Activate 100% Of Your Brain

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada, and you want to receive inspirational text messages from me to your cell phone, text me right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to teach you about your brain. And by the end of this episode, you will understand your brain so much better and you will have the tools to help you use your brain and basically any challenging circumstance that comes up.

0:46And when you look at your brain, I'm extremely intrigued by the brain because we are given the most incredible piece of machinery in the entire universe, but we have absolutely no manual on how to use this thing. Now, it doesn't mean that the manual doesn't exist and we can't go find it. It means that we're just not given it at birth. And so for me, I want to know how to use my brain to the best of my ability the same way that like I want to use my legs to the best of my ability. I want to use my arms to the best of my ability. And our brains are these incredibly complex organs and the average person just doesn't know much about them yet the brain completely runs their lives, runs what they think, runs their emotions.

1:28And so our brains do so much for us. They solve problems that are in our life. We create art with our brain. We experience joy with our brain. We experience anxiety with our brain. And it's really complex, but today I'm going to teach you about the four major parts of your brain. And if you know the four major parts of your brain and how it's divided into those parts, which is the left thinking side of your brain, the left emotional side of your brain, and then the right thinking side of your brain and the right emotional side of your brain, you understand how each one of them work. It'll give you much more understanding of how you think, why you think, how you feel, why you feel, and then how to respond to the world around you.

2:11So whether you're navigating like something really challenging in your relationship or you're trying to be creative or you know you have something going on at work or you just want to understand your emotional reactions, knowing how these four pieces of your brain work together is really going to help you kind of master the brain. So let's dive into it. Today's going to be really in-depth. The first side that we're going to talk about is the left thinking side of your brain. And this side is often referred to as the analytical brain. The left side of your brain is called the analytical brain. And the left thinking side of your brain is responsible for your logic.

2:47It's responsible for your reasoning, for critical thinking. So when you're sitting there and like you have a math problem you need to figure out, or you're sitting down to write your book, or you're sitting down to plan your day, you're tapping into this part of your brain. You're tapping into the part of your brain that is the left thinking side of your brain, is the most analytical side of your brain. And it's in charge of processing language. It's in charge of logical thinking. It's in charge of understanding what someone is saying to you, also producing your speech. And so it's good for sequencing, for categorizing, for linear thinking.

3:24And it's the part of your brain that makes to-do lists and it structures your day and structures your life logically. It's the part of your brain that does the math and the calculations and the balance sheet and thinks in facts and figures and numbers and very boop, boop, boop, like very facts and figures. Like if you can't see me, I'm looking like a robot where it's very like I am analytical and I think only analytically. And that part of your brain, that is what it's really best at. So let me give you like a real life example. Let's say that your boss comes to you and gives you a task of developing a plan for a new project.

3:58And so you take this new project and you start breaking down the project into smaller tasks. And you take those tasks and say, who's going to take this one? Who's going to take that one? And you assign deadlines to each task. And you organize the workflow and you put the to-do list and everything together. This is the methodical part of your left-thinking side of your brain. It helps you stay focused. It helps you get organized. and helps you be effective in achieving your goals. So that's the left thinking side of your brain. Now, there's also the left emotional side of your brain as well. And this is like the source of your motivation.

4:35This is the source of your positive emotions as well. So the left thinking side of your brain, the thinking part, deals with the logic and it deals with the structure. The left emotional side is responsible for processing your positive emotions. So this would be like happiness. This would be enthusiasm. This would be optimism. And it's the part of your brain that makes you feel motivated and socially engaged. And so it processes all of your emotions that are positive, right? This is the part of brain that's active when you experience the positive emotions like joy and love and happiness. And when you're around other people, whether it's like, you know, you get news of something and you feel joy after hearing that news and excitement about, you know, something that you're going to be doing or something that you accomplished.

5:21That's the left emotional side. The other thing that it does is in charge of motivation and drive. And so this is why it's really important. Let me pause real quick for you guys to understand this. The reason why I'm going through these four parts is so you can start to know, okay, like what part of my brain is overactive, if possible, what part of my brain is underactive. And then I'm going to give you tools to how to actually strengthen each part of your brain. Where if you go, you know what, I don't have as much drive and motivation as I want. Maybe I need to get this part of my brain to be stronger and start working at it.

