Ten Simple Ways to Exercise YOUR right brain for greater power, engagement, creativity…yes, that business, personal and inter-personal empowerment and leadership edge!
About your right and left brain: The concept of right and left brain was developed in the 1960’s by American psycho-biologist and Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry. He discovered that our right and left brains had two very different ways of thinking. The right brain is visual and processes information in a simultaneous and intuitive way; the left brain processes information in an analytical way as if it were putting the pieces of a puzzle together. Today, there has been a great deal of research by neuropsychologists around the right brain, and seeing it as our creativity, intuitive and spiritual centre. Meanwhile our educational system and society has typically trained as to be left brain thinkers . Today, the imperative to develop our whole brain is really critical for those who aspire to greater business, personal and inter-personal leadership, managing stressors better, developing a problem transformation optic, rather than just trying to problem solve.
Ten Simple Ways to Develop Your Right Brain 2. Do the alpha state exercise twice a day, visit my website at www.justcoachit.com select Cool Tools and scroll to a simple exercise you can do almost anywhere for a few minutes a day that will put your brain into an alpha state, a state that is important to creativity, spiritual connection and often accomplished in prayer, meditation or during part of the sleep cycle. Building a daily routine that can help you tap into an alpha state for even a couple of minutes twice a day can be transformative.
3. Challenge yourself to look at a problem or challenge completely differently than you normally would. Step boldly out of your routine, your automatic way of trying to solve a problem and start to try to transform it. Use tools that help you tap into your right brain like mind maps (Google Tony Buzan and mind maps to learn about this excellent tool) 4. Play games, board games that develop the right brain like Pictionary, Barbarossa, Cranium. 5. Do something tactile, something and forces you to create something with clay, with earth, with a medium you do not normally work with and uses your sense of touch. 6. Find rituals that are spiritually engaging to you, personal rituals that help you tap into that incredible sense of feeling and living in alignment with the Creator, with your higher power. 8. Get sensual. Really enjoy your senses! Pay attention to what touching things feels like, enjoy looking at things, feeling things and really enjoying the various colors in your environment. 9. Draw, sculpt, whistle, act or play spelling games…just explore and enjoy your innate creativity without judging what you think you are good or bad at. Focus on the experience, enjoying it, savoring it!
1. Change routines, stop living on autopilot. Changing the way you brush your teeth, tie your shoes, the route you take home from work, any small thing that causes a change is powerful because it will help you think with your right brain!
7. Listen to music that engages your right brain.
10. Read and enjoy “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards, a classic, fun and wonderful book!
Enjoy developing whole brain thinking and your Q Power! I help clients develop three strengths I call Q strengths. I believe, in fact I remain passionate about the fact that these Q strengths have been the fundamental catalyst for great leadership, and that TODAY they are critical to our individual and collective leadership, engagement, ideation, effectiveness and wellness. What are these strengths? Enhanced ideation/IQ, enhanced emotional power/EQ and enhanced spiritual connection with our higher power/ SQ. Developing our Q power, means learning to build our whole brain so that we can tap into our ability to see differently, see farther and see more; building your right brain can be fun and is a worthwhile enterprise that can help you become a better whole brain thinker who also actualizes your Q strengths. Enjoy the ten simple exercises in this blog. Send me your feedback or comments through posting on this blog, or write to me directly at irene@justcoachit.com