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.

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

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

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.

Meditators are shown to have thickening in parts of the brain structure that deal with attention, memory and sensory functions. This was found to be more noticeable in older, more practiced meditators than in younger adults which is interesting because this structure usually tends to get thinner as we age.

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