Looking at brain function these two people most likely use different sides of the brain as a general rule.  The Scientist thinks with his left brain searching for logical explanations that fit neatly into organized classifications.  The Artist will be mostly right brain with a focus on creativity, beauty, and the feelings that come from his or her work. 

            In society, they often seem directly opposed.  The “intellectual” left brain finds no legitimate purpose feelings.  It wants to know the “how” of it all.  Having a tendency to focus heavily on left brain function myself, it often revealed itself as thinking that an art show was cool but pointless.  When I heard an artist talk about their inspiration, I rolled my eyes and searched for the nearest exit.

            Flip that and the “creative/emotional” right brain sees no purpose to understanding how something works without knowing what feelings it creates.  It wants to know the “why” of life. As a teacher and chiropractor I see the look in those right brain leaning people’s eyes when I begin my explanation of how our body works.  They might think it’s cool.  But what they really want to know is how the global outcome and purpose.

            Working from a differing point of view it’s easy to cast aside the other as someone who “just doesn’t get it.”  Left brain make decisions and arguments based on rationale, observation, and measurement.  Right brain people are living from gut instinct and intuition.  The Scientist looks at the Artist and says, “it’s the processes of life that make you live.”  The Artist regards the Scientist by responding, “it’s life and living that drive and give purpose to the processes.”  Opposition ensues and so does misunderstanding.

            Obviously I’m making a grand generalization here.  Yet, I’ve been witness to many conversations that have had similar scenarios played out just like the one I described.  Sometimes they’ve taken place in my own head.  Some have resulted in heated arguments and stubborn retreats.  Others have seen a beautiful merging between the ideas and found deeper insight on both sides of the brain. 

            What it takes for that to happen is a personal willingness to almost literally, see the topic from the other side.  Commonly known as seeing someone else’s point of view.  This requires engaging the other side of your brain, whichever that may be for you personally, and sending signals through the corpus callosum to integrate both logical thoughts AND gut feelings. 

            Here’s what I find really fascinating about this.  While we may put scientists and artists in different brain categories (a very left brain practice!), they both use the other functional aspects of their brains more than they probably realize. 

            A scientist has to be extremely creative in the design, implication, and understanding of their experiments.  They have to find ways to study aspects of nature that have never been studied.  If no one’s ever done it, how do you know what to do?  You don’t.  So you have to create it which takes right brain approaches to left brain understanding.     

            Artists usually have the global picture of their art and its end result clearly in their mind before they ever put a brush to canvas.  But now all across the United States people are taking one evening classes where other artists are walking them through a logical sequence of creating the overall masterpiece in three or four hours.  They are breaking down the whole to recognize the progressive steps.  Right brain merging with left brain. 
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            We do this all the time.  Yes, some people are going to be more directed one way or the other.  My friend, Jay Wright, is a brilliant entrepreneur.  He sees the big picture months or years down the road from a single, small project just getting off the ground.  He quickly accesses and moves with his right brain to see the global idea and end result.  Using a deep sense of awareness that he has cultivated through years of reading and self-examination, he has become incredibly efficient at seeing that big picture move through its progressive parts (more left brain).  Now his business has a specific end goal that Jay already knows, plus a blueprint for how it’s going to get there.  He’s followed this path with many businesses and has been incredibly successful.

So how are you going to work both sides of your brain?  Will you find a way to be creative while analyzing something at work?  Perhaps you can find a way to organize some abstract thoughts.  Either way, by connecting and utilizing both sides of your brain, you'll gain more data and insight that will propel you ahead in work and in life.  

We can be really creative when it comes to NOT doing what we know we should be doing.  At first glance, our "reasons" seem reasonable.  But upon further examination, we can often punch holes in the logic we used to build our platform for why we couldn't do something.

I kind of, sort of got called out the other day.  Our close friend Jan was asking me about the brace I had on my wrist.  I explained how I injured it and how it had been frustrating for the past few weeks. My impatience led me to work out despite the pain.  And I injured it worse.

However, that's not the point.  It was my next step that revealed my creativity in making excuses.  Since exercise had hurt and delayed healing, I decided to not exercise.  Just flat out not do it.  No weights, no running, no plyometrics, no yoga....nothing.  My mind said, "you're injured and it needs time to heal."  Which is true.  But what's not very true is that my wrist injury prevented me from doing core workouts, leg exercises, going for a run, or even some forms of yoga.  I took a non-debilitating injury, to an important but limited body part, and exploded the idea of not working out far beyond my wrist.  

It's only been about a week and a half since my last workout.  I still felt it.  My knees, ankles, and hips felt like the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz.  They needed fresh oil and to move around before they felt loose and agile.  And as I started feeling the euphoria of working out, I started thinking of all the ways that I get creative in making excuses.

I bet that you do it too.  I'm not being hard on you but it seems that we are constantly finding reasons why something didn't work out, we didn't get this accomplished, or life is somehow not going how we want it to.  

One of my big excuses (i'm sort of ashamed to say) is my daughter.  I love her.  But man can kids be time-consuming!  I put restrictions on myself saying that I can't do two things at once.  Meaning the distractions Alyssa causes keep me from my work.  Sure, there are parts of this story that are true.  But to use it as THE reason why I don't get things done is nonsense if I'm being honest.  

My question to you is this...what are the excuses you make?  What parts of your life have you wished to change but not found the right circumstances to change them?  Why haven't they happened?  Are there people, events, limitations that keep you from having what you really want?  Or is it more that you just haven't taken direct action to really go for it.

As with everything, the first part is noticing and knowing.  Identifying your excuses is powerful, and often someone comical.  I was amazed at how I had been so creative in making one injury so powerful it totally knocked me out.  Once you know what your excuses is, whether good or not, you can choose on whether that's the real reason you are where you are.   And then decide if it will continue to be a good excuse or something you blew by on your way to having what you really want.

