Life is all about sides: what team you play for, what politics you support and which way you swing. While there are most definitely grey areas between everything, we still like to categorize ourselves as one side or one way. And we usually like to dictate which one is better.
This competition between sides doesn't exclude our own brains. Divided into two hemispheres, left and right, we've become divided players of our own mind.
While we use both hemispheres, there are personality distinctions that form from using one side more than the other.
From being more left-brained or right-brained, we inherit traits depending on the side we find ourselves using more.
This comes up in the way we learn, act and feel. Unfortunately for right-brained children growing up, they felt like were on the losing side.
According to E. E. Smith of Psychology Today, “In schools, left-brained ways of thinking are generally favored over right-brained, primarily because of the logical and analytical skills of left-brained students.”
For example, the left-brained children probably got better grades in their foreign language classes because of how they processed languages compared to right-brained students.
According to Tania Lombrozo, in a report published by NPR, "left hemisphere processing is more influenced by what are sometimes called ‘top-down’ connections, which means that the left hemisphere is more likely to predict what word might be coming up next and to have its processing affected by that prediction.”
As Angelina Jolie said in her beautiful speech at the Kid’s Choice Awards, there's beauty in being different. Being told you were wrong as a child only leads to being right as an independent adult.
While right-brained people may be less logical, rational and realistic than their left-brained counterparts, they are more creative, empathetic and intuitive. They may have been hampered as children, but they are blossoming as adults.
If you spend your life feeling like the way you think and feel is wrong, it's time to realize the way you do things differently is just so right:
1. They dream bigger, not just what they're told to
Right-brained people have a propensity to daydream. You can't create without dreaming. They may have gotten bad grades in school, but all those missed lessons were just plans for a greater one down the road.
It’s the dreamers and the distracted who create something unique and transformable.
2. They feel more deeply, not just live on the surface
People who use more their right brain more tend to be more emotional and holistic. In the callous environment we raise our children in, they were labeled as weak and soft.
Humankind would be lost without the few empathetic souls who can understand the struggles of others, rather than create them.
3. They understand actions, not just words
They might not be as strong in foreign language class, but right-brained people understand what you’re saying better than those who are only “conversing” with you.
They’re more in-tune to emotional cues and body language than left-brains are.
Right-brained people don’t need to be fluent in 27 languages to be able to communicate with people; they have a way of doing that without speaking a word at all.
4. They make decisions based on gut, not logic
There may be no proven right or wrong way, but we all know that those who follow their guts usually end up making better decisions... at least for themselves.
As we get older, following your intuition can be hard in a world that's pulling you from it. Right-brained people tend to listen to their inner urges more than those around them.
5. They love harder, not because they're supposed to
They feel more deeply, thus, they love more deeply. Right-brained people follow their feelings more than their heads and ponder every feeling and new emotion they experience.
They don't discredit or discard a feeling just because they weren't expecting it. They're known to follow their hearts and take wild chances at love.
6. They create, not just follow
They aren’t great at following in a certain direction because they're too busy making their own. They are used to finding their own ways of doing things, creating their own jobs and taking their time.
According to Nancy C. Andreasen of The Atlantic, “many creative people are polymaths, people with broad interests in many fields.”
They have a propensity for “getting distracted,” but that’s only because they are trying to understand and learn about more than just one thing.
7. They invent new worlds, not just live in one
They're inventors and artists. They don't feel the need to conform to the world they've been placed in, but create new ones. They'd rather be happy in their own world than miserable in a crowded one.
8. They make bold decisions, instead of wallowing in indecision
They might be random and impulsive, but at least they're making moves. They may be scattered, but at least they're going somewhere. They don't always make the right or best decisions, but at least they're making them.
9. They appreciate the beauty in life, not just the structure
What's the point in living if you're not enjoying it? There's work, and then there's play. Just because one is mandatory doesn't mean the other shouldn't be experienced just as regularly. Life is wasted if you're only working and never looking.
