Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: The 4 Brain Characters That Transform Habits and Critical Thinking | Human Behavior | E390

26:42S stands for speech. If you have any problems with language, all of a sudden, and you're watching me, and I'm now in my mind, I may still be hearing my language, but clearly what's coming out is a problem. That's a huge warning sign. S, speech. T stands for tingling or numbness in the body. Usually this is going to be on only one side of the body, but not all the time. So really paying attention to what's going on with your limbs and how you're feeling. So S, speech, T, tingling. R is remembering. All of a sudden, are you having a problem, an acute problem with remembering your spouse's name or where you are or not where you parked your car.

27:36That's kind of a common one that we all get. But if you're having some major acute problem with remembering, that's a warning sign. Oh, off balance. If all of a sudden you're having a real off balance and often one side of the body will droop, one side of the face may droop, you may be dragging your leg all of a sudden. You may have a little bit of paralysis in your arm. you can't get it to go. These are warning signs. And then K stands for killer headache, throbbing, pulsing, like that caustic pain that you get when you bite into ice cream, major warning sign. Usually one-sided, again, not always, but usually on one side or the other.

28:19And then E stands for eyes, or all of a sudden, major problems with vision. And stroke is, It's a stroke. Boom. It usually happens. It happens quickly. And so those are the primary warning signs. What can you do to help prevent it? What are you eating? Really, food makes a difference. How much sleep are you getting? Sleep is a time period when new information streaming in shuts down, and this is when the cells turn on and the garbage cleaners go in and they clean out all the waste, you have to consider your brain is like 800 billion neurons that are talking to one another. They're eating, they're creating waste while you're busy.

29:08So when we go to sleep, that's when we go in and we flush the system. So that's really important. How much rest are you getting then? And how stressful are you? Well, the stress circuitry is a go, go, go, go, do, do, go, go, more, more. Okay, I reached a goal, but I'll celebrate for this long, and then I want more. There's always this driving force of that left brain that wants more. So there are things that we really can do. And let me say this, Hala, about the brain and our vulnerability, is if you look at a human brain, you can see the blood inside of the blood vessels because the walls of the blood vessels in the brain are so thin, they're transparent.

29:57So the pressure system, when we get angry and when we get mad, when we're holding it in or letting it out, but we're in that rage or we're in deep fear or we're just feeling out of control, This is impacting the internal pressure system of what's going on inside of the brain. And, you know, it's not healthy for the overall animal, the overall organism that we are biologically.

30:25Hala Taha:Such good tips. I feel like that's so helpful. So I want to go back to your story. So suddenly you found yourself, you had awareness, but you didn't have any control, right? And you actually felt you were witnessing your brain shutting down. What happened next? What was really interesting to me was, you know, when we look at a human brain, it has these two hemispheres. And these two hemispheres process different information in different kinds of ways. And the left hemisphere has language. And language is my ability to create sound. Dog, dog is a sound. And then we can comprehend what is that sound and what is the meaning of that sound.

31:08We can read. We can write. We have mathematics. We can speak multiple languages. I mean, the left hemisphere is a very, very busy place. And so the hemorrhage was happening in my left hemisphere. And so that left hemisphere would kind of go offline for a little while, and I would drift into the present moment. Because the right hemisphere, it's just a right here, right now machine. It is all about the present moment. And in the present moment, my name is over there in my left hemisphere. the boundaries of where I begin and end as a human being over there in the left hemisphere. But right here, right now is the richness of the experience coming in through my sensory systems.

31:53And it feels like euphoria. It's beautiful in the present moment because there's no judgment of what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad. It's just, wow, I'm alive. So on the morning of the stroke, I would waffle, waft back and forth between being in the present moment, oh my gosh, I'm alive, to, oh my gosh, I'm having a problem. I need to get myself help. And so eventually I did make a phone call and I did get help. But by the time I got help, I had no language, so I couldn't speak. And I thought I sounded like a golden retriever. The person listening to me, He sounded like a golden retriever.

