Whole Brain Learning

In a conversation with a friend about learning languages, I remembered my own struggle learning a language. I was going to visit Israel for a month or two, and needed to learn Hebrew.

There are Ulpan classes designed for quick learning, and I signed up a few months before the trip. But it wasn't until I was in Israel, living with people who pretty much didn't speak English, that my brain had to open up and learn.

I remember having a dream where I was trying to move out of an apartment, and the movers wouldn't lift a thing until I said the Hebrew word for "furniture" (not a word I normally used), and as soon as I said "r'hitim" they grabbed everything up and moved me. Since dreaming is in the right brain, but language learning is left brain---it's interesting that the dream was the breakthrough. After that, I was able to speak and understand much more Hebrew.

Come to think of it---when I was learning how to drive a stick shift car the same thing happened. I couldn't get it. Struggled and failed and failed and stripped gears. Then, one night, I dreamed about driving it. The next day I got in the car and drove like I'd been doing it for a decade.

So maybe there's a point where learning, which we try to do in the left brain, needs right-brain connection.

They do say that people test higher if they first imagine themselves taking the test in the room where it's given. And even higher if when they study (left brain again), they do that same imagining first---of being in the test room. Again, adding the right brain into the picture (so to speak).

I think it's true for anything: a whole brain approach gives improved results. It's all about exercising that corpus collosum, the bridge between the hemispheres, that gives us the extra step-up toward success, and happiness in our lives.

Imagination vs. Knowledge

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”--Albert Einstein (Quoted in Chapter Three of The UPositive Guide to Goal Attainment for Creative People)

I love this quote. It makes me think every time I read it. I was raised, like many of us, to believe that knowledge was the key to the world. The more information we retained, the smarter we were…the more successful we would become. We were rewarded for As in school, punished for low grades. And obtaining those grades often meant letting go of our imaginations that might argue with the “facts” or focusing our left brains to memorize and store the information that we were taught. If we questioned too much, or asked the “wrong” questions, we were admonished. Repeating the data perfectly, which is defined as obtaining knowledge, became the goal for success.

And here comes Einstein, of all people, the epitome of shifting our knowledge of the universe and how it works, saying that knowledge isn’t the most important goal. Imagination, of all things---a right-brain activity---is more important. How can that be?

Bottom line for me in answering this is that without imagination our knowledge would never grow. We would pass the exact same information from generation to generation, never learning anything new, never expanding our experience, never achieving breakthroughs in science or mathematics or even chemistry---all arenas we usually think of as Left Brain.

Kekule, who discovered the benzene ring which brought major breakthroughs in chemistry and therefore medicine, first saw the structure in that half-dream state of the imagination. Einstein himself, after working his Left Brain into exhaustion trying to figure out his theory, finally reached his Theory of Relativity lying on his back staring at the sky in a trance state. These are all right-brain, or imagination, states of being.

It is, indeed, the imagination that allows us to increase our knowledge. That makes complete sense in rereading Einstein’s quote.

Are there any other ways you see to read the quote? Please post your replies here. I’m looking forward to reading them.

--Batya

Aha! vs Just Do It! Creativity Controversy

News!

The www.UPositive.com website is up and crawling…there are some editorial changes and some additions still in process, so it won’t quite be up and running for a few more days (next week?). Please visit! Please give me feedback at Batya@UPositive.com.

The Batya Sez… shop (you can reach it through the Shop page on the website, or directly through www.cafepress.com/UPositive is working! It needs a lot of editing, and so far has only T-shirts and mousepads for half the motivational/inspirational/slightly cynical/and just plain funny sayings that will soon be there. At some point in the near future, there will be caps and mugs, magnets and coasters, bumper stickers, and more…and nine more sayings! Check it out---get yourself or someone you know a gift…and come back often! (I don’t think the Thank-You page is connected yet, so let me say Thank You now!

The first eBook….The UPositive Guide to Goal Attainment for Creative People…is waiting for its isbn number and for me to figure out which server(?) to attach it to. So…foreseeable future!

The Aha! or Just Do It! Creativity Controversy

I’ve been joining a lot of social/business networks lately, and visiting some interesting forums. This week, one of them focused on the question of creativity and moods, or style of creativity. The musician/songwriter wondered if people thought it better to create from those moments of inspiration or from sitting down and forcing the creative act. Here’s my response, with a bit more detail than I fit in the post:

I think it's (d) all of the above.

