Using Left-Right Brain Theory To Understand People

What does it mean to be left brain dominant or right brain dominant?

Scientists have explored theories about the two hemispheres of the brain and the ways that they differ in function and control of the body. According to recent research, people who are right brain dominant and those who are left brain dominant, process information and respond in different ways.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEFT-BRAINERS

Left-brainers are logical and analytical. They thrive in structured environments. They smoothly articulate what they wish to communicate to others. They may even enjoy a 'good argument'. They perform well under stress, as in job interviews, laying out the answers to the questions, in a sequential and orderly way. 

Left-brainers easily rise to the top of office management. They coolly and clearly look at the facts and make unemotional decisions. They are leaders who are not afraid to tell others what to do and how to do it. To them, there is only one way to do things and that's the right way - the way that makes the most practical sense. Trying out new ways of doing things can seem like a waste of time.

Key left-brain functions

• Uses logic in decision-making
• Detail oriented
• Facts rule
• Prefers words and language
• Present and past oriented
• Math and science
• Comprehension
• Knows
• Acknowledges
• Order/pattern perception
• Remembers an object's name
• Reality based
• Forms strategies
• Practical
• Prefers safe course of action
• Rule conscious

CHARACTERISTICS OF RIGHT-BRAINERS

For right-brained people, following a regimented, rigidly prescribed office routine is deadly. It goes too much against their creative Free Spirit. They like to imagine new possibilities, and enjoy looking at the many different angles of a problem. Inevitably, they want to try new and different ways of doing things. And this can clash with the lefties sense of orderliness and practicality.

Right-brainers visualize the big picture, ignoring the details of how to get there. If they are being interviewed by left-brainers, the right-brainer may appear to speak in generalities. They can even seem to be off point and scattered at times. They like to respond emotionally during interviews, laughing or telling stories to illustrate a point. Left-brainers, who are looking for a direct, concise, structured and unemotional answer, are unimpressed.

Key right-brain functions

• Uses feeling in decision-making
• "Big picture" oriented
• Imagination rules
• Prefers symbols and images
• Present and future oriented
• Philosophy and religion
• Gets the "general meaning"
• Believes
• Appreciates
• Favors Spatial Perception
• Remembers an object's function
• Fantasy based
• Presents possibilities
• Impetuous action takers
• Risk Taking
  Following  exercises will definitely help your communication skills when you need to get through to a person who functions using the opposite brain preference than you. You will know or have a feel for how they think.
  
  

  If you are a Left-Brainer, try these Right-Brain Exercises to see how it feels

   

• Pay more attention to how you say things vs. what you say. Right-brained people are more influenced by the tone, pitch, and rhythm in the sound of your voice when you are telling them something. 

•  Try to feel how the other person is responding to you. Right brained people are more emotionally expressive and intuitive. The right brain tells them when something "feels" right. 

• Look more at the big picture, the possibilities, the broad vision with as much sensual information as possible. The right brain wants to see, feel and experience what is being said. 

•  Ask more open-ended questions: "Why?" and "How?" 

•  When you go on vacation, try going with the flow, and just let things happen, without planning it out beforehand.

 

      If you are a Right-Brainer, try these Left-Brain    

      Exercises to see how it feels :

• Become more detailed, and present your points in a clear, concise, logical order when you are trying to convince others.
• Challenge your mind with new ideas, such as learning a foreign language, doing crossword puzzles, or solving brainteasers.
• Focus more on what you are saying rather than how you are saying it.
• Try to see the linear sequence of events rather than going for the whole picture first.
• Before going on vacation, try planning it out in detail, so each day you know what you'll be doing.

Where You Fit at the Workplace :

 

 Left-brainers love keeping records, doing calculations and working with the facts. They are in the minority in the expressive and performing arts, involved in discovering inventions, designing, or in creative marketing. 

The arena of right-brained thinkers is any work that requires long range visionary or exploratory thinking, and motivating others. Left-brained scientists and engineers also need these qualities to shine in their fields. 

In this predominantly left-brained world, we need both of these types to thrive. Without right-brainers, we wouldn't have most of the exciting innovations in the world. 