32:38And it was like, fortunately, he knew it was me. He recognized my squawk. And then he did what he needed to do to get me help. So you thought that you were barking? I've got her. Golden retrievers, they speak like. I mean, they communicate. And that's how you felt like that's what you were like.

33:00Hala Taha:You were trying to communicate. But it made no sense. Were you afraid at this time? Did you have fear? No, I did not. I was very fortunate that part of the cells in that left hemisphere, in the left emotional portion of my brain, were swimming in a pool of blood as well. And that would be my fear. So I was fine.

33:25And I didn't really care. The right hemisphere doesn't really care. I mean, it thinks life's great. It's cool. I was motivated, but it had no information to be able to attach myself to normal reality and do what I needed to do, engage in any way I needed to engage in order to take the steps to orchestrate my rescue. But between I waffled in and out of these two hemispheres, fortunately, I did not have fear, but I did know I was in grave danger. And after I'd finally made the phone call, I got on my butt and I went down my steps and I unlocked my door and I just curled up into a little fetal ball and I just heard inside my own mind I heard myself saying hold on hold on and then I kept thinking what am I holding on to what does that even mean you know hold on and it was like, it was like, don't leave the body.

34:32As soon as I'm out of the body, I felt like I had become so disabled over a course of four hours that I was afraid that if I went unconscious, then I would never be able to get this body to work again because in the consciousness of the right hemisphere, I literally was energetically as big as the universe because we are energy and there's no boundaries in the energy. And when you're connected to all that is, then it is that which becomes of interest. And in that expansive openness, there were no details saying, oh my God, I'm going to die, you know, and all that.

35:18Hala Taha:You just knew that if you left your body, you wouldn't be coming back. I felt like I would be gone. So what happened next in terms of like, how did you get better, right? How did you get better? What did you learn from this? And I know that you realize there's four characters in the brain, so I want to talk about that. But just talk to us about like what happened next and how you got better. So I landed right as I was passing out. I was in an ambulance arriving at Mass General Hospital emergency room. And I literally felt, I was curled up in a little fetal ball. And I felt, I went unconscious.

35:58I felt, I described it as I felt my spirit surrender. At that point, I had no say. I was gone. And so within a few moments, and I mean literally moments, in, they take my gurney out. I'm in the emergency room, bright lights, people are on me, people knew I was coming. And it was just poker and prodding, giving me IV, here, sign this consent form, which I do remember thinking, what's wrong with you people? You know, it's like, it was just consent, right? Take our hand and make a scribble. It was ridiculous. But it was what it was. And so they took me into a room. They gave me anti-inflammatories.

36:47They gave me steroids, which are anti-inflammatory. They already had, at the first hospital that I went to, they already had a CAT scan. They knew I was having a hemorrhage. They also knew that I was employed by Harvard. They are all Harvard Department of Neurology. So I was considered a VIP. So I got, you know, I know that that helped me from their perspective. But so they stopped the bleed and then they decided I needed to have brain surgery. And so two and a half weeks later, they come ahead open and they removed the blood clot that was the size of a golf ball. And they sewed me up and sent me home and said, we have no idea how much you will ever get back.

37:47But, you know, that's now your job is to try to recover. and I have a mother who is an absolute angel in my life and she dropped her world and she came to me and she surrounded me in an environment of love and let's watch and see what could I learn, what was in the way of my learning and what could she do to rearrange and to literally teach me, starting with, she recognized I was now an infant in a woman's body. And we began with, I couldn't see color. She had to teach me colors were different. She had to teach me how to make sound in order to be able to have language. She had to teach me vocabulary.

38:39She had to teach me how to walk. I mean, she taught me everything. So that, yeah, she was, reared me twice.

38:46Hala Taha:Wow. And what did this experience actually teach you about consciousness? I know that you feel like you learned a lot from it. Talk to us and realize that like a lot of us don't think about consciousness at all. So we're starting from, we don't, we don't think about consciousness at all. It's like we just, nobody knows how it works, like really. And so it's just something that is and nobody thinks about it. So I think these are really hard concepts for people to grasp like really quickly. So explain it to us like we're infants. Like, what do you think consciousness is? So we start with a single cell.

