|
Can you feel it?
The rise of right-brained thinking?
(Obviously, by right brain I mean the right hemisphere of your brain. Ditto for left-brain.)
Ecstasy with a Happy Right Brain
Let’s look at Max, the investment banker. He’s a completive prick, but with a charm that lets him get away with screwing people. He also makes tons of money, not that it does him any good. Beyond gloating and beating other people in the market, he has no life.
Max doesn’t take vacations. He doesn’t do weekends. He doesn’t have relationships or friends.
“Don’t ever tell people I am on vacation. Vacation is death,” Max scolds his assistant.
Even though Max, played by Russell Crowe, is a character in the film, A Good Year, he’s real enough. You’ve met him.
Suzanne didn’t like Max so much she walked out of the film after only 15 minutes. It takes a long time for Max to wake up. You just want to smack him and shout in his face, “WAKE UP, Max!”
He really isn’t glowingly present and happy until the last scene. Do watch the whole film. The beauty of southern France will certainly make your journey easier, and it plays a key role in healing Max.
My second time through the film I called Suzanne back in after Max had begun to awaken. She was glad came back.
Albert Finney plays his bachelor uncle who owns a vineyard in Provence. He mentors the twelve-year-old Max. Somewhere along the way, Max forgets Uncle Henry and becomes the prick we meet in the opening scene of the film.
They won’t tell you how, why or when he goes off the rails, but you probably can recall a time when you forgot what really mattered in your life.
If you’re like me, fear creeps in and you forget. I have to awaken newly almost every day. That’s why I have practices, so I can increase my chances of reawakening.
I recommend the film as an illustration of what you get when you slide into the good life of right-brained living.
Uncle Henry enjoys and honors the good things in his life.
He spends his days and evenings filled with activities and passions that have meaning to him.
He surrounds himself with a beautiful landscape.
He loves, honors, and respects women.
He eats well and enjoys excellent wines.
His life is simple. He plays. He works.
Henry balances all of it seamlessly. (See Simple Is Sophisticated another of the Four Alluring Paradigms.)
You get a life filled with story, not just facts and numbers.
In a rapidly cut sequence you see Max, the prick, taking snapshots of his uncle’s chateau in preparation for selling off the place. Snap after snap you get see elegant design, beautiful images. And as you watch through the snaps, you realize each image has a story. Max begins to see, too. He begins to wake.
Can you sense what I’m pointing to?
Because it turns my default cultural thinking on its head, I love this cartoon.
“Which is the wasted life?” I ask you.
What would your parents say was the wasted life?
We’ll leave you to ponder those questions and Max to continue his awakening.
But What Do You Get with a Happy Right Brain?
“William, I admire your intuition… And that you listen to it.” a kind patient said just today.
Her complement starts to answer the question.
First, when you are more right brained, you get intuitive flashes.
Second, then when you act on them, you tend to be in the right place at the right time.
When you do this all the time, your life flows in harmony with all there is. This is known as living in synchronicity. You feel at home everywhere. Not bad, eh?
Also, because of the intuitive flashes, you solve problems in relationships and at work.
Your right brain is also in charge of empathy. You get to connect more lovingly and effectively with people of all sorts.
Your life runs more smoothly.
Your work becomes easier and you have long lasting meaningful relationships.
Max falls in love with a real woman, who sets intense boundaries. He gets it and wakes up. It’s sweet.
As your native hunger for deep meaning calls to you, you choose to engage in activities that feed your heart and soul. You choose work aligned with your soul. Your daily life harmonizes with your heart.
Max quits screwing people and makes lovely wines, for example.
You surround yourself with beauty. As you develop an eye for good design, you invite lovely objects to come into your home and into your life. You choose to live in areas of the world where people value those things, too.
Your life is less cluttered in all senses of this.
For many, this means saving up for something elegant, instead of settling for cheap schlocky rubbish.
The good news: Often good design costs no more than the ugly alternative. My Prius possesses elegant design and costs the same as comparable cars.
Many people gather unique items that they discover at craft fairs. My home is decorated with art I have created.
The first piece of are art you see when entering my office is a large painting by my daughter Sasha done when she was four. It’s a masterpiece of design composition and color.
The Big Paradigm Shift
The pattern looks like this –
The Hunter Gatherer Age after tens of thousands of years shifted to the Agricultural Age. Then everything changed. For instance, you get the birth of cities.
