Thought Breaker #5: Right Brain New Year.

Play/Recess. On this first day of the New Year, I am reminded of New Year’s resolutions come and gone. So play with this: What are your New Year’s resolutions for 2009? Go ahead. Commit them to pen and paper.

How’s your list? Same auld lang syne? Here are mine (borrow or revise as needed):
(1) Exercise more. Eat healthier. Lose the 5 (or was it 10) pounds gained since Thanksgiving.
(2) Embrace frugality. Spend less, save more. Stop gawking at the stock market and 401k balances.
(3) Live simpler. Calm impatience. Accept imperfection. Understand wabi-sabi.
(4) Magnify strengths. Tolerate weaknesses.
(5) Better manage time at work. Share more quality time with my spouse (and/or Guitar Hero).
(6) Less: woulda, coulda, shoulda. More: don’t worry, be happy.

Of course, New Year’s resolutions are often focused on: health, wealth, beauty, and love. It seems there is always room for improvement in these areas. And, such resolutions are often repeated from year to year. Yawn. Ho-hum. Whooptido. Ditto. Been there, didn’t do that.

Now look back over your New Year’s list. Did it include anything about your right brain, creativity, or whole brained balance? If null, void, absent, then list on this: What are your right brain resolutions for 2009?

Learn/Discover. When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, perhaps we should treat them as personal development objectives, and thus a means of directing or guiding our actions.

These resolutions can also be used to focus our creativity and creative thinking.

My right brain says: go with the flow, let it all hang loose, que sera sera, what will happen, will happen. And many believe this is how creativity and creative thinking works…you cannot control, direct, or can do little to truly influence it. You are born creative, or not. It is nature, not nurture.

My left brain says: prepare yourself, set parameters, focus, and at least set objectives that are feasible, manageable, and will motivate immediate action and allow steps in the right direction. I believe, as do others, that creativity can be learned, nurtured, and strengthened. It is nature, and nurture.

If we truly can learn to be more creative and to enhance our creative thinking (nurture), then the left brain is beneficial in doing this. Because my left brain is dominant, my thinking often chooses to set objectives or in this case New Year’s resolutions concerning creativity, creative thinking, and the New Year’s right brain. There is a method to my madness, a rhyme to my reason, a row to my ducks.

And, as with the purpose of this “Play With Your Right Brain” blog, right brain resolutions can provide us with focused right brain direction for this new 2009 year of the Ox.

My right brain resolutions (borrow or revise as needed):
(1) I will not let deadlines, rules, plans, grades, meetings, calendars, budgets, competition, and left brained critics overwhelm or disrupt my whole brained balance.
(2) I will make a greater conscious effort to recognize, appreciate, and nurture my own right brain, ideas, creative process and outputs.
(3) I will make a greater conscious effort to recognize, appreciate, and nurture the right brain, ideas, creative process and outputs of others.
(4) I will make a greater conscious effort to "play with my right brain" and stimulate my imagination, curiosity, humor, day and night dreams, originality, and creative self-discovery.
(5) I will make every conscious effort to get my right brain back!

Grow/Balance. As with health, wealth, beauty, and love resolutions, right brain resolutions require action. Making a list and checking it twice is a first step.

Second step: before the day is over, you should pick a resolution from your left or right brain list and do something in that direction.

For example, from a left brain list to improve your health, you could: eat an apple; go for a walk; skip the elevator; buy multi-vitamins; drink more water; eat more green foods. And so on.

From your right brain list to improve your creativity, you could: start your own blog; sing as if no one is listening; dance as if no one is watching; listen for good ideas; read fiction; stop saying “dumb idea”; brainstorm for a new product invention; adapt a favorite recipe; play with or as a child; feed your dreams; turn off the television and daydream; take a nap; Google for curiosity; read more PWYRB blog posts. And so on.

Have a happy right brain new year!

Copyright 2009 by Denny E. McCorkle. All rights reserved.

"Play With Your Right Brain," "Thought Breakers," "Aha! Experiments," and “Aha! Lessons”

are trademarks of Denny E. McCorkle.