Keeper of the Brain

What exactly have you been put in charge of?

So, you have been issued a brain. It can learn languages, recognize faces, solve problems, create music, remember an embarrassing event from four years ago precisely when you are trying to fall asleep and somehow forget where you put your water bottle nine minutes ago. During adolescence, some of its most sophisticated networks are also still developing. This leaves you in the unusual position of being both owner and trainee of an extremely powerful biological system. Think less goldfish. Think dragon.

Your dragon is powerful, adaptable and not always interested in what would be most convenient for you. Its developing prefrontal networks are learning increasingly complicated jobs involving planning, attention, self-management and decision making. You cannot simply order this system to perform brilliantly whenever required. A much better question is: what conditions help your developing brain work well?

Try it: If you were handed responsibility for something valuable that was still developing, what would you need to look after?

What does your dragon need every day?

Rule One: Let the Dragon Sleep. Sleep might be the least glamorous brain-health strategy ever discovered. Unfortunately for anyone hoping science would recommend videos until 1:00 a.m., it supports attention, learning, memory, emotional regulation and executive functioning. Adolescence adds an interesting problem because your body clock tends to shift later, while school remains strangely committed to mornings. Your executive functions help you plan your evening and actually go to bed. Sleep then helps those executive functions work the next day. Your developing executive system is partly responsible for getting your developing executive system to bed. Whoever designed this arrangement apparently saw no conflict of interest.

Rule Two: Dragons Need to Move. Your brain does not live separately from your body, despite occasionally behaving as though it is head office. Movement changes blood flow, muscle activity and metabolism, while your brain coordinates the production. Catching a ball, skiing, dancing, walking a trail or learning a physical skill also gives your brain jobs involving attention, prediction and coordination. Apparently, your dragon prefers occasional field trips to being permanently stored on a chair.

Try it: Looking at yesterday, where did your dragon get sleep and movement? Where was it shortchanged?

What do you feed a developing dragon?

Rule Three: Fuel the Entire Creature. Your brain requires a continuous supply of energy and nutrients, and adolescence involves growth throughout the body. Apparently dragons have operating costs. This does not mean there is a magical brain breakfast or that one questionable lunch causes your prefrontal cortex to submit a formal complaint. Nutrition works across patterns. Enough food, protein, essential fats, vitamins, minerals and varied nutritious foods support the developing body that supports the developing brain. The goal is not nutritional perfection. It is reliable fuel.

Try it: Think about yesterday. Did your body have reasonably reliable fuel across the day, or were there some very long empty stretches?

Why do the other dragons matter?

Rule Four: Choose the Other Dragons Carefully. Your social world is part of your brain's developmental world. Relationships repeatedly ask you to deal with belonging, trust, disagreement, support, pressure and figuring out who you are around other people. Healthy relationships give you room to speak honestly, listen, disagree, set boundaries, change your mind and repair things when you get them wrong. A relationship built around fear, humiliation or control provides a very different environment.

Dragons, as it turns out, require more than adequate snacks.

Try it: Think of someone around whom you are comfortable being yourself. What does that person do that makes the relationship feel different?

Should you believe everything your dragon tells you?

Rule Five: Absolutely Not. Your brain generates thoughts constantly. Some are useful. Others arrive at 11:47 p.m. announcing that everyone probably remembers the strange thing you said in Grade 6. A thought is real because you experienced it, but its message is not automatically true. I can't do this. Everyone will judge me. I always mess this up. Instead of immediately accepting the thought, ask: “Is that actually true?” Look for evidence. Decide whether the thought deserves your attention.

Your brain produced the thought. It did not automatically promote the thought to management. Even dragons occasionally submit proposals that should not survive committee.

Try it: Take one unhelpful thought you have had recently. What evidence supports it? What evidence does not?

Who actually holds the reins?

Rule Six: Train It. Don't Expect Perfection. Brains learn through experience, including mistakes. You make a decision, see what happens and gain information you did not have before. What worked? What did you miss? What would you change next time? One poor sleep, inactive day, argument or bad decision does not determine who you become. Repeated patterns matter more than isolated moments, and returning to supportive patterns matters more than never leaving them.

Friends, family, advertising, social media and your own immediate impulses will all occasionally reach for the reins. Influence is unavoidable. Ownership is different. Other people can influence my decision. They do not own my decision. Being your brain's keeper means becoming better at noticing those influences, deciding what happens next and learning from the result. You were never supposed to become a perfect dragon keeper. Give it sleep. Move it. Fuel it. Give it healthy people and worthwhile challenges. Listen to what it says without believing absolutely everything.

The dragon is still developing. So is its keeper.

Try it: Of the six rules, which one does your dragon need you to work on most this week?