5:50Okay, well now I've identified a weak point that I want to strengthen. So this part of your brain is in charge of your drive. It's in charge of your motivation. And it's what fuels your ambition and your desire to go and pursue goals. It's what keeps you going when you're like really passionate about something. And it gives you the emotional energy when you start to see things are getting tough, but you want to see them through. And so like, if you look at this as like a real life example, if you think back to a time when you were working on something that you were really, really passionate about, something that like really excited you, and you had this sense of like enthusiasm and motivation for doing it, the eagerness to work hard, to dive into the task, that is the part of your brain that turns on, the left emotional side where it's like, hell yeah, I'm so excited, I can't wait to do this.

6:40And this side, also what it does is it helps you connect with other people and stay optimistic and maintain a positive outlook when challenges arise. So if you're like, man, I'm not very driven and I'm not very positive, well, then you're probably going to want to work on this side of your brain right here, which is the left emotional side of your brain. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. So that's how it will look. And that's the left side of your brain. Okay. So that was the left thinking side. That was the left emotional side. And so I'm going to give you the other two, And then we're going to go through how to actually use each one of them and how to bring them together to make a very cohesive unit in your brain that each one is working how they're supposed to be working.

7:21So let's go to the – those are both the left side. Let's go to the right side. Let's go to the right thinking side of your brain. This is where creativity comes from. This is where your intuition comes from if you feel like you need to work in your intuition. So the right side of your brain is known as the creative brain. And that's what most people usually say. So left side, thinking and analytical. Right side, creative. And so it's also responsible for seeing like the big picture, thinking outside of the box, and using your intuition to solve problems. And so the key functions of the right thinking side of your brain are creativity and imagination.

7:58So if you feel like you're not as creative as you used to be, okay, well, this is a part of your brain you might want to strengthen. So creativity and imagination, like sitting down and you have a blank canvas and you want to paint a picture. Or sitting down to a blank Word doc and you're going, you know what, I'm going to write a story. Or coming up with like, say you're at work and you want a really innovative idea to conquer whatever task it is or to come up with a way to get more sales in your business. Well, this is that side of your brain as well. This is the right thinking side of your brain that's in charge.

8:30It is the source of your artistic and inventive impulses. And so it's also really good at pattern recognition. It's good at spatial awareness. And it's really your intuition and your holistic thinking, looking at everything as a whole. So when you look at, like, for instance, the left thinking side of your brain, which we just spoke about a minute ago, that focuses on the details and the facts and the figures. The right thinking side of your brain is really good at looking at the whole picture and how everything is holistically connected. So it helps you make connections between things that might seem really unrelated and unrelated ideas and then use your intuition to go, okay, what's the right decision to make here?

9:10And so if you look at this like in real life, imagine that you're at work and you have a new project and you're brainstorming ideas for this project. Instead of following like the linear path, which would be the left side of the brain, instead of following that linear path, why don't we just let our thoughts flow really freely and, you know, have different concepts, try to connect different concepts in ways that we've never done before and try to come up with really creative solutions. If you can do that, now you're bringing in the right side, the thinking part of your brain, the right thinking part of your brain, and that's what it looks like in action.

9:45So it enables you to think beyond like conventional thoughts, conventional ideas, conventional structures, the box that we live in, and it just allows you to see outside of the box. So that's the right thinking side of the brain. The right emotional side of the brain is where your negative emotions are. but it's also where your empathy is. And so this side of the brain is associated with processing your negative emotions like fear, sadness, anxiety. And so you might sit there and go, man, I have a lot of fear. I have a lot of sadness. I have a lot of anxiety. Well, maybe I have a really, really strong right emotional side of my brain and maybe I should start working on the other sides.

10:26And so this side of your brain is, like I said, it's the negative emotions. It's the anxiety, it's the fear, it's the sadness, but it also is really important in empathy and understanding the emotions of other people as well. So when you look at this part of your brain, it's the negative emotion processing. So when you feel anxious about something or you experience sadness over a loss, that is your right emotional side at work. It's the part of your brain that is in charge of processing and responding to these challenging emotions. But it's also, like I said, empathy, looking at the entire social world and everything that's out there in the structure and understanding other people.

