Which side are you on?
One of the most amazing feats we can perform is to consciously control which parts of our brain we are using.
Once mastered, you can then put this under ‘unconscious control’ and increase your creativity several fold.
A good example of this is when you learn to ride a bike or drive a car. Once learned, you can do something else and multitask without having to give what is an amazingly complex task a second thought.
Now I should say the the whole left and right brain model is both simplistic and only serves to help us understand that we can be in different states of mind. Our left and right brain functions are caused by our state of consciousness not the generators of it and what is processed by the physical left and right are nowhere near as separate as perhaps currently thought. It is a good approximation thought to help us get our mind around what is one of the most complex structures we currently know of in the Universe – our own brains.
In simplistic terms, however, what happens is that the right brain learns a process and hands it to the left to handle automatically.
To understand how the right and left interact, do the following exercise:
Step 1: Write down the word MAGIC on a piece of paper
Step 2: Then write it down two more times
Step 3: Now write it down backwards
Step 4: Then write it down backwards two more times
Step 5: Notice how when you wrote the new word backwards for the second and third time how much you speeded up, probably copying the word you first wrote. Notice how the third time was even quicker than the second time.
Note that I haven’t purposely written it down backwards in this blog as this would spoil the effect. What is happening is something like this.
Step 1: your right brain decoded the sentence above and sent it to the left to handle
Step 2: the left brain repeated the task twice with a modicum of right brain holistic supervision
Step 3: either your right brain forms a whole picture in your mind’s eye of MAGIC backwards and then tells the left brain to write it OR your right brain gets your left brain to write each letter down and then forms the picture of it backwards – perhaps correcting itself with the position of the A and I and G and M after the first attempt
Step 4: when you repeat it, your left brain either copies what it sees on the page or uses the right brain whole image and processes the whole synthesised word
Now repeat the same exercise with the word POWER but this time do it with your eyes closed to experience the difference.
Now this might all sound a bit trivial and we perform complex actions like this every day without giving them a second thought. Just being able to do this is magical. If you really think about it, being able to comprehend that we are doing it is even more magical – and the beginning of a new level of mind control.
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
The Art and Science of Light Bulb Moments
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