Was recently listening to a fascinating book called Brain Power that explored how and why we barely tap into 1% of the brain’s capabilities…
Much of the focus is on the development of both the left and right sides of the brain. So often in life, we are told that we are good and bad at certain things, so then we end up isolating one side of the brain.
This leads us to continue to develop what we are good at and completely shut out what we are not… Yet, in all actuality, the smartest and most well-rounded people who have ever lived have always used and developed BOTH sides of the brain…
None more notable than Leonardo Da Vinci who was possibly the most iconic “Renaissance Man” of all time. This is how his Wikipedia page described him in the first paragraph:
“…an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of paleontology, iconology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank, he epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.”
Holy sh*t balls. 😳
You think Da Vinci ever let his third grade teacher tell him he wasn’t a good painter and he better just stick to math???
Nah, he told him to go f*ck himself, then painted a picture that sold for $450 MILLION 500 years later at Christy’s Auction in New York in 2017.
Even Albert Einstein, who most would pigeon hole to being a left brain thinker, actually credited his imagination (and his bicycle) for just about all of his successful accomplishments, including the discovery of the theory of relativity. When asked how parents should raise their children, this was Einstein’s response:
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Look, this isn’t rocket science, and if it was, we just learned that we would need to use both sides of the brain to successfully fire those bad boys off.
Most of us are naturally left brain dominant but that doesn’t mean sh*t. There have been 75-year-old retired math teachers who all of a sudden decide to take piano lessons and within a few weeks begin to become masters of their new craft…
Bottom line:
Don’t ever accept limits put on us by a pigeon holing society with preconceived judgements and a limited mindset. How we use our brains and how we live our life is completely up to us…
Let’s just make sure the one sided brain washers know to get the f*ck out of our way. 👊
-EB