Arjun Khemani

You probably are aware of some of the research which divides the cerebrum of the brain into two hemispheres: Right and left. People normally like to refer to the classification as being a left brained or right brained person.
The “right-brained” are generally creative and imaginative thinkers and work with their intuition.
The “left-brained” are those who are more logical and methodical and who like to think analytically and statistically.

Basically the left part of the brain—according to Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry which came in theory in the 1960’s—is responsible for logical thinking, sequencing, math, facts, and literary (or word) thinking.
While, the right part of the brain is responsible for creative imagination, holistic thinking, intuition and visualization in a person.
So, whoever is more prone to a single set of traits is called a person with that kind of, that side of the brain. If for example, a child is good at numbers and easily remembers important dates, she’s considered to be a left-brained individual. And if a person is more creative, and tends to use his own imagination to solve problems and create solutions, then he’s considered as a right-brained individual.

Both kinds of people are more or less equally respected in their own fields, which is a problem and I’ll come to that in a minute, although traditional education tends to neglect what the right intellectual and intuitive side of the brain can do and mostly focuses on the real statistics and analytics of the subjects, rather than let children create and think for themselves.

The “problem” is that real problem solving in anything requires both sides of the brain working together to find out a solution—through questioning, running the numbers, intuition, analytics, and imagination and facts—to the problem.

There needs to be a balance. Balance is really important between the two ways of thinking. But people who are right brained say things like, “I’m not good with numbers”. And those sided to the left brain say, “Creativity isn’t my thing”. These are just other ways to saying that I am right brained and left brained respectively. But this doesn’t work. Even in business, the management keeps a different marketing team and a separate finance team. Those two usually don’t bond well because they think differently and do not tend to agree on many things. But we need them to work together and put up a combined strategy using the intellect of the marketing team and the statistical analytics of the finance team to produce the best results.

Even normally, a person should be in a state of balance between the right and left brain, the marketing and finance mind-set, the art and science behind things, the imagination and facts on particular matters. Mixing up both categories and ways of thinking let’s you be open to finding out the depths of a problem or any matter, not just a problem, it can be a decision to make as well and then look at the subject at hand from a different yet a combination of perspectives and hopefully find the best way out of the decision, strategy or solution you find out.

And a common misconception worth addressing is that people believe that they can’t change. If they are left brained they can never think from a right brain point of view. And that’s not true! You weren’t born with a way to only think like a left brained does. Even if your “genes” and/or childhood environment did have a substantial amount of impact on your thinking, you can always train the other side of your brain by behaving or trying to behave the way a person with the other type of brain thinking tendency would. And try thinking like him, and solving problems like him. And sooner or later you’ll succeed in having both ways of thinking in your power. Isn’t that cool? You can’t not do anything! You can easily learn something, and a new way of thinking, whatever your age or mental pattern and state may be.

Be a both-sided brained individual.