39:23And that single cell has all the DNA blueprint that it's going to take to multiply itself into all these different kinds of cells that will differentiate into specific functions. Like you're going to start with that single cell, then you're going to end up with three layers of cells, essentially. One of those layers of cells, the ectoderm, is going to become the nervous system, spinal cord, brain, peripheral nervous system, as well as the skin. So it kind of envelops us. And then the mesoderm is going to become the muscles. And then the endoderm is going to become connective tissues and other types of tissues.

40:04But all of this is a groups of cells that are differentiated. So eventually we end up with this magnificent human brain. The human brain is divided into two hemispheres. It has two, so the primary difference between a reptile and a mammal is the addition of our emotional system called the limbic system. So reptiles don't have emotions, mammals have emotions, and the primary difference between typical mammals and the human is this explosion of thinking cerebral cortex. So we humans, we have four major modules of cells inside of our head, two emotional, evenly divided between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, and then two thinking modules of cells, the right thinking and the left thinking.

40:56And most of us have heard, oh, the right hemisphere is emotional and the left hemisphere is thinking, and that's simply not true anatomically. Anatomically, we have two emotional and two thinking modules of cells. So the primary difference then between the right and the left for me when I lost my left hemisphere was I lost one linearity across time. So somehow or another, these amazing cells step out of the consciousness of the present moment. I mean, this is, to me, this is the mind blower. How do they even do that, right? But the right hemisphere, it's a right here, right now machine. So the emotions of the present moment experience, what does it feel like to be alive as your audience is listening?

41:45What are they doing? What does it feel like to be sitting or to be walking, to be moving your body? What does it feel like as you dive into water? What does that feel like, the experience? what is the temperature of the air or the water against your body is it pressure against you what's happening you know glasses on your nose what do those feel like if you focus on that feeling you can feel that otherwise you go pretty unconscious so the right emotion is experiential what does it feel like to be here and then the right thinking is right here right now if i'm just in the right here, right now.

42:29All I'm aware of is what is in front of me. Whatever behind me doesn't exist. Whatever happened before this moment in time doesn't exist, including what is my name? I don't know, right here, right now, unless I got a big name tag on the wall in front of me, but I don't have that kind of language. So the right experience, the right hemisphere is right here, right now, emotion and connected to all that is because I don't have that boundary of where I begin and where I end because that's in that left hemisphere. So we access these parts of ourselves, the right emotion when we are experiencing something.

43:09I come from Indiana. We're big basketball, of course. What does it feel like when you're getting ready to do a layup? that feeling of lifting yourself up into the air, throwing that ball, the movement, the calculation of the brain, of the arc that you have to make with that ball in order to get it to go into the basket. So it's the experience of being. And then the right thinking is, oh my gosh, I'm alive. And in this sense of, oh my gosh, I'm alive is this incredible gratitude of, wow, I'm alive. And there are people here with me who love me. And it feels like love. And I listened to a podcast where you were speaking about how close you were to your father.

43:56And when your father was ill and he had to go into the hospital, your heart reached him and his love reached you, even though you couldn't be in the same space with one another. And it is in that right thinking consciousness where we are beyond the limitations of ourselves and we are enveloping one another in this feeling of deep love. So the right hemisphere is right here right now. And then the left hemisphere, it's not right here right now. These cells in the emotional system step literally out of the consciousness of the present moment. So I can say to you, Hala, Hala, what did you have for dinner last night?

44:46I had Asian food. Okay. Where did you go in order to remember that, right? You don't have the Asian food right here in front of you. You have stepped out. You have left me here alone in the present moment. You have stepped into another consciousness that is constantly running in the background. and the beauty of that group of cells, those emotional cells, is that everything that I ever experienced is running and it's running and it's always there for me to refer to and oh my gosh, let's say now something happens in this moment and let's say all of a sudden the ground should start to shake and as the ground starts to shake, your brain goes and it says, oh my gosh, I'm not safe, I don't care about Jill anymore, I got to get out of the building because there's an earthquake.

