In the previous episode we looked at how to assess risk and protective factors that impact brain health. In this episode we propose a similar system for assessing mental control and flexibility. We propose a set of disciplines that affect our ability to manage our minds.
We begin by discussing the characteristics we would look for in an effective list of cognitive activities. We suggest that the disciplines should be recognizable, meaningful, evidence-based and prescriptive. Further, we should be able to manage these disciplines in the short-term and should be able to improve our skill and mastery of them in the long haul.
We offer the cognitive ability of metacognition as the first, over-arching discipline. The human ability to think about our own thinking is a prerequisite for managing our mental capacities. We can manage thoughts without knowing that we are having thoughts in the first place. We then move through a short list of disciplines that fit our criteria. They include attention, concentration, thinking fast and slow and thinking tight and loose. One discipline that we call “time travel” refers to our ability to take our mind to the past, the future and back to the present. The final discipline is mindsets, or frames of mind that structure how we see the world and how we make sense of who we are.
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