In Tough Times Your Right Brain Wants to Help

This struck me today: If you are going through a really tough time in your life, your right brain self, your infinite, intuitive self, is the part of your personality that you want to call in.

Are you going through a divorce?

Are you grieving the loss of a precious soul?

Are you suddenly out of work?

Are you scared SH%*LESS because you WANT to get divorced or quite your job?

Are you reeling from intense family drama?

Are you in a dramatic fight with an old friend?

Are you broke?

Many of us are dealing with these kinds of tremendously challenging life experiences. I know the internal dialogue that goes like, “Why me?” or “Why do I keep getting knocked down?” or “I don’t want to deal with this,” or “THEY don’t understand, don’t love me, will never get me…” or “I’ll never have enough,” or…. It can go on and on, right.

And that voice in your head is not wrong. But is that voice really serving you?

What if I told you that you absolutely have another voice that you could tune into, just like changing the radio station in your car, that would catapult you out of whatever negative, painful, or frightening situation that you are in and into a new chapter of your life that feels more positive, uplifting, encouraging, and happy?

Have you watched the TED Talk by Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor?

In that talk, former Harvard Brain Researcher Dr. Jill, shares how she found “Nirvana in her right brain.” She was not aware of this entirely separate feeling personality within herself until she lost her entire left brain faculties because of a stroke. She believes she survived so that she could “educate others about how their brains work, that they have a right hemisphere, and that they want to get there.”

This is what a Creatively Fit Coach does, get you into your right brain and strengthen that mental muscle so that you can learn from, be strengthened by, and BLOOM because of (yes, because of) these life challenges.

For example, your LEFT brain is fear based. It is there to protect you and keep you in your “known.”

Your RIGHT brain is love based. It only knows love. It knows that you are being loved, somehow, someway, in this life situation you are experiencing. It believes, as Albert Einstein said, that you live in a friendly universe.

In a challenging, traumatic life experience, your LEFT brain is going to ask “Why me!?” It is going to be critical and try to protect you from any further hurt and pain. On the other hand, just as available but not as often stimulated because of the nature of our LEFT brain world, your RIGHT brain is asking, “What are all the ways we can learn from this?” “How can I love myself in spite of this person, thing, occurrence?” “How is everything working out perfectly?”

You get to choose.

Many of us just were not taught that we have these two perspectives. We just accepted that our knee-jerk reaction, which will be the fear based voice 90% of the time because our world projects that voice the most, was the only one.

What can you do right now to get into that right brain state of mind? Glad you asked! 

• Get out in nature. Go to a park. Travel to a state or national park asap.

• Walk. The left/right motion actually aligns the two hemispheres and will help balance the fear and love too.
• Look at pretty pictures. Google image something you love. Check out this search for mountain waterfalls.
• Doodle! Yes! As a very busy adult, who has time to doodle!? And you probably think you aren’t “good at drawing.” Exactly why it works! Your left brain can’t stay engaged when you are doing such a “unproductive” activity that is sure to NOT bring you any recognition, money or material gain.

Seriously, try it.

Your left brain will tell you that you are too busy, you have too many other things to do, that this is silly….

Am I right?

Your intention is EXACTLY to detach from that train of thought and tap into another one.

Matthew Fox said in his book on creativity, “You can not be depressed and creative at the same time.”

Take any negative, painful situation you are in and just ask yourself, “What else is possible?”

Otherwise, you are going to allow your left brain to continue to judge the situation as bad, wrong, unfair, too hard, too scary…. And it is hard to create any change in how you feel if you are already judging it and leaving no room for it to shift.

“What are all the ways this is actually working out perfectly?”

You are being prepared for something better.

After I was car jacked at gun point in the spring of 1997, I returned to The Creative Fitness Center, my first art center where I had been broken into and stolen from at least five times in the last 12 month period. There was a young man there, I have no memory of who it was, who knew about all the break-in’s  and now being held up at gun point. He said this to me,

That is all he said.

Those words changed everything. I knew I was being prepared for something.

I learned such compassion and empathy in that moment and in the moments to follow.

I learned gratitude.

YOU are being prepared for something. YOU are being prepared for a life that you live with even MORE love, grace, peace, authenticity, personal expression and joy. You are being given an opportunity to feel the opposite SO THAT you will appreciate the goodness.

Don’t buy it? That is your left brain talking.

If you are ready to bring your left and right brain into balance, and allow them to dance together, pick a time for you and I to have a Discovery Session…let’s explore all the ways I can help you create the change you desire. Pick a time HERE for this FREE session, exactly for those of you really ready to get unstuck, fired up, and aligned with your passion.

SO grateful you are here and SO ready to step through the struggle and sadness into the field of infinite possibility!

heARTfully,