45:42And you know what the experience is because you have information about that. So our emotional reactivity is designed to protect us in the present moment based on experiences we have had in the past. So if I'm running a consciousness where I'm literally as big as the universe with the right thinking tissue, and I'm running a consciousness in the right experiential, what does it feel like to be in my body and to be engaging? And I'm running a consciousness in my left emotional tissue that is reminding me of everything that ever happened in my past so I can protect myself in the present based on that past.

46:28And then, oh my gosh, I have left thinking tissue and that is my A-type personality. it's my language, it's my do, it's my go, it's my value of I want more, oh, let's do this, let's do that. So if we're running all four of these consciousnesses and we know all four of these consciousnesses, then we can gain the power to pick and choose who and how we want to be in any moment, which gives us power to choose what life we want to live.

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50:27Hala Taha:That's bitdefender.com slash profiting for 30 % off. That's bitdefender.com slash profiting. It's so interesting. Like I've never heard of this before, right? All I ever hear about is left and right brain. So let's bust some pop psychology myths about the left versus right brain. What do we need to know? Well, number one is we only use 10 % of our brain. No, if it's alive and it's in your head, you're using it. Now, you have a huge life. I mean, just consider for a moment. So here we have a population of entrepreneurs who aren't generally thinking about their brain, right? However, in order for you to do everything that you do, you have to have brain cells that perform that function.

51:15Some people say to me, oh, I'm not creative at all. And I say, well, for some reason, you're using other cells to dominate the circuits in your right hemisphere that open you up to the possibility. And creativity is in the right hemisphere because it's not about the box of what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, what has come before, and let's define it. That's the exact opposite of creativity. So, but if brain cells are like people. We're social. They're social. A single cell can have 10 ,000 to 15 ,000 connections in a network with other neurons. 10 ,000 to 15 ,000. That is a social network.

51:59Talk about influencers, boy, it's those brain cells. So they're busy in there. And it's the same for humans. We are social creatures. And what happens to us if we don't socialize? Well, we become more rigid. We become more firm in our right, wrong, good, bad, and we kind of curl up in little fetal balls and we die. And the same is true for neurons. So number one, if it's alive and it's in your head, you're using it. The other biggest one is right hemisphere is emotional, left hemisphere is thinking, and it's like, well, it is true that the left thinking is the rational, organized, analyzed, linear thinking, methodical.

52:44that is true. But we do have emotion in both hemispheres.

52:50Hala Taha:So let's talk about how each side of the brain perceives reality. I know you've been talking about it, but again, like a lot of us are learning this for the first time. So hearing it multiple times in different ways, I think is helpful. So how does the left side perceive reality? How does the right side perceive reality? So as far as the medical, traditional medical world is concerned, only one quarter of our brain is conscious. According to the traditional medical world, only one quarter of our brain is conscious, and that's the left thinking tissue. Okay, let's look at the condition of the world, right?

53:30We're kind of a mess. We're killing each other. I mean, it is like what we value is just that one portion. So imagine the world we could live in if we actually didn't think everything else was unconscious and out of our control, and so we didn't have to take any responsibility for it. Well, if I know what's going on in these four major portions, modules of cells, and I have the power to recognize in any moment which of those four parts I'm in, which character am I exhibiting in the world based on what those cells, skill sets give to me. And in this moment, I'm exhibiting. When I know all four, it's kind of like a hand.

54:16If I just have a hand and I'm flopping things and pushing things and smashing things, and you know, it's not very sophisticated. But as soon as I can differentiate between those four digits of my hand, I have exponentially exploded my capacity to using that hand. And the same is true for our brain. So whole brain living is about figuring out, recognizing what parts am I using when? Am I happy about that? Am I remotely in balance? Do I need a little more play in my life? Because my left circuitry is running all the time, and that's my stress circuitry. And it really has interfered with my relationships.

