We as humans spend our lives working from the age of 6. We go to school everyday even though by the time we are in high school, elementary school is a long forgotten memory. Even after we graduate high school we continue to get up and learn new skills or go to college to keep expanding our minds. But after we finally get our dream jobs and start working day in and day out most of the knowledge the history, math, or even the grammar slowly just fades away from us. It only stays with us if we use it. Our minds are the most complex pieces of technology that will or exist right now and if we do not maintain them then we are in more trouble than if we were to neglect using long division once a month. The most important part of our lives is not finding success or love. I feel that having the freedom to make our own decisions and to do what makes ourselves happy is what is top priority. I have never once in my life enjoyed sitting behind a desk working on math problems. I am always needing to move around learning from my own experiences and mistakes, not some history textbook. But I had not realized this until highschool because that is when teachers, parents, bosses all started asking me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. When I needed to start thinking about myself and my own future not some grammar problems on a worksheet. That is why I believe that if we all work for ourselves, our brains and our own well being then that is when we are the happiest and most successful. That is why I have come up with some strategies we can work with to take care of our very complex lives.
To start off I want to group together what is most likely what you would hear if you asked a person on the street how to take care of your mind. Which would be to eat regularly, drink regularly, and get a consistent amount of sleep but not too little. I agree with these as being very important for mental health because when we begin to take care of ourselves then the happier in life we will be.
Stop. Stop, slow down, think, and listen when we learn to stop what we are doing when we are feeling too overwhelmed or are having trouble thinking clearly. Stop what you are doing for just a minute, take a deep breath, slow down, do not rush. It will not help and think rationally. I know it's not easy to think rationally when we are being overwhelmed by thought but if we take a deep breath and re approach thought then we can easily work out the problems.
Do what makes you happy with your life. We cannot work a job day in and day out while hating every bit of it. When we need to force ourselves out of bed in the morning and have no motivation to keep going then we are in serious need of a change. This is where I think our society as a whole is flawed. How can we be expected to automatically know what we want to do everyday of our lives right out of highschool. We could be going to college and spending thousands of dollars on something we have yet to truly experience.
Challenge yourself. I think it is very important to choose a position in life that always has new challenges and opportunities. When we overcome a difficult challenge the mind is flooded is dopamine which is a chemical that is created by neurons for many reasons naturally. The dopamine that floods the mind when a challenge is overcome is the reason for us to continue challenging ourselves but with a lack of dopamine then we can lean more into a depressed or unfulfilled state of mind.
Accept change. Some people are against changes, those are the people that have forced their brains to have a timed schedule everyday. Schedules are never a bad thing but once done too much then it can work against you never accomplishing anything new. But when we are open to changes in life we are opening our minds for new possibilities even with small simple changes. For instance, moving away to college may sound scary. Nobody will be there for you to depend on but once we realize that we need to learn how to survive on our own then that brings on many challenges for us to overcome. Or even small parts of life like having a messy room may be because we are used to seeing that as where we just sleep that is what our brains do is connect certain environments with certain situations. Once we break that way of thinking it may be difficult at first to overcome but the clearness of thinking a new way can change us a lot.

I chose to create this list because of what I have been going through recently. The uncertainty that fills my mind and clouds my thoughts. The belief that I have come so far in life and that I still have yet to decide how to live the rest of it. I feel like the end of highschool is the true start to my life. I now have the freedom to choose what I want to do as an adult that is why I feel our brain is the most important tool to ever be created yet the most complicated to understand. That is why I felt this needed to be written and researched to learn how the most important tool for life that we all have can be taken care of and changed to help in life.