The more you use your right brain, the more open it is to receiving input, and the more available it is to you. Although that's not quite right.

The right brain is always receiving input: sensory, emotive, whole-picture (forest-type), metaphorical. The trick is opening the path from right to left brain---bringing it into awareness and available thought (left brain). It's cleaning up, calling in the road crews, and widening the corpus callosum, which is the connector between right and left brains. The more you use it, the easier its use becomes. You want to introduce your right brain to your left brain and get them talking to each other.

Personally, I sometimes write with that sudden "Aha!" inspiration. Other times, sit me down in a nice comfy chair, with pen(cil) and paper or laptop, tell me "write!" and it happens. When I was working on Barbie fashions, I could grab a piece of material and a doll, without any preconceived idea, and just start draping. Sometimes, though, I’d walk through my workday with an image of a dress floating just behind my eyes, rush home, and execute the piece---with or without a sketch.

I realize not everyone works this way, and I'm not saying it's the best or worst way to do it---the creative process and judgment don't go well together, until you get to the Edit stage.

First---figure out your own style, and encourage it. Organize your time as best as possible around those activities or triggers that already invite your Muse in. If you write best in the morning, wake up early with your inspiration open. If you design best late at night, clear a space in your home where you won’t bother others as they sleep. Maximize what already works for you.

Then, encourage your brains to talk to each other any time, everywhere. Beckon up your Muse: invent a chant, light a candle, find a talisman---create a small ritual to call him/her present. With some repetition, this works remarkably well. The Muse, after all, comes through the right---symbolic---brain.

Practice, practice, practice. Sweep and stretch the corpus callosum, let your right and left brains sit down to coffee together regularly. Train them to pay respectful attention to each other, to inform each other of their needs.

Any other thoughts on the Aha! vs Just Do It creativity controversy?

--Batya

Welcome to the Age of the Right Brain

As I sifted through a pile of months-old New York Times papers, I came across an interesting article in the Business Section of April 6th. It caught my eye with the title: “Let Computers Compute. It’s the Age of the Right Brain.” Yes!

The article, in a nutshell, emphasizes not only the importance but also the need for creativity in the business setting. This certainly isn’t a new thought, but it has taken a number of decades for it to gain some weight in the business community.

As the NYT article states, we have entered a “Creative Economy” and the “Conceptual Age.” It points out the somewhat obvious: that computers and cheap labor in Asia are now doing much of the left-brain work of the previous American workforce. The left-brain work of creating and using computers, which can now handle many of the sequential skills of that hemisphere, has made much of its own work obsolete.

The left brain is outsourcing and automating itself. For instance, can you remember the last time a live person answered a business phone? Or when customer service for a product didn’t start out (and for the most part complete) your problems by computer?

Business Coaches may well be at the forefront of encouraging creative thinking in corporate America. They use brainstorming (a right-brain activity), drawing, journaling, and other right-brain activities to teach problem-solving from new angles. Thinking outside the box is now encouraged in many major corporations, at least on the management level.

That’s great news!

I think, however, that it’s going to take a while for it to trickle down to the mid-size company, and certainly longer to trickle down to below management level, if it ever does. Is that a hint of cynicism? Yes. I’d love to hear experiences that prove me wrong about it, though.

It’s a good sign, anyway. Certainly, the fact that creativity in the business setting is addressed by the New York Times Business Section, means that the topic is up for conversation. Entering the awareness of the general populace, creativity just might have a positive effect in places we can only imagine (yup, with our right brains!).

It’s my firm belief that the more we use our right brain in all areas of our lives, as individuals, as groups, as communities, as businesses, as a country…the better off we’ll be. The right brain sees the whole picture---it sees humanity as one thing, for instance---rather than categorizing. Certainly, there are more than enough prejudiced artists, writers, singers, et cetera in the creative community, but taking an educated guess I imagine the percentage is lower than in the general population. The right brain tends to be inclusive and sees similarities; it puts things together in patterns the left brain is too busy categorizing to notice.

And anything that encourages creative productivity in any form is on the plus side of my ledger-of-life.

So I’m on board to welcome the “Conceptual Age”---bring it on! My right brain is ready: is yours?

--Batya