55:04And it drive, drive drives me, but it's probably interrupting my sleep as well and my overall wellness. So as we look at these different parts of who we are, then we can spread the love essentially in, I'm not just a biological creature. I'm not a single-celled organism. I'm not a reptile. And I am not a canine. I am a human being. And in the design of being a human being, we have these four different wonderful groups of cells that serve us. And if I want to be a whole successful human being, then I need to be capitalizing on the skill sets of all four parts of who I am because they're a natural part of the design for a reason.

55:49Hala Taha:Yeah. So I just want to recap the four characters for everybody, just so everybody's on the same page. So you've got left thinking, which is about identity, planning, control, achievement. You have left emotional, which is pain, fear, trauma, and memory. You have right emotional, which is play, creativity, and connection. And you have right thinking, which is witness, wisdom, and peace. Let's talk about these four characters as they influence an entrepreneur. Because running a business is very different than being an entrepreneur. And not always, especially not in this day and age. there's a lot of overlap because now a lot of entrepreneurs are running businesses.

56:34But I think it's kind of, are you going from the left brain, left thinking, here's my business, here's my brand, here's my product, these are the beans, I'm going to hire my bean counters, they're all about how much are we going to earn, I'm going to hire a creative team, they're going to terrify us because they're going to come in and they're not going to give us any information about design other than we can guarantee you that if a woman is going to shop for this and reach for the product, she's going to pick this one instead of that one. And the left brain is going, oh my God, that's terrifying.

57:09We have to change our whole production because you think, and it's like, yeah, that's the way it goes. So we end up, all of our lives is about this relationship between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. Entrepreneurs have to have creativity. I mean, isn't that what happens? I'm doing whatever I do. I'm relaxed. I'm thinking about something. And it's like, oh my gosh, here is a great idea. Great idea. I got a great idea. And then it's like, well, if I don't act on that great idea, the idea just goes back into the idea pot and someone else may pick that out of that big that in the universe.

57:51So I have to turn on my left brain. I have to figure out how am I going to do it. I have to organize it. I have to get funding for it. I have to step through A through Z in order to set the business, in order to be able to do it. And then I have to be able to figure out how to sell it. And I have to get out of my own fear because, oh my gosh, who am I to start a company when I don't know anything? I'm over here, have got the idea. And now I got to trust people. Oh my gosh, I got to trust people. Nothing more terrifying than trying to pick your team and figure out who do I trust, who do I not trust, who do I keep, who do I get rid of?

58:28Oh my God, I don't want to have to fire somebody. I'm a nice girl. All of that. So that really does require a whole brain. And then you have to have the vision. And the vision is going to be that right thinking that comes in and says, you can do this. You can do all these things. You have good intention, you have good energy, you have good logical skills, you have good emotional containment, and you're never alone. And that's the beauty of whole brain living is to know that this part of our wisdom, this part of us that connects us with others and connects us within ourselves, that is always there.

59:15So every time I experience fear that says, who am I to do this? Who am I to say? The whole imposter syndrome thing, that little left emotional fear. There's always that wisdom-wise loving part that can come in and say, I got you right here inside of our own head. I got you. And that's not arrogant and it's not narcissism. It's an awareness that I have fear. and my fear is meant to be in formation. It's not supposed to become a lifestyle. So I'm not supposed to let those kinds of, excuse me, fears come in and take over and derail me and then I get all caught up in that. It's like, no, my fear is a warning to take a bigger picture look at everything and know that I got this, I'm okay and I have this backfield of people who love me and who know me and who support me and we're all in this together.

1:00:15Hala Taha:Now, would you say society as a whole is like really left brain dominant? And what part of the brain do you feel like if we all spent a little bit more time trying to understand and tap into, do you feel like would help solve a lot of the problems that you were just talking about? Like the world feels, we are talking right now, it's like January, mid-January, the world is falling apart between ICE and Gaza and Iran and Venezuela. Like, it just seems like one after the next. It just feels like we don't love each other anymore. So talk to us about why we're so left-brain dominant and how we can become more right-brain dominant or what do you think society needs to do?