11:07And so it's a really big part for understanding the feelings of other people and saying, I feel how you feel. And so that is very important. We don't want to turn this part of our brain off. It's also very important to understand that this is the part of your brain that's in charge of emotional memory. The right emotional side of your brain is linked to how we store and recall emotionally charged memories, especially those that were negative or very traumatic. And so if you look at it in like a real life application, like think about a time when, um, let's say you, you felt anxious about a difficult conversation that you had to have with somebody, uh, or you were worried about an outcome of some situation at work.

11:46Your right emotional side was likely the most engaged, which helped you kind of navigate, navigate those feelings. And at the same time, if you've also ever, you know, with the empathy side of that brain, you say, okay, well, you know, if you've ever had a friend that's going through something really tough and you comforted that friend who is going through that tough time, your ability to empathize and understand their pain is this side of the brain as well. And so those are the four parts of the brain, which is really important to understand before we go any further. And so let's talk about how all of them work together.

12:16It's important to understand each one of them, but it's also important to understand they rarely operate in isolation. So our brains are designed to integrate all of these functions and allow us to kind of respond to the world in a very balanced way. And so the way that you would integrate these in your life, let me just give you a quick example, right? Let's say that you need to make a really tough decision. Maybe your boss comes to you and says, hey, I want to move you to a new city and give you a raise. Well, then your left thinking side of your brain might sit there and start to think, okay, what are the pros?

12:54What are the cons? And it would analyze the logical aspects like salary and career growth. The right thinking side of your brain might consider how it aligns with your long-term dreams and your passions and what you want to create in your life. The left emotional side might feel excited. It might feel optimistic about a new opportunity. You're like, oh, this is going to be fun. And then the right emotional side of your brain might feel anxious about it at the same time, leaving a city that you grew up in and leaving your loved ones behind. And so it's important because people get so confused and they get so caught up in like, I'm thinking this and I'm really excited, but I'm also very anxious.

13:36I don't know how those two things can live at one time. Well, it's two sides of your brain working the exact same time. No big deal. That's just what you're designed to do. Okay, well, I'm also starting to think about logically, but I'm also starting to think about my passions and everything. These are the four parts of your brain working as one unit. So it's normal. And I want you guys to understand this. It's normal to feel what seem like complete opposites of a spectrum. Oh my God, I'm so excited about this opportunity. And oh my God, this scares the shit out of me. And I have anxiety about leaving my house.

14:10Completely fine. You know, those are the four parts of your brain coming in to help you make a better decision. And so they help you to analyze the situation and look at it from many angles, which should be like logically, emotionally, intuitively, creatively. And this is why writing down your thoughts is so important. It's because there's kind of like four different people that live inside of you. And if you're like, oh my God, I'm so confused. I don't know what to do. Perfect. That's exactly what it's supposed to be like. Put it down on a piece of paper because it's incredibly complex. There's four different brains basically working there at the same time.

14:45Writing down everything can help you process all of those parts of your brain so that you can make the best decision for you. This is also why it's really good to like, when you're going to make a big decision in life or just any decision that's like, you know, holds a little bit of weight to it, writing down like a pros and cons list and being like, okay, if you know, like we did this when we were trying to figure out Lauren, when she was, she was about to have the baby, she was, 11 days over her due date. And we were going into the weekend. And because it was going into the weekend, our doctor wouldn't be there anymore.

15:17And so they're like, hey, like you're at the point where, you know, if things go bad, they could go bad quickly. And so we had to like, do we induce? Do we not induce? And so we were like, okay, we're going to go get lunch real quick and we're going to figure it out. And we made a pros and cons list for inducing. We made a pros and cons list for not inducing. And once we put it all on paper, it was very obvious what the right choice was. and that's what we went with. And so it took all of these complex analytical side and emotional side and fear and excitement, put it down into a piece of paper and it was like, oh, this is a very easy decision.

15:50And so that's what you have to understand about your brain is that there's all four of these complex pieces that are moving at the exact same time. How do we make sure that we can, we cannot have one of them that's like taking the microphone from all of the other ones and just completely running the show, but how do we bring in all parts of this brain so that we can use it. Now, let's talk about how to actually balance the four sides of your brain, how to actually get the four parts of your brain to each be stronger. And so for the left thinking side of your brain, if you want to be more analytical and to strengthen that, maybe you are really good at that, but you want to strengthen even more.

