(Photo credit: vaXzine via flickr)
I hear people talk about being right brain and left brain all the time. It seems that the belief is, if you are a “left-brain person”, you are logical, methodical, system oriented, that you spend your time looking at the pieces, and if you are a “right-brain person”, you are creative, erratic, unpredictable, that you spend your time looking at the whole.
There is much scientific evidence for this. Well, actually, what the scientific evidence says is that the two sides of the brain each have their own function and way of dealing with information and that some people have an affinity toward one or the other, much like some people are right-handed, some left-handed and some ambidextrous.
What most people in our culture have taken this all to mean, however, is that, if you favor the left brain thinking, you must behave a specific way, we’ll call it analytical, and you can’t behave the other way, we’ll call that creative. The reverse, of course, would also be true in this belief system.
Notice I call it a belief system. This belief seems to be based on firm scientific evidence. Oh, yes. But think about it. If you are right-handed, you can at least pick up a pencil with your left hand, can’t you, even if you can’t necessarily write very elegantly with it? And if you have to, say your dominant hand is in a cast or you grew up in the dark ages of the early 20th century where they beat you with a ruler if you used the wrong hand, you can learn to write fairly well with the other one.
You have two brain halves (unless you grew up in some other gruesome time when they did particularly horrendous experiments to find out just what the brain was for.) You use both sides all the time, every day, even if you favor one or the other. Right-brained people can actually think logically. I’ve seen it happen! Really! And left brain people can actually be intuitive, random and, yes, creative. It’s a joy to behold. Every person can both analyze and create, in other words. Yes some are better at one, some at the other.
And if you are mentally ambidextrous, just think how you can confuse your more limited friends with your wanton straddling of the divide. How marvelous to be able to build a website, then write the content for it! Oh, you already do that? See?
There are times when logical, system thinking is required of all of us. When we get to a certain point in our lives and our careers, of course, we can pay other people to be logical for us. And there are times when creative, holistic thinking is needed, no matter how committedly left-brained we believe we are. (You can eventually farm that out, too, if you need to.)
Find ways to use both hemispheres of your brain. The first few steps into logic for a right-brained person may feel like the first time you put on ice-skates and were thrust out onto a froze lake with bumps in the ice, but you can master it. Find a course or a book on logic or on systems. For a business person, I highly recommend “Work the System” by Sam Carpenter.
The first few steps into creativity for the left-brain person may feel like being forced to dance ballet in logging boots, but you can even make that work. Take a course that teaches you to create, perhaps even write a short story. I have one HERE, or read the book based on it, You Can Write a Short Story, but there are plenty others that only a little investigation will uncover.
Smite the myth. Use your whole brain.
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