1:01:00Yeah. So you're absolutely right. We are skewed to the values of the left hemisphere. and this has been going on for a very long time. It came in after World War II. The great generation came in and now it's like, okay, now we want to prosper. And what we value is our family, which is right brain, but we also now need, we want to build our roots. We want the all-American dream. We want to have a house. We want to have enough money in the bank to do what we want to do. We want to have vacation. I want a nice car. All these things. And then the great generation gave birth to the boomers, of which I will admit I am a tail end of the boomers.

1:01:51And boomers, our parents wanted us to have everything. And they gave us everything that they could give us so that we could live a better life than what they had to go through. because, oh my gosh, they had to live through World War II. And wow, did that completely change the landscape, especially of America. And because the U.S. ended up influencing World War II in a way that that war was won because of the atom bomb, it put us at the top of the powers of the world. So now the U.S. is going to kind of be a dictator of influence in the world because now we were thriving. And so, you know, everything happens then.

1:02:38But here's something else that you need to think about is that the great generation had two very different hemispheres and they had to show up and become disciplined and become organized in order to win that war. And everybody had to get on board in order to do that. And so the men went to the war, many women did as well, but the women, they organized in the U.S. in order to be able to take over all the jobs. And so everybody became really very pragmatic and very left-brained, and the whole system became very left-brained. And then the war is over and everybody comes back, and then the boomers happen.

1:03:17And the boomers are also a left-brain dominant because we get that now from our parents. But then the boomers had children, and the children are the millennials. And the technology of what happened for the early millennials was the creation of really the first little robot. It was a little teddy bear called Teddy Raspin. and this little teddy bear was the first little living creature that we would stick in the crib with our little millennials so that they could hear a heartbeat or they could hear a humming or they could have a little language speaking back to them. So the millennials end up with a robot, essentially, a very, you know, three circuits, but a robot has their significant calmer, emotional contentment.

1:04:17And so then the Gen X, who are right behind the boomers, between the boomers and the millennials, this is a group of people who are still very left-brained, but they are technologically savvy. And they start making everything. They just, you know, all my Gen, I can always tell a Gen Xer. And the difference between a Gen Xer and a boomer is that the Gen Xers, they just say, just push buttons, just push buttons. And the boomers are going, oh my God, I can't push a button. I'm afraid I'm going to explode it, right? So these are huge societal shifts in populations. So the Gen Z, the Gen Xers come along and they're now making all this technology, all this technology, and our millennial children are learning from technology.

1:05:12And here's the difference. If I give you a pad, an iPad, and I say, I'm going to teach you the timetables. Well, anybody left brain, we learn timetables, we memorize them. That's all we did. We memorized them. A two plus a two equals a four. A six times a six equals a 36. We memorized them. But what we did for the millennials was we said two chickens plus two goats makes four animals. We gave you a visual and we started training your right brain. So the right brain became dominant with the millennial population. And when you think about in business, I have had so many millennials say, I don't get those boomers.

1:06:01I mean, it is like my way or the highway. And if I hate my job, I'm gonna suffer with it for 40 years because, oh my God, it's a paycheck. And the boomers are looking at the millennials going, I don't get these millennials. If they're not happy with their job, they're gonna leave. And there's no commitment to the long-term of the business, which is going to make them suffer. So at the fundamental differences between these generations, it is huge right now about how these different age groups developed across time. And so the millennials actually are more connected. They like to do things in groups.

1:06:42You want me to make a decision? I'm going to check with some of my team, right? Boomers weren't like that at all. Boomers were making decisions, even if they were bad decisions, they were going to make the decision. So we end up during this point in our lifetime of the left dominant skewed to the left value structure. Now, what that means is that the millennials, even though they're different in the way that they've learned and grown and developed, they're still fitting themselves inside of the boomer world. And the boomer world is one for profit. And all that matters is money. My value is money.