As a health expert it's easy to point out a wide load of problems and potential crimes of corruption when examining the food industry.  But as I went through the grocery list today, and in doing so visited a local farm and 2 other grocery stores, it occurred to me that the food industry may actually be doing something right.  The healthiest food often is the most expensive.  Perhaps this shows that the food industry values nutrients!  What a lesson!

We hear this complaint all the time.  "Eating healthy is too expensive."  Forget trying to figure out if that's true or not right now.  But shift your focus to what is in the various packages we find at the store and why some are insanely cheap and others outrageously expensive.  True, when you examine it this way the health products are more expensive (sometimes by A LOT!).  Why?  I don't actually know the complete reason.  It might be because of reduced shelf life, maybe it's due to the cost of ingredients, it also probably has something to do with a stepped down scale of mass production.  It's probably a collection of all of these and a number of other factors, too.  Whatever the reason, my daughter's cheddar bunnies are twice the price of cheez-its.  

Today something else struck me though.  Is health food more expensive because we value nutrients over calories?  Is it ingrained in the food industry that, without them even realizing it, they make better food cost more in accordance with the vitamins and minerals they provide?  Do people have a natural understanding that spelling fruit as "FROOT" signifies the presence of garbage instead of, well, actual fruit?  

I'm more than willing to admit that I may be giving the food industry too much credit.  But that leads me to the REAL question.  What are you valuing?  Where are you putting your attention and money? Is your grocery list loaded with a plethora of nutrients supplied by health products that are organic and Non-GMO verified?  Or are you merely looking for the cheapest product to fill an empty belly?

The kicker is that whatever you're doing is totally fine.  I mean it.  Whatever you're choosing is cool by me.  I'm fully aware that giving my daughter an organic, more natural form of cheez-its isn't exactly "health food."  So go along doing what you what you want to do, as long as you know what you're choosing.  Only when we begin to express ignorance as a reason for our choices do I begin to have a problem.  Like somehow trying to convince ourselves that FROOT is real.   

My point is this.  While I would love it if foods were priced on their nutrient to calorie ratio, where health food would be cheap and junk food more expensive, it's probably not coming anytime soon.  This means that the impact of our food choices lies directly on each of us, as individuals, for ourselves and our families.  If you're willing to even begin considering the search for nutrients to be a priority, then cheers.  But if you're just too disgusted by paying a little more for real, quality food and you decide it's not worth it, cool.  Just be warned, your health bills later will probably compensate.  Now, I'm off to have some FROOT, I mean, fruit.

It's easy to get upset with ourselves when we succumb to bad habits.  We all have them and we're VERY aware what they are.  For me, it's eating an entire bag of chips while I watch sports, focusing on work instead of taking the time to listen to my daughter, or just stacking mail up on the kitchen table instead of just putting it away.  The issue always becomes the after effects of those habits.  Feeling sluggish from too many chips, a daughter who gets upset, and having to spend an hour filing through mail are a couple examples.  

But how do we get beyond them?  How do we break through the bad habits of life and create something new?  

I propose that the best way to get past bad habits is to form strong, healthy good habits.  And we do that in the brain by using positive actions.  

By positive actions I mean doing things that add to life that leave us feeling happy, fulfilled, accomplished, hopeful, and optimistic.  Most of the plans out there (diets are a great example) are based on negative action steps.  Take away this food or that food, deny yourself this and be strong to overcome temptation.  That's a popular method not just in diets but in many other aspects in life as well.  However, it never works.

Now think about how you could change your diet by putting in lots of the "good" stuff that replaces the bad stuff.  You get beyond the aspect of denial and while doing something positive for yourself you also get fed.  You get your cake AND eat it too.  We achieve this through what we call addition before subtraction.

The brain loves this.  The positive actions stimulate an area called the Basal Ganglia which help with motivation.  When you do something that creates a sense of joy, you release dopamine that keeps your attention on that joy and establishes a pathway that supports that action.  Keep moving and doing things that cause more dopamine release and you continue to create neural circuitry that supports those actions.  

Feed the brain with a steady stream of dopamine and the basal ganglia work through their internal network, which is expansive, to literally work on creating brain pathways that support good habits.  Suddenly, the "bad" habits begin to fall away and you're left feeling positive now only about your new habits, but the end results they provide.  

I've been dealing with a right wrist injury for over a month now.  And quite frankly, it's wearing on me.  There's a lot of things about injuries that can be frustrating and upsetting. But the one that gets me most?  Keeping me from doing exactly what I want when I want.

I bet you'd agree.  Pain keeps us from playing with kids, being able to spend time with significant others, getting outside, working in the garden, and, particularly in my case, affects my work and my workouts.

As a chiropractor, I use my hands.  And when I injure my wrist it directly impacts my work, at least my comfort level with it.  Similarly, it stops me from doing all the workouts I like to do.  For over a month I haven't been able to do Muay Thai, can't lift weights normally since my grip strength is down, and so on.

The big problem is the frustration is causes me when I can't do the things I love freely and without pain.  I see this every day in the office.  Back pain doesn't stops people from exercising or doing their favorite hobby.  Headaches keep you from reading books or being around grandkids.  It's mostly what we can't do that's the problem....sometimes that's worse than the actual pain.  

That's just a small part of why I do what I do.  It means more to me when someone comes back sharing stories about how they get to play with their grandkids or finished a 5k race and I can sense their excitement than just hearing their pain levels are down.  Turning frustration into freedom is what we largely desire.  Getting back to living life on our terms is the ultimate goal.  Chiropractic and the other simple techniques we teach are all about this one idea: Getting beyond frustration and back into fully enjoying life.