1. Normal sleep
Sleep is brain restoration time. We replenish our brain's neurochemistry with normal sleep biorhythms. The brain requires regular sleep to maintain normal brain systems function, including normal attention, alertness, emotion processing, mood stability, memory formation, and thought organization. Having a good day depends on a good night's sleep.

2. Normal nutrition
The brain requires normal nutrition to maintain and replenish the brain's proteins and chemicals. A balanced diet with salads, fruits, vegetables, brown breads and cereals, and (if desired) lean meat, especially chicken, turkey, or fish.

3. Regular exercise
Regular exercise and physical work does several important things for our human brain:
• Boots the brain's endorphins, which are the brain's built in "feel good" hormones.
• Boots dopamine, which is the important neurotransmitter which keeps our alertness, attention, thought organization, and motivation circuits on line.
• Boots BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor). BDNF stimulates the growth of neurons in our hippocampus, maintaining and improving memory and thought organization.
• Stabilizes the brain’s emotion processing and mood regulation systems.

4. Regular outdoor time
The sky, the trees, the mountains,, the flowers, being intuned to nature. Being outdoors is therapeutic. Our human brains were not made to be indoors all the time. Regular outdoor time improves our mood, our outlook, our attitude. Our brain's intunement to reality gets reset each time we walk outside.

5. Regular work
Meaningful, useful work keeps our brain connected to reality and meaning in life. The prefrontal cortex, our brain's CEO, has to stay booted up in order to work. So, regular work gives the prefrontal cortex practice in staying on line, staying intuned to life. Using our abilities every day in meaningful, useful work makes one's life worth while and is the only consistent way to boost and maintain self esteem. Those who never work never mature.

6. Reward yourself regularly
After working hard take regular breaks. Reward yourself for your hard work. Do something you really enjoy every day.

7. Have structure in your everyday life
Have structure in your life, so that you are sleeping regularly, going to work regularly, exercising regularly, and eating regularly. The brain has built in biorhythms. The brain likes routine. A structured life gives you more free time to do the things you really want to do.

8. Try to learn something new every day
Keep your brain learning. The brain works best with continued stimulation. Keep the brain learning in order to keep the brain working. The brain, like our heart and our muscles, goes by our body's universal principle: "If you don't use it you lose it."

9. Pray or meditate every day
Prayer or meditation activates the very highest part of our human brain, the prefrontal cortex, and decreases the activation of the primitive limbic fear/fight/flight circuits.

10. Treat each person like you want to be treated
Treat each person with kindness and respect, even if that person is not kind to you. Be gentle. Be fair. Be honest. Be helpful. Share your life with others. Walk the extra mile.

11. Practice forgiveness every day
Forgive yourself if you make a mistake. Forgive others who make mistakes, forgive those who hurt you. Forgiveness turns off the negative emotion processing circuits in the brain and frees up the highest systems. You cannot be happy when your emotion processing circuits are reset on negative. Forgiveness resets the brain's emotion processors back on positive.

12. Practice gratitude every day
Every day is a gift. Be thankful for every moment. A beautiful day. Time with your family. Time with your friends. A beautiful song. A beautiful sunset. These are priceless gifts.

13. Get in tune with your real values and priorities
Be intuned to your priorities: your God, your family, your work, your friends, and be intuned to yourself. Make your life more personal and less driven. Get off the roller coaster of materialism.

14. No exposure to violence
Do not expose your brain to violence, whether in the environment or violence in the media, including TV, videos, video games, movies. The brain doesn't know the difference, whether the violence is on a screen or in person. The repeated activation of primitive limbic stress response circuits decreases higher thinking and resets our emotion processing circuits on negative.

15. Learn about your brain's system
The brain's highest systems are the thinking systems. Practice keeping your thinking systems in charge. Let your thinking circuits call the plays, not the lower emotion circuits. Thinking circuits make better decisions.

16.When you don't feel normal, keep doing normal things
If you have a "bad day" still keep doing the normal things. If you keep doing the normal things, and stick with it, you start to feel more normal. So never give up. Things will always get better if you stick with the plan.