1:07:23You have learned that there's plenty of money. The boomer mindset is some zero. I get it or you get it. Very different.

1:07:35Hala Taha:That's so interesting. And it's so obvious now why there's such differing politics, why millennial and Gen Z are way more of like peace, no war, you know, against genocide, against apartheid, all those things. Whereas a lot of the boomers are for all those things or believe everything they see on TV. So let's not make that gross of an evaluation. Let's say that the boomers are divided between their values. The Democrats, when I think about politics, I go to one thing, taxes. Where do I want my tax money to go? What kind of things do I want my money to go to? The value of the right hemisphere says, I care about people.

1:08:22I care about social programs. I care about food stamps for people who don't have any food. I care about the mentally ill. I care about reforming the incarcerated population so that these people can get back into it and get ahead again. And so the Democrats are really looking at the value structure of what does the right hemisphere value. And there are a lot of boomers who are Democrats. The Republican brain comes in and says, well, it's about me. And me means if there's a me, there's a you. And if there's a you, if you don't look like part of my tribe, then you're not on my team. And the left emotional brain comes online and says, well, we're tribal.

1:09:12And in that tribalness, it's me against you. And so we fuel this with our sports teams. We fuel this with our political teams. We fuel this with any division. It is that left emotional brain that looks at someone and says, I'm blonde-haired, blue-eyed, I'm a female. Okay, you're black-haired, you have a different hue, color to your skin, and you're different from me. And the left brain says, because you're different from me, I'm going to push you away. And as soon as the brain says, I'm going to push you away in racism, I'm also going to elevate myself, happens naturally, to being superior to you, all right?

1:10:02So this is, we're actually wired at the level of ourselves to do this. The right brain comes in though, and it says, you're different from me. You have different color skin. You speak a different language. You eat a different kind of food that smells different. My right hemisphere says, oh, you're different. I am curious about you. I want to know you better. So to me, racism really boils down to the circuitry because every ability we have is because we're wired to be that way. But there is a whole half of the boomers who are, they are evenly divided in what they value. Yeah.

1:10:46Hala Taha:So would you say that like you're like, do you have control over which parts of the brain that you use or which ones are stronger than the other? Or is it something basically you're just born with or you like it happens, instills in you when you're a child? Like at what point can you change it and when does it develop? love. Okay. Because we are taught by society, by the traditional medical world, that only a quarter of our brain is conscious, then that leaves three quarters of our brain as unconscious. Okay. Well, now you have a brain scientist who was at Harvard teaching and performing research about how does our brain create our perception of reality and wiped out her left thinking tissue, which was the conscious part and wiped out the left emotion, wiped out the right emotion.

1:11:41So all I had left was the right thinking tissue. So that's all I had. So I learned, well, in the absence of all that, those other cells, this is what's going on here. And then once I had surgery and I could then begin to function again and hold some energy inside of my body so I could actually learn something, then I regain the skill sets of the right emotional tissue. So I'm really clear that was very different. That portion of who I am, that is a whole different level of consciousness. And then it's like, okay, well, if I'm going to function like a normal human being in society, I have to get my language back.

1:12:23And so I used my right brain to rebuild the skill sets that I knew that I had lost because I was a neuroanatomist after all. I know because I could still visualize the language circuits. I could still visualize the emotional circuits. I just didn't have any of them anymore. So it's like, okay, well, what do I need to do in order to reconstruct and rebuild those circuits so they can become functional again? So then I regained a new, it was a new reboot for the emotions, but I used what I had in my right hemisphere to rebuild those skills in my left hemisphere. And so I learned what's going on in these different parts of cells.

1:13:11And so then it's like, okay, well, I have the power to choose. I can choose in an instant. I can become very angry. I can hit those left emotional. I can become very analytical and do some mathematics with you. I can become very experiential and playful and joyful and creative in an instant, or I can pause and connect to the bigger picture and automatically right there, I don't know if you noticed, but there was a skip in my language because the language shuts out because I become actually in the present moment and there's no language there. So because I had this experience, I gained this insight.

