There is a solution for every problem. This is the ultimate value of learning to develop your right hemisphere. Individually and collectively, we eventually encounter complex challenges that seem insurmountable. Yet, we are blessed with a brain that can consistently come up with original solutions given the opportunity. This is what I teach. You can call it thinking out of the box, being exceedingly original, shifting the paradigm, seeing what others can’t see, etc.
Its difficult to train this half of your brain because the strategies to teach how to do it require language, which originates in the opposite hemisphere. Being right minded is learned experientially and intuitively. You might say its developing your intuition, but its more than that. Its accessing the non-verbal side of your brain to process information outside of your normal conscious awareness. You develop a sense of knowing what to do or say next. Your are guided to the solution. There is far less effort involved in finding the most efficient path to take.
I will do my best to convey what I have learned over the past 40 years studying this topic. First, forget all the claims you’ve heard that have since been discredited – such as one hemisphere is more emotional than the other. While both hemispheres work together, one typically takes the lead and directs your thoughts and behavior.
To oversimplify a bit, when you are left hemisphere dominant, you are focused on yourself and your selfish needs. You are basically pro-self. You believe you must compete with others due to there being scarcity. You are judgmental of others, carry resentment, treat others as objects and minimize or ignore their feelings. You are convinced your opinion is the best one and others should agree with you or they must be ignorant or ill informed. When things go wrong, you become fearful that you won’t be able to find a way out of your negative situation. Deep inside you are constantly afraid about safety for yourself and your loved ones. You are narrowly focused on getting your needs met.
In contrast, when your right hemisphere is dominant, you are focused on not just your needs, but also the needs of others. You are pro-social. You see abundance around you. You are non-judgmental and have compassion for others. You feel grateful for all that you have. You see the humanity in others and treat them with dignity and respect. You are humble and acknowledge your opinion is just that – an opinion, which may or may not be correct. You trust there is always a creative solution to any and all problems. You are broadly focused on balancing your needs with others’ needs, with cooperation, generosity, and altruism being significant features. Finally, you are fully right hemisphere dominant when love has replaced fear.
Most of us recognize that we toggle back and forth between these two sides of of our consciousness multiple times a day. Every social interaction is unique and requires a judgment call. How do we best navigate between our needs and others’ needs? Given the context of a situation, how can we behave in a way that creates the best possible outcome for all involved both now and in the future? The left hemisphere will always lean towards its personal gain only, which may lead to less gain or adverse consequences later on. We should rely on the right hemisphere to make these decisions as it has the ability to see the larger picture and understand the context of the situation.
This is where creative solutions come in. Two major strengths of the right hemisphere are pattern recognition and creativity. Pattern recognition increases with age and experience. The right hemisphere can pull together seemingly unrelated bits of data and see the larger picture, the pattern, that cannot be identified by its parts alone. It cannot explain how it knows what it knows because its not one part, but the whole that gives the answer. Secondly, the right hemisphere has the ability to see the uniqueness of anything, beyond the limited categorizing offered by the left hemisphere. Being able to see that uniqueness allows the right hemisphere, particularly when not under pressure, to find unique solutions to problems.
Since our culture has been moving towards left hemisphere dominance for over 200 years, it requires conscious effort to train the right into having a greater influence. If you haven’t guess it by now, the left hemisphere, left by itself, objectifies the world and sees it as mechanistic, dualistic, and frozen in time. It accepts scientism as the ultimate truth. Everything can be reduced to its smallest part, and if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist. It leads to a belief that human brains operate like a computer and the body like a piece of machinery. There is no soul.
The right hemisphere by contrast is interested in having a relationship with the world and sees all of life as subjective. It experiences time as a flow and understands everything changes. It knows things are real that cannot be measured and there are nuances to answers beyond yes or no.
I hope you see the advantage to developing your right hemisphere (being right minded).
In other blogs, I offer five behavioral suggestions on how to do this: gratitude, acceptance, soft eyes, moving gracefully, and mindful breathing. Practice them and see what happens.