Then after not such a long time 8000 to 10,000 years, this Agricultural Age gave way to the Industrial Age. Everything changed. We got the modern life you know so well. For instance, you get the assembly line producing airplanes, electric lights, and cars.
Next after an even shorter time, the Industrial Age gives way to the Information Age. Everything changes. It’s still left brain, but no longer assembly line. You get the computer and the internet.
What happens when the Information Age gives way to the next paradigm?
Our Fall from Grace
Unfortunately, long has your life been dominated by left-brain, sequential, logical, rational thought – no magic.
All through your school, a steep mountain of preference and prejudice for left-brain thought has dominated your every moment. Schools and the culture as a whole have dismissed and denigrated the artistic, holistic, pattern recognizing part of your brain.
True story –
The head honcho at Hallmark Cards goes into a kindergarten (age 5-6) schoolroom, sees art made by the kids displayed throughout the room.
“How many people in this room are artists?” he asks.
Predictably, every hand shoots up. Smiles abound.
Same honcho, goes into a 6th grade classroom (kids age 12) asks the same question.
Not a single hand goes up. The kids look around anxiously to see if someone will confess to such a shameful thing. Will anyone come out of the closet today?
After repeating the experiment often, our honcho concludes our left-brain culture has killed the native artistic impulse you had at age six by the time you were twelve.
Yikes! Anger and tears.
The End of the Information Age
As information jobs are exported, outsourced, to India and converted to software, you can see information has become a commodity and the Information Age is ending, perhaps, quickly. (There is software that writes legal documents. There is software that can write computer code.)
Wait. You and I have a way out.
We as a culture need the right brain to solve the seemingly insoluble problems we face in the world. Information isn’t enough. Google any topic and you will be overwhelmed with information. Right?
You need to be able see patterns in the mass of data in order to create something new to solve problems.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. – Albert Einstein
You can develop your right brain skills so that you can contribute to solve these problems. And, not incidentally, enjoy your life a whole lot more.
By the way, don’t kill your left-brain. You’ll need your analytical and your sequential skills, too.
I beg you to develop these right-brained skills that follow. Don’t worry; you can learn them easily. If you let yourself, you might even have fun.
The Six Elements of Right Brained Training
Daniel Pink’s fun to read and easy to understand book will deepen your sense of the right-brain vs. the left-brain. Pink offers fun exercises for developing each of these aspects beyond my suggestions listed below.
Obviously, explore the articles and stories on the site. Many of them point to ways to develop these skills. (I have adopted Pink’s names for the headings in an attempt at consistency.)
Design –
When you hear the Grand Pooh-bah of General Motors utter, “We’re in the art business.” You know you’re not in Kansas anymore.
The head of Sony says the same thing. All the consumer electronic products in the industry have essentially the same specs. Sony can’t compete at that level. What sets them apart, and therefore garners sales, is good design.
Good design is everywhere, thankfully. So is bad design, sadly. The race will be won by good design.
You will win by surrounding yourself with good design. You vote for good design with your actions.
You can investigate my article, Focus on Design to Upgrade Your Right Brain,for some fun things you can do. (See link article below)
When physicians-in-training learn to draw, they give more accurate and insightful diagnoses. Why? Obviously, they stop and look. They learn to see patterns better.
What you can do –
· Learn to draw.
· Take art classes.
Resources –
Story –
When you go to visit your doctor, you naturally prepare a story to tell him what’s going on. On average, your physician will interrupt you 21 seconds into your story. 21 seconds.
Now, some physicians are being trained in story. Their diagnostic skills, and, no surprise, their healing abilities go up.
Clearly, having an hour of interrupted meaningful conversation and sharing of story is part of what people like about working with me one on one.
Barbers, bartenders, and hairdressers have known this forever.
Human Fact
There are events. Then humans make stories about the event. Stories shape our lives. The events don’t.
Politicians make stories to shape popular opinion. Notice.
The President of the United States explained the need to invade Iraq utilizing stories. Years later people uncovered facts that create a different story.
What you can do –
· Notice stories.
· Read stories.
· Write stories.
· Read comics.
· Write comics.
· Watch films
· Make films – post on youtube.com
· Tell stories.
· Listen to stories.
· Rewrite any story from your personal history that you don’t like to one that serves you. You must incorporate the facts for this to work. This is called reframing and is one of the most powerful healing techniques I know.
I use it all the time in my practice.