1:13:51And then I gave a TED Talk. And it was the first TED Talk that ever went viral. It was in 2008. And that exploded Joe Bolte-Taylor into the world and TED into the world. So that became this really interesting thing. And then I was chosen as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World because they recognized what this meant to the bigger picture of humanity. And then my book, which I had already written, My Stroke of Insight, ended up spending 63 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. So all of that happened, and I'm now riding this wave going, little girl from Indiana who had a stroke, all of a sudden exploding in the world, and it's like, well, I didn't plan for that.

1:14:41And so I had to ride that tsunami of a wave. And then I actually, but I always felt like that TED Talk was a miss because people walked away with a reverence for me. And I didn't need their reverence. I was connected to the universe. I wanted people to have a reverence for themselves and for their own lives and for the lives of others because that would shift the value of more, more, more into the relationships that we have with one another in our right hemisphere. So my ultimate goal, there's nothing wrong with capitalism. There's nothing wrong with money, but that's a quarter of who we are. It shouldn't be all of who we are.

1:15:27And I truly believe that the driving force power of us as human beings is our present moment interrelationships with ourselves and others as humanity. And then we have these brilliant left brain skill sets that allow us to do all these magnificent things that they do.

1:15:49Hala Taha:So we have about 10 minutes left together, and I feel like we should spend the last 10 minutes just talking about how we can better use the right side of our brain. Like, what do we need to do? How do we catch ourselves when we're using our left brain? And how do we just build the habits to naturally start using our left brain more? Hala, what do you do for fun? I like to work out. I like to go out to dinner. I like to go to the movies, spend time with my boyfriend. Okay, so you like to work out. You like to get into your body. The right hemisphere is the relationship, the experiential. What does it feel like?

1:16:24Now, if you're off doing yoga and you're in your down dog and you're thinking to yourself, okay, let's see, I'm going to have this conversation with this person and I'm doing my yoga now. But these are the three things that I'm analyzing what I'm going to be doing some other time. That doesn't count. You need to bring your mind to the present. So how do you bring your mind to the present? And so if you're doing something physical, be physical, be there. Listen to music. Get your groove going. Get the movement. Get a collective whole. Get the whole body awake. Because you are this magnificent biological creature.

1:17:05You're not just a brain. So I really encourage people to do things that require them not just to go and compete. If everything you do when you're in your body is competing, you're still in your left brain. No, I want you to actually enjoy the fact that you have a body and that, oh my gosh, it can move. And that, oh my gosh, when the head goes one way, oh, isn't that interesting? The hips go the other way. And oh my gosh, my parts are interactive. So get into your body. That's going to be the right experiential part of who you are. Play, laugh, have joy, be creative, be creative without a purpose.

1:17:54Just be creative. So pay attention. And now all those left brains, that left thinking portion of the brain, they're listening to this podcast going, that's a total waste of time. Why on earth do I want to go and waste time? Well, the reason why you want to go waste time is because that's where your genius is. Genius is in the right emotional tissue. The left brain, it's just do, do, do, linear, linear, linear, to do, to do, cross it off the list, jabber more, build more, make more, blah, blah, blah. Your genius is right here, right now, in the present moment, willing to look at something and to do something in a way that is different from the way it was done before.

1:18:41So that's number one, getting your experiential. You know, when you're eating, actually think about your food. Don't be just like watching a movie or doing something or being on the phone and being distracted. If you're going to fuel your beautiful cells, think about what you're feeding them. And if you're standing up and doing something else while you're eating, that's not being in the present moment, having the experience with food. It's a pause. This is the pause to the go, go, go. So if you don't feel yourself pausing, and then some people are going, I don't like the pause. The pause feels like death to me.

1:19:25It's like, well, that's okay. You know, boom. We're only pausing for