[00:00:00] : If you find yourself stuck in. Overanalyzing over planning perfectionism, you know, unable to switch off, then you may be spending way too much time in your left brain. And I wanna talk about why high performers need more time in the right brain and why it matters for your performance.
[00:00:18]
[00:00:19] : Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. I'm gonna talk about why high performers need more right brain time access
[00:00:27] : so you would've heard about right side, left side hemispheres of the brain and they serve different purposes. And I was watching this interview with, Jill Bolty Taylor on the Diary of a CEO. It was a really great interview and I've seen her before. And in fact, I love her. And she did a TED Talk many years ago and it's like one of my favorite TED Talks ever.
[00:00:48] : She. Is a neuroanatomist who had a stroke and she lost the left side of her brain and she had a really amazing experience by losing the left side of her brain, that left [00:01:00] side that is involved with planning and analyzing that left side that recognizes I am and who, you know, who you are, your identity. Uh, that can be, you know, stuck in overthinking and seriousness, but we use it to.
[00:01:14] : To plan our lives, like we use it a lot. And she'd lost that left side of her brain. So she had only had access to the right side of her brain and she noticed quite amazing things by being in that place. So, you know, she was saying that the left brain is important because it helps us to be productive, but it also creates a lot of pressure. And today we spend most of our time, if not all of our time, in the left side of the brain, which is creating burnout, stress, depression, violence, and all the problems that we see today.
[00:01:45] : So the left side of the brain is responsible for planning, for analyzing time, tracking productivity, identity. It's kind of me versus the world separation, problem solving to-do list and structure. So you can imagine that's, that is what we. [00:02:00] Uh, kind of pushed into right productivity, being productive. I did a podcast earlier where I talked about why that's so outdated now because I think as we start to evolve as human beings, and maybe with AI coming in, taking off a lot of those tasks from us, we have this potential now to spend more time in the right brain and why that matters, right?
[00:02:21] : As you can imagine, it's important to be balanced. And when we are lopsided with using one area of the brain, of course we're gonna be in states of stress. Of course, we're gonna be in burnout, of course, we're gonna be unhappy with our life. We're spending all of our time in one side of the brain, which is never what we were designed to do.
[00:02:37] : So here are some of the signs that you're stuck in left brain overdrive, and I think you might recognize some of these overthinking that constant problem solving mind. You've constantly got something to work out. You're feeling rushed, you're feeling pressured. You can't relax, you can't switch off.
[00:02:52] : You're a perfectionist. You've got a very loud inner critic. You have difficulty accessing your intuition [00:03:00] or your gut feeling, so you're really someone that goes to the thinking mind instead of your gut feeling. You feel disconnected from joy, you're not feeling joy, or you're not able to experience the moment and find the pleasure in the moment you feel like you're living in your head and not your life.
[00:03:15] : You're burnt out and you're too serious. Right? Seriousness is an issue of left brain overdrive.
[00:03:21] : So that's a left brain. What does the right brain give us? Because it's completely different, right? And this is a missing piece for women who are feeling really stretched because it would make sense logically when we are in the left brain to say, okay, I have so much to do. I need to be really productive to get it all done.
[00:03:40] : Whereas the right brain. Is not about being productive, but the right brain is essential for helping us to get a lot more done with a lot more ease. Than anything else, the, for women who are feeling stretched, the right brain delivers that calm, that emotional regulation, the [00:04:00] creativity, the intuition, that big picture vision.
[00:04:03] : We feel peace, we feel joy, we feel connected, right? We can play, we have flow, embodiment, all those really nice. feelings that, we should be feeling on a daily basis and after we don't, right? We're caught up in the pressure and the urgency and the rush. Okay? So these feelings from the right brain are very important for nourishing, but they're also important for to move us through life.
[00:04:25] : So being in the right brain can feel like you've got lots of time. Right. You can be in the moment. You're not thinking about the next one. You're not feeling rushed. Things aren't urgent. You've got capacity. You've got bandwidth, right? You've got lots of creativity, a lot of ideas. Without trying to force it or brainstorm it, you're emotionally, emotionally regulated.