And without the left-brainers behind the scenes, cooly directing and managing, organizing and controlling all the administrative details, that drive right-brainers batty, things wouldn't run as smoothly.

Keep this in mind the next time you are tempted to pass judgment on your opposite type!!!

पहले पैसा फ़िर भगवान

These are Osho's views on God & Richness . Enlarge the image by clicking on above.

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

    Kapil was looking visibly upset today. I thought it better to let him speak on his own so I kept mum. I knew that it was difficult for him to remain silent for long. He waited till we got seclusion at our workplace. He started at once.

Sir ! I want to ask you a personal question.Please answer it honestly .
Kapil , you are like a Betaal from Vikram & Betaal Stories , whose every question has to be answered by Vikramaditya. So, feel free to ask any question Mr. Betaal ! As for the honesty in answering is concerned, it has to be evaluated by you. Any way , what is your question ?

Sir , I rarely find you worried even during crisis , while I remain worried about smaller things in life all the time. Then , I seek your help to resolve them. Since morning , I have been thinking on this , then I decided to ask you directly the secret of freedom from worries. Please share your secret with me .

" Kapil ! You have raised a very fundamental question, which is also the oldest dilemma of mankind !There is one fundamental difference between animals and mankind , called Mind . Because of this , human beings get new problems and are also able to solve some of them . Each problem , until it is solved , causes worry to mind, rather we can say that , worry forces mind to find the solution.

Nature in its constant churning , gives mankind its daily stock of problems , worries ,new questions and paradox etc. The human mind in its constant endeavour to overcome them thinks, imagines, theorises its solutions, resulting in the development of science, technology, religion, literature, philosophy etc.

The relatively fast development of so many systems to tackle various basic issues related to human existence in last two centuries led to an unfounded belief that man can control almost everything in nature . But , every person at some point of life, is compelled to think that against the forces of nature , the man made systems are nothing more than castles of sand and life has more miseries than happiness. The Tsunami disasters in south east Asia in December 2004 and then in 2011 in Japan with nuclear disaster, record breaking floods everywhere and frequent Earthquake in many parts of world, are examples of this.

To answer this basic dilemma, that , who is more capable human effort or somebody else, every society got its own theories. Most of the philosophies ended on accepting the existence of a supernatural power which controls entire nature and its habitat including human beings. This supernatural power is called GOD in all religions. Except perhaps Buddhism, all religions believed in existence of God. And all religions developed their own system to deal with eternal problem of worrying human mind through this concept of God.

Sir, that I understand , but I wanted to know in a very simple way the secret of being free of worries.

Kapil , I was coming to that point but before that I wanted to stress the complex nature of your question. Let me make it simple. The freedom from worries is commonly interpreted as PEACE (शांति). Since eternal time, people have been searching this PEACE OF MIND. You cannot find it in any market. Further , even my telling you about peace , will not bring  peace to you or anybody else.

The ancient Indian literature describes PEACE as SHAANTI (शांति)  , which is loosely translated as the state of equality Sama(सम) and the reverse state is known as ASHANTI (अशांति) meaning Turbulence . Now , all of us know that this world is full of ASHANTI everywhere. The Indian religious literature simplifies it in this way , ASHANTI does include SHANTI , only prefixed A is to be removed.

Suppose , you need a glass full of water to quench your thirst, but you find yourself sitting near the sea-shore, wondering what to do with immense saline seawater within your reach but no potable water being available nearby . You need to first remove salt to make it worth drinking. Once you know the method to separate the clear water from seawater, your worries for clear water are over , not for once but for forever, because you found an unlimited water source.

In the same way, every ASHANTI has hidden in it an equal source of SHANTI which needs to be separated from its packing. Just as you are not going to use a soap without unpacking it , similarly Shanti or peace is to be found only from the packet of underlying worry or Ashanti only.

You may also understand it as a duality of electron & proton or coexistence of hydrogen and oxygen in water molecule , which require special efforts to exist independently. Further , peace has to have many forms just as worry has.