16:27Well, what you'd want to do is you want to start doing more puzzles. You want to start doing more strategy games. You want to start doing tasks that require a logical reasoning and thinking and processing for yourself. You know, practice writing down, practice organizing, practice planning activities that involve really like linear thinking. Like there's a lot of people out there that are very, very good at being analytical. And there's a lot of people that are listening that are not good at being very analytical. So this is something you can strengthen. It's not like, oh, this part of my brain just doesn't exist.

16:58You can start strengthening. I need to do more puzzles. I need to get some more strategy games. I could put them on my phone. I could do whatever it is that's going to strengthen that side of my brain. Do activities that involve numbers. Try to start setting a budget. Try to start playing like math related games. Some of you are already getting anxiety from thinking about doing that because you're like, oh my God, I'm so not analytical. All right, chill out, bro. You can always get a little bit more analytical if that's something that you want to work on. Okay, so that's the left thinking side of your brain.

17:28For the left emotional side of your brain, surround yourself with positive influences. So whether that's books, whether that's music, the people that surround you, so that you can start to strengthen the strong emotions that you want to feel, the positive emotions that you want to feel. Listening to this podcast, this is really good. How can you start to have internal and external positive influences in your life so you can strengthen that positive emotions that you have? Set goals that excite you. Try to tap into that intrinsic motivation. So if you're not very driven or you don't feel like you're very driven, It's not that that doesn't exist within you.

18:04It just might be a little bit more dormant than everything else. You know, practice gratitude to start to enhance the ability to focus on positive emotions versus negative emotions or what is it you don't want. Okay, so that's the left side of your brain. The right side of your brain, let's go to the right thinking side. So I would try to do more hobbies like drawing, like writing, playing a musical instrument. You know, Google and see if there's anybody that does pottery around you so that you can start to get more creative because it's not that you're creative. It's just maybe you haven't been using that side of your brain since you were 12 years old.

18:36You know, engage in like brainstorming sessions at work so that you can start, you know, having free flow ideas without judgment of that's ridiculous or that's not logical, whatever it might be. Try to do more mindfulness, more meditation so that you can start to strengthen that intuition that you have within you as well. okay for the right emotional side which is the negative side but then also the uh the empathy side try to be more empathetic to others like actively listen to other people speak and imagine their perspective and don't even try to respond you know if you really want to get good at this start seeing people who have the complete opposite ideas as you and try to empathize with them start people who have a if you're you know not religious listen to religious people and try to imagine their perspective.

19:24If you're, you know, one side of a political spectrum, go ahead and listen to other people on the other side of the political spectrum and try to empathize with them. This is a really good way to strengthen the right emotional side and have more empathy. You know, start to think about past experiences that you've had in your life and how they've shaped you emotionally in the responses. And then try to develop like an emotional resilience through stuff like therapy, through journaling, through stress management techniques. And so those are the four parts of your brain. I want it to be like a mini masterclass for you to really understand that if it feels like there's multiple people talking inside of your head, there kind of are.

20:02There's four different parts of your brain that are completely opposite, talking at the exact same time. When you can understand them, and if you want to go back and listen to this episode again so you can understand it even more, write it down, take notes, all of that, that would definitely help you. But the main thing I want you to get from it is that if you feel like there's multiple people in your brain, no big deal. Join the club. We all do. And it's because there's parts of your brain that process things differently. If you want to help yourself kind of take that symphony of voices inside of your head and logic and emotion and all of those things, and you want to kind of be the conductor of that symphony, start writing things down, start journaling more, start writing stuff down and planning out your life because that allows you to process it a whole lot more.

20:45So that is how to activate 100 % of your brain. So hopefully you can achieve everything that you want. So if you love this episode, please do me a massive favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The biggest way that you can say thanks for everything that we do over here is just to share the podcast. The only way that we grow is from you guys sharing it. So if you've been listening for a while and you've never shared it, do me a favor, man, just share it. Help us help other people. It is absolutely free for them to learn and grow and the more people that we can impact hopefully the better the world becomes so if you would do that I greatly greatly appreciate it and with that I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode make it your mission to make somebody else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day