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.

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

If someone is depressed they tend to retreat within the inner circle of their comfort zone which in the longer term, may contribute to exacerbating a problem rather than soothing it and if not seeking to expand the comfort zone becomes the norm.

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

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.

It used to be thought that you stopped making new neural connections in your youth and from then on your brain was fixed and it was downhill all the way. But in fact as we know from our own experience we can keep on learning and learning means changing our brain on a physical level.

Beginning a new habit, or ending an old one can feel like letting go of a rope that swings a mile above the ground. So we feel reluctant to let go, after all, we've survived so far doing what we've done, why risk it.