Cleaning Out the Left Brain

Although I believe the Life of Our Dreams can only be found in the right brain where our intuition resides, it's very, very difficult to get to our right brains when our left brain's inbox is full.  For most of my life I got up in the morning already feeling hassled and behind on GETTING THINGS DONE!  I jumped into my life at a furious pace and fell down exhausted at night.  Finally I came to my senses and began to try to learn what to do to quit living like that.  Quite a journey it's been too. 

There are lots and lots of books and seminars out there about how to get everything done.  I've tried all of it.  And the truth that I discovered is that there is no possible way to get everything done.  I don't know about everybody else's brain, but mine can think up important stuff to do faster than I can work.  So it turns out it's about making choices, about deciding on priorities.  And that has turned out to be incredibly difficult because my left brain doesn't know what's really important.  My ego resides in my left brain and will only be satisfied if I get EVERYTHING done.  So now I'm back to needing to get into my right brain but I can't because of all the stuff hanging out in the inbox of my left brain. 

Finally I learned that the left brain inbox can be emptied onto a piece of paper.  It feels so lovely to write down every single thing my ego thinks I need to do.  Then I go back and write down what I think the outcome of each activity should be.  I store this list both in hard copy and in my data base.  Then there is blessed peace in my head so I can think clearly about what my heart and soul are telling me is really important.

Collages

My favorite way of accessing my right brain is by making simple collages.  I gather up some magazines that have pictures of things I think I might like, put on some upbeat music, and give myself thirty minutes to rip out pictures of anything that appeals to me.  I purposely do not censor myself or think about what I'm looking for.  I'm just on an exploration of what jumps out at me and tugs at my heart when I'm rapidly turning pages in those magazines.  By the end of the 30 minutes I have a big stack of ripped out pages. 

I have on hand some scissors, glue and poster board.  My next step is to take 30 minutes to cut out the pictures I've ripped out and put them on the poster board.  I don't glue them down until I have them looking the way I want them to.  I look at the colors and shapes rather than the content.  I usually have many more pages than I have room for on the poster board so I have to cull out some of the ones that don't seem that pretty or that don't seem to fit in.  During this process I am still not looking at the content of the pictures.  I'm just arranging them in a way that is pleasing to my eye.  Once I'm satisfied with the arrangement, I glue them down.

At this point I let my left brain look at the collage I've made and analyze what my right brain has told me about my heart, soul and creativity.  Sometime it takes me a few days to understand the symbols I've pasted down.  For example, the last collage I made I had put a picture of a giraffe with a flower in it's mouth right at the very center.  I had no earthly idea what that meant.  Much later I thought that giraffe's "stick their necks out" and maybe my right brain was telling me it was time to take some risks.

The "Right" Side of the Brain

There's nothing wrong with the left side of the brain if we use it the way it will work the best for us.  It's great at logic, math, language, figuring things out and reminding us to stop at stop lights.  But our whole culture is based on the left side of the brain - to our detriment.  Our egos live over there in the left side of the brain and work hard to make us believe that our happiness and joy will come from making ourselves look good to other people.  For example, when we pay attention to the thoughts constantly passing through our minds, we will probably notice that our egos are trying hard to convince us that how we look in terms of our appearance, our possessions and our status in society will make us happy.  Maybe you've noticed this in yourself and other people and have also noticed that doing everything "right" doesn't help us be happy.  Rather it tends to make us anxious, on edge, and constantly striving for perfection that's impossible to reach.

On the other hand, the right side of the brain is where wonder, creativity, love, intuition and joy reside.  Getting into the right side of the brain in a world where almost everything is about the left side is a huge challenge.  Nevertheless, it's worth the effort to learn to spend a good part of every day seeking to live from the right side of the brain.  Being in nature and really paying attention: hobbies that access the right side of the brain such as art, poetry, dance; meditation - all these can bring us closer to using our brains in a way that can bring us closer to the life of our dreams.

Knowing What I Really Want

We are living in a world that operates almost completely in the left part of our brains - the part that handles language and reasoning.  Very little of our lives uses the right brain - the emotional side, the intuitive side, and creative side.  Quite a number of scientific studies show that satisfaction and contentment lie in the right side of the brain which we don't seem to use at all in deciding what the life of our dreams would be like.  Our world has told us that more money and stuff will make us happy, but a lot of us are beginning to suspect that we're being lied to so that we will work harder and buy more stuff and make some other folks richer.

According to those studies, loving relationships with people; using our creativity; taking care of our bodies; helping others; companion pets; and cultivating kindness, gratitude and optimism are the things that universally make people happy.  I would add that most people seem to greatly benefit from spending time outside enjoying things that were not made by people.

I've spent a lot of time and energy cultivating all those things and have found that by doing so I've increased my happiness a hundred times over.  I hightly recommend that strategy compared to getting more stuff!

What if...

Goals are nice.  Sometimes they really move us toward the life of our dreams.  Other times, when we achieve them, we realize we still don't have the life of our dreams.  Or we don't do what's needed to reach the goal and we feel like failures and mentally kick ourselves.  Not the best way to get to the life of our dreams. 

It's been said that the purpose of all our efforts is to be happy at home.  The first time I saw that in print, it stopped me in my tracks.  I thought that it could not be possible that that was the purpose of all my efforts.  I tried to refute it but couldn't.  At that point in my life my home was just a "pit stop" where I ate and slept and then ran out the door to get to the next task.  I kind of resented having to clean the place, change the sheets and towels, etc.  It seemed to me that those chores got in the way of my "real life."

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that being happy at home was a worthwhile goal.  Why else did I go to work every day and run all those errands?  Maybe creating a home where I was happy could be a priority!

Christmas is over...

Christmas is over.  So how do we feel about that?  Are we sad because we had such a wonderful time?  Or are we relieved because now we can slow down and relax.  Some super organized people and some devotees of simplicity suggest that now is the perfect time to start planning next year's holidays.  Maybe we could decide now how we want them to be and start now making plans for that to happen.  Of course, we don't have complete control of things like weather, accidents, illnesses, people losing jobs, etc. that can drastically change everything, but we could begin to develop a general idea of what the best part of the holidays is for us.  For some it's the food.  For some it's family and friends.  For some it's parties.  Whatever our favorite part is, maybe we could spend some time thinking about how we could reduce the difficulties and increase what we love.  We may have more power over how things go than we think!

Emotion

I recently read that emotion is much stronger than rationality, and I know it to be true.  Working toward the life of our dreams is fraught with the pitfalls of too much emotionality and too much rationality.  Our emotions tell us about the dreams of our hearts and our rationality tells us how to get there.  It's not that simple, though.  Underneath all that are the buried sorrows, fears and disappointments that can derail our plans.  So, often, the journey to the life of our dreams has to take side trips to discover the burial grounds for past pain lest it permanently derail the trip.  Professional help of the right kind can be key to the process.