[00:04:45] : You've got a lot of energy. You've got that sense of connection with others. With the environment, with nature, you're seeing the possibility instead of the problems.
[00:04:54] : And why does this matter? Okay, these are all nice feelings. Of course, we wanna feel calm [00:05:00] in all of those things, but it's important because it helps you to expand your bandwidth, expand your capacity, your adaptability, your resilience, right? Your new, your intuition, which is a key for leadership and just life decisions, right?
[00:05:12] : Lifesaving decisions is what? Intuition is key for. Creativity and emotional regulation. Important for our relationship. Important for our business, important for leadership.
[00:05:21] : So with all that said, how do you access your right brain? Okay, so I guess it's completely opposite to the left. The right brain is when you slow down your pace, when you're not rushed, because when you are forcing the timeline, you are in left brain dominance. It's when you get into your body. Anything that, any kind of movement or breath work or sensations that help you to get into your body is a right brain dominance.
[00:05:44] : Anything that you, where you are creative or you're playing, like drawing, dancing, uh, cooking, gardening, all of these are right brain activities.
[00:05:53] : Being in nature, that should be the number one, right? That is a hundred percent a right brain activity, right? There is something that happens to us in [00:06:00] nature. If you ever go hiking or for a bush walk, you'll notice that you just feel such a sense of connection, such a sense of calm, so switched off from everything that's going on in the other part of your world or in the left brain, right?
[00:06:12] : So being in nature helps us to shift into right brain dominance. When we have deeper connection with people, we have, we spend time with our loved ones, with our family, with our friends. We have deep conversations. We connect with others and joy and humor, they should be pretty obvious. When we are laughing, we're doing things that bring us joy or we feel joy in the moment.
[00:06:29] : So, like I said, when we spend more time in the right brain, it seems like being out in nature or drawing or dancing is not gonna help us in our leadership role or in our business, but you have to see what the right brain brings, So with bandwidth and capacity and intuition and creativity, those are the building blocks for our relationships.
[00:06:49] : For our leadership and for our business. Right? It's not so much the thinking left brain that's so analytical because that part of our brain is only accessing the information that we've used before, right? It only [00:07:00] goes back in the past and pulls up what we've done already. Whereas the right brain will give us access to ideas that we've never come up with before.
[00:07:08] : You know, it'll help us to be more creative in areas that we. Never seen before. Right? So it gives us a whole new, uh, fresh thinking, whole new ideas, right? A whole new capacity. And so in order for us to evolve and grow and, you know, reach our highest potential and be better than yesterday, is like we need better thinking.
[00:07:28] : We need higher level thinking. And that's what we are getting from the right.
[00:07:31] : So one of the things that I've seen for myself, and I know you would have, is that for high performers, they fall into this trap of using their left brain for everything. And now you may be using chat GBT for everything, right? Still left brain. It's not right brain. Okay. The overanalyzing, using logic to solve your problems that are actually emotional or need creativity.
[00:07:51] : Maybe you're using productivity that to solve problems that require presence or strategy to solve problems that require intuition. So [00:08:00] like I said. We fall into this trap and we operate from this place, but there is so much more for us with this right brain access that we have. As Jill Baldy Taylor said, it gives us so much, so much of a better experience of our work and our families and our relationships when we spend more time in the right brain.
[00:08:18] : So really, uh, for a lot of women who are burnt out, who are stretched thin, like I said, it looks like, well, I didn't have enough time. I need to be super productive in the time that I have. And so. 90% of their life is this really analytical, task driven, stressed, left brain, right? It creates all of our stress, creates that urgency and that pressure, and it looks like it's a time problem, but it's really a consciousness problem, You spend more time in the right brain, you get bigger ideas, better ideas, faster way to do things that help us to move along much faster without all the burnout.
[00:08:53] : So leave a comment below. Do you recognize that you're in left brain overdrive? Do you spend most of your time there? And [00:09:00] what do you think about when I talk about the right brain, does it sound like a nice to have or can you see how it's essential? Leave me a comment below.
