly in relationship with our earliest caregiver in the first couple of years of life.

If we think of our brains as a map, those early roads are like grooves, tram tracks, easy to fall into.

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.

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.

Two brains are better than one. You've twice the brain capacity and you have two sets of experiences and genes to bring to any challenge.

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.