Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Oh, my goodness.

If I understand what part of me interacts with the external world and is smart and is good with details and is well-organized, then I know how to use that part.

We are skewed as a society to that left-thinking portion of our brain.

In fact, as far as traditional medicine is concerned, that thinking portion of our brain is the only portion that is actually conscious.

So then we live our lives literally with our left emotional tissue, our right emotional tissue, and our right thinking tissue all as part of our unconscious brain.

But what if it's not unconscious?

What if we actually know what those groups of cells also do so that when I'm experiencing my pain from the past, I can actually call on the portion of my brain that knows how to self-soothe me so that I can lift myself out of my pain, learn from those experiences, and then live a more fulfilled life.

It's the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world when we understand what our choices are.

You do it all the time.

You're just probably not aware of it.

Let's say you're going to have a business call and you got your stats and you got your data and you pick up the phone and you say, yes, this is Steve and blah, blah, blah.

And you work into your details.

And then let's say someone peeks in to, let's say a little dog comes running in.

Okay.

Well, you're going to have a couple of responses, potentially responses.

One, you're going to smile, right?

You just smiled.

You just moved into, oh, I love my little fuzzy.

And yeah, okay.

Now, you know, now you're a little gentler because now you shifted into a different portion of your brain that is open to the present moment.