Example: “The glass is half empty” is a story, not a fact. “The glass is half full” is another story that embraces the same fact.
Resources –
· See Screenwriting in the Short Book Review section.
· Poetry in the Poetry & Cool Ideas section.
· The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. The hero journey is the seminal story. Campbell noticed that the same story appears over and over again all over the world and over all times. Tune in to it.
An exercise worthy of my finest clients – read the book and discern where you are on your heroine’s/hero’s journey.
Symphony
Imagine a symphony conductor standing on a podium in front of an orchestra, arms moving rhythmically, emotionally gesturing to the different sections to rise and fall in sublime balance and harmony.
Imagine orchestrating the diverse instruments into an harmonious experience. That’s what your right brain does when it solves problems for you at work and in your daily life.
I think of this as connecting the dots – not one by one – but by seeing the whole pattern pop at once.
Intuitive flashes and synchronicity derive from this ability. Your life works infinitely better when you listen to these flashes. You end up being in the right place at the right time – ideally you do this every moment of your life.
What You Can Do –
· Go to the symphony, watch and listen with Your eyes closed some of the time.
· Listen to CDs of symphonic music.
· Watch films like Amadeus to get a sense about how this music is composed.
· Listen to your intuition. Listen to your wise belly.
· Notice when you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time. Notice.
Play
Play frees your brain to create and to invent.
Again the research shows those who play video games or any games do better in solving problems.
What you can do –
· Play games
· Make friends with your inner children and let them play. I like wading in the mudflats of Puget Sound.
· Definitely surround yourself with people who let you reveal your inner children.
· Go outdoors often.
Resources –
· The outdoors.
Empathy
Obviously, this is about connection and about relationships. Learning empathy will help you to earn more money. It will help corporations to truly serve the needs of its customers. Incontestably, good things.
But the big deal, of course, is healing and feeding your soul.
Dalai Lama –
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The more we practice empathy the more of the world becomes us. This is empathy births the global village. Our survival and happiness is dependent on this. There are no others – it’s all us.
Witness the outpouring of world aid and concern around the Asian tsunami. Likewise for the twin tower terrorist attacks of 9/11.
And we have a long way to go.
Resources –
· Parent Effectiveness Training by Thom Gordon teaches how to listen – key to empathy.
· Any book by John Gottmann will serve you well. Mostly, he aims at marriage, but you can extrapolate to all relationships easily.
· Younger Next Year and Younger Next Year for Women talk about the limbic system in the brain. Your limbic system loves connections. When it is well fed with connection, it rewards you withhormones and the like that help you to feel great and live beautifully. Get some of that.
Meaning
We are born for meaning, not pleasure, unless it is pleasure that is steeped in meaning. -- Jacob Needleman.
Answer either of these two classic questions and reveal meaning in your life –
1. Imagine if you inherited $20 million (pick your favorite currency), what would you do with your life? Would you keep working at your current job? Where would you live?
2. Imagine if you knew you had ten years to live, what would you do with your life. Would you keep working at your current job? Where would you live?
What did you discover?
Man’s Search for Meaning
People often complain: if only I had this or that, then my life would have meaning. Check this out.
The Nazis imprisoned Viktor Frankl in death camps where his family was killed, and he suffered the cruelest privations.
In spite of this hell, Frankl found meaning to his life.
Some of those in the camps with him in similar circumstance didn’t or couldn’t find meaning and perished.
You must find meaning in your life or you’ll perish. Clearly, your life just won’t be any fun without meaning.
Read Frankl’s Man's Search for Meaning for the whole story and to gain his revolutionary strategies. These strategies founded a movement in psychiatry that continues to this day.
I know, you fear the book will be dismal beyond your endurance. Not to worry, you’ll find it compelling and inspiring.
Back to Max
You started this journey with Max. How do these six elements relate to Max’s life? How’s he doing with these elements at the end of the film?
Let’s see. Max ambles quietly, eyes twinkling (Play), across his sun dappled terrace (Design) wearing an untucked blue shirt with sleeves rolled up as happy activity swirls around him. He’s in love with his fiancée. He is surrounded by people he loves and who love him. (Empathy, Meaning) The vineyard is producing wonderful wine (Meaning). His life surrounds him, and it’s all interconnected (Symphony.)
How are you doing with these elements?
Rx Film reviews
Rx Focus on Design
|
Member Area 
.jpg)
Gain Deep Wealth. Find out what I mean.