Is it not ironical that worry is a state of mind and so is the peace also and both exist together in the same mind ? That is why, like worry ,peace also has some adjective with it like world peace,peace of mind , internal peace, planetary peace( Grah Shanti) etc.

Therefore, you can understand peace in as many forms as you or anyone can think. Further one person's peace may be another's worry e.g. drinking wine, listening loud music, strengthening of army etc."


O.K. Sir, now I got your point. You want to say that to be at peace depends on one's individual attributes. In other words, every person has to find his kind of peacefulness by exploring into the causes of his worries. And nobody can help in this private matter , because peace lives alongside worry in the same mind. I also feel that one cannot follow the same path to attain peace as followed by somebody else. But still I would like to know from you how I can attain my peace .

" Perfectly understood Kapil ! The way to attain peace always goes via equally deeply disturbed state of mind and there are various examples of this, including the famous case of Lord Buddha. When worries attack you from all sides on a grand scale, you are bound to get the similar magnitude of peace also later on. It is said that the lasting peace is born from the womb of war only. We have example of Second World War , most ferrocious war in human history, resulting in the longest global peace period of 66 years till now and still continuing...

There is one more mathematical truth related with peace. Just as proton and electron are equal in an atom the peace or SHANTI period is almost equal to ASHANTI just as day is equal to night . These are just two facets of the time. Therefore , deep peace is attained only after undergoing deep turmoil of the similar magnitude. And after deep peace, the turbulence has to follow again in a cyclical manner."


Sir, that means that even trying to achieve peace is equally a futile exercise. It will come on its own at its destined time in magnitude equal to the turmoil preceeding peace. Do you agree with me ?

Absolutely agree with you Kapil ! Just as any kind of attempt to get Sun Rise before twelve hours from Sunset is useless, in a similar way , the peace cannot be attained forcibly before its scheduled time.


But Sir , intellectual people and many institutions go on attempting to bring peace in world . Why they don't understand the futility of such attempts ?

In our example of Sun-rise and Sun-set , the duration is small and every human being has seen it happening it thousands time , so nobody will believe in an early Sun rise. But the cycles of War & Peace are of long years , the minimum cycle being 30 years and its multiples, therefore, a person does not have much chance to experience it many time in life. That way , the authentic information on such cycles is not available , so people go on trying all the time . And when peace arrives at its designated moment, people say that it was brought by their efforts. It is like conducting an 11 hours-ritual after sunset to get a sunrise !


Then Sir , Is there any way to know the timing of peace and turmoil for human beings ?

Yes ! But now we end our discussion at this point. We shall deal this issue in next sitting .

What is missing in Management Education - I ?

  Thanks to my company's sponsorship , I have undergone few management development programs ( MDP )at premier institutions like MDI Gurgaon etc. In the present week , I am undergoing a week long MDP called Transformational Management alongwith 22  colleagues at Hotel Fortune ,near Chhatarpur Temple in New Delhi , being conducted by International Management Institute , New Delhi.

    On the inaugural day, we had the priviledge of attending two  sessions conducted by  Dr. Pritam Singh , the Director General of IMI  and a renowned management guru of international stature.

   Based on my 23 years experience in Power sector after doing my engineering graduation , I have found  that there is a gross disconnect between the management education preached in the airconditioned controlled environment and the real war like situation  at site , where all this education is supposed to be practiced.

   So , when I raised this issue with Dr. Pritam Singh during tea-break , he immediately responded that it was true with any other education also, say engineering. He said that unless any training is practiced, it would not deliver. 

    To this point I retorted that engineering or technology deals with machines , whose behaviour is well established irrespective of its managers and handlers. For example , an electrical equipment does not change its behaviour for an electrical engineer or a layman and it is basically a linear system responding to a certain set of rules. So, a burnt transformer has to be repaired as per procedure and even a Prime Minister's instruction or presence cannot make it work.

   My point was that , it is easier to handle machines than human beings ( the most complicated and non-linear machine in this world). Unfortunately, in case of machines , there is no dichotomy in theory and practice. An electrical motor works everywhere  on the earth in the same fashion and as per theory written in the electrical engg. book.

    That is why, I always thought that something serious is missing in delivery of modern management education.