Nearly everyone is excited about AI these days. So, just for fun, I asked ChatGPT about cognitive wellbeing. Here’s what it came up with:
Cognitive wellbeing refers to the state of a person’s cognitive abilities, including their ability to think clearly, process information, remember things, make decisions, and solve problems. It encompasses a person’s overall mental functioning and is important for their overall quality of life and daily functioning.
Not bad for a soulless machine, I think you will agree. It doesn’t really get into the emotional side of things – the fear, distress and indeed despair that can result when we feel that our cognitive wellbeing is not where it should be. From the small annoyances of getting older or the beginning of a neurological disorder – misplacing things, forgetting words, telling the same stories to the same people – to the stark terror of not knowing one’s own nearest and dearest. I don’t know about you, but that is certainly my greatest fear as time moves on. Self-care is fun, but as we get older it develops more of a purpose to it – keeping that little mass of cells in our skull in the best working order we can.
I did some research, and came up with a few areas of life that seem to be most important for supporting cognitive wellbeing. I will mention them briefly here, and then devote the next few newsletters to exploring each of them a little more deeply.
- Sleep
- Social Fitness
- Food & Nutrition
- Physical Activity
- Stress Management.
- Brain Health
None of these should be surprising to you – after all, what’s good for our general health is also going to be good for our cognitive wellbeing. But I’m excited to delve a little more deeply into how these choices and behaviours can help us keep our brains functional.
Of course there’s always the possibility of something we can’t control – a genetic issue, an accident, life is always throwing us curve balls. But let’s focus on what we can control, and not worry about what we can’t.
I’ll be making short videos all this week on these topics, so keep an eye out on all my social media and my YouTube. I’d love to hear what you think about them!