How do you shift from Left Brain to Right Brain?

Achieving Excellence through Self-Actualization

Are you on the road to self-actualization. Are you striving to achieve excellence?

If you want to accelerate your self-actualization and achieve flow you should read on. Many people have found these two practices to be helpful on this vital journey!

1. Metacognition – thinking about your thinking (and then improving your thinking)
2. Intentional Brain Lateralization – being able to shift from left to right and back again (L-Mode – R-Mode shifting) when you want to

When you are skilled at these two practices and aligned with your strengths you will achieve flow routinely! And  you will be unstoppable! On to your own personal greatness! “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

This post is about Brain Lateralization. Maybe I’ll post something about Meta-cognition in the future but until then you can read Are You On the Road to Greatness?

The Question

Yesterday I posed this question on linkedin and sent the question to many of my contacts and friends. The responses are pouring in. And even though I’m sure I’ll get more, I wanted to summarize them here now for your benefit:

Do you have any special ways that you shift from left brain to right brain (L-Mode to R-Mode) to help solve problems?

Details: I’m taking Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to help my creative process and am able to go R-Mode easily. But I’m hoping I can set up some exercises to help others that are L-Mode dominate so they can practice going R-Mode. You can see my drawings at http://vitaljourney.org/tag/drawing/

Why You Should Care About Brain Lateralization

If you are unfamiliar with the Left – Right Brain (L-Mode, R-Mode) brain dominance concepts you might want to visit wikipedia and this site at MIT. And for a really great write up, Betty Edward’s book, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain details the benefits of Right Brain thinking and is one of the best general explanations of Brain Lateralization.

We do know this:

• Most people are left brain thinkers (logical, analytical, verbal)
• Society tends to be oriented towards left brain thinking
• Solutions to complex problems require 1) left brain analysis of the problem (critical thinking) and left brain collection of information about the problem and potential solutions 2) right brain synthesis of the facts and data collected by the left brain and 3) right brain usage in the development of solutions
• Schools (K12), while acknowledging the importance of right brain thinking, tend to discourage right brain thinking
• Performance and visual artists (musicians, painters, sculptors, etc.) use the right brain extensively

And the kicker is that long term life satisfaction and happiness requires achievement of flow and when you are engaged in right brain thinking, you achieve flow. See the Dr. Martin Seligman’s video at the bottom of this post to learn more about long term happiness and flow.

Answers

And now for the answers. I have summarized and shortened some of the answers for brevity. Where I have permission I will highlight the person’s full name and blog URL.  My comments are noted as such below.

Cody

I’ve been using both sides of my brain since the time I started to really dig into the web… I would design with one app, and code in another. Constantly switching back and forth from Photoshop to vim. Color palettes to php… I think web developers/designers are folks that are forced to do this day in and day out.

Comment: I have to agree. My job as a web professional requires dramatic and sometimes extreme lateralization from left to right and back again.

Ann

Try the Whack on the Side of the Head books.

Tony

These days, I’m a professional photographer. Thus, my ability to switch from Left (managing the highly technical equipment of high end photography) to Right (to produce effective fashion and art) is crucial to my field. It’s understanding that the thought processes for the two are led by two different goals: The Left is lead by a desire for a define answer that is achieved through logical thinking while the Right is lead by emotions (my own and the “viewers’”). I have to switch from “technical solving” mode to “emotionally creative” mode in a split second and back again, sometimes even taking on tracks of thinking for both sides simultaneously.

How does one learn how to do this if not born with it? I have to train my assistants and other photographers to do this often. “Think” versus “Feel”. Think too much, you ruin the feeling. Feel too much, you have a hard time thinking and solving. Do both right and you’re brilliant. Again, I think that it must come from an understanding of how these things are different so that they are applied at the appropriate times and application. If I’m looking at art or creating something artistic, I must feel my way through it. How does it make me FEEL? If I need to solve a math problem, my feelings about it are totally irrelevant. I should follow a logical process in that event. So what do I suggest as practice for achieving such mental switching? Look at a lot of art and focus on how it makes you feel. Explore these feelings by thinking about the associations you are making to cause these feelings. You likely moving to Right and primed for creating something of your own. To make the trip back, freeze frame that mental mode and immediately look for something that must be solved logically and through a define process.

Here is an example that applies to me. I might open a fashion magazine or some form of artistic photography magazine and look at the images there. Right side: how does the image make me feel? How can I create something to evoke that same feeling? Left side: What equipment was used to make that image? What lighting and camera settings do I need to create that image?

Comment: I wanted to edit down Tony’s response but I left it whole because of the amount of useful information packed in his words.  Tony is a photographer who used to be a marketing expert and just picked up a camera one day and it felt natural. He is extraordinary in his talents.  When I worked with him years ago he was able to go extreme left and right. He continues that tradition.

Ami

Another R-brain exercise - sketch your non-dominant hand after taking one good look at it, then don’t look again til finished. Use a single unbroken line to do this.

Christian

I find that giving the mind the space it needs to think creatively is critical. Don’t try to write words when creating (unless, of course you are doing creative writing)…speak, sing, draw or just visualize…use minimal tooling to capture as you think (record speech, scrawl on large, blank paper).

I tend to think software problem solving since that’s what I spend most of my time on and in these cases, work the abstraction. Explore the domain. Get far away from code and think concepts, entities, associations. Talk through user stories and explore their edges to find holes in your abstraction.

Comment: Christian is a particularly talented Software architect who seems to live in the right brain most of the time. Very unique and talented.

Jeff

When I get blocked I try to explain the problem on a white board to
someone else.

Talking through it and drawing helps wake up my other half.

Works well if you do it by yourself too… where you verbally talk out
the problem and draw on paper…
I sometimes talk outloud to myself in the car on the way to work to chew
on problems.

Paul

I listen to or play music. Or even sing

Marc

Use children as sounding boards for your problems/issues.

Try to figure out how you would attack a scenario as a game where any player could win, but the rules are minimal. Then play the game with some colleagues.

Write out your thinking process around a scenario and then go through it step by step and try to find all of the assumptions you have made, and see if there are any reasons why you MUST keep them.

Martin

I trust you have read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. Several good exercises there.

David

Making the L to R switch is a challenge, and it can be equally challenging to switch back. The best technique I have found is more of an all-the-time way of life for me. I try to keep my left and right brain both engaged as much as I can in everything I do, so that neither is ever turned off. This isn’t always possible, but the more I can do this, the easier it is to shift more one way or the other when I need to or want to.

Comment: For many people, going left is simply a matter of speaking of the words or thinking of the words we use in our lives that we use for common symbols in our lives. Hand, foot, book….

Dave

Take up a musical instrument, do crossword puzzles and Sudoku puzzles. These stimulate your brain in ways that nothing else can…

Kathy

I’ve always used 2 techniques for jumpstarting right-brain activity, and you probably already know them:
1. Drawing from an upside-down picture
2. Drawing vase/faces

Comment: Betty Edward’s book details how to get started with these exercises.

Michele

Check out the “KnowBrainer” from Solution People it’s used for a class here …  and it’s a cool tool.

Comment: I’ve used this tool a little.  I need to play with it more.

Jennifer

To go right-brained, I have to start on the left. Creativity for me has to be a problem-solving exercise. I hate it when someone says only, “Be creative.” My immediate response is, “To what purpose?”

I have to have a goal, but once I know what I’m aiming for, THEN I can get creative.Kind of like your shadowing exercise where you turned the painting you were copying upside-down.

I gotta say, one of the best games for left-brained people that makes them go right-brained is Cranium. That’s a pretty simple exercise for your class folks.

Comment: Without critical thinking, which is left brain thinking, we may be solving the wrong problems.

Continuation

I’m still getting more responses to my question. I have continued this article with Part 2 - more practices for Right Brain Shifting

In the future I will also describe my current set of Brain Lateralization Practices of which I’m expanding all the time. I’ll also detail some other help techniques for capturing and using what your R-Mode thinking creates.

Books About Right Brain and Creativity

This is just a sampling of books that cover these topics. I’ve not read all of these books but they come highly recommended.

Betty Edward’s The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is fantastic at both explaining the left and right brain but also in helping people go right brain so they can draw. I’ve started to learn to draw using this material. But better yet, I’ve now learned additional ways to shift my brain from left to right and back again.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

The whack books are also great. I use this book and from time to time read Roger’s Creativethink blog.

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

I’ve not read A Whole New Mind yet. But it’s on my list now.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

Videos

These ted talks will make you laugh, cry and shout with joy! If you know of other great videos from ted on this topic please post a comment below.

Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson - Do schools kill creativity?

Link to video

Ted Talk Martin Seligman: What positive psychology can help you become

Dr. Seligman make the case for the importance of flow in achieving long term happiness!

Link to Video Dr. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness web site

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Link to Video

Help Extend The List

Please give us your brain shifting exercises. Let’s keep this going.

Part 2

This post now continues with more ideas for Right Brain Shifting.  Thanks to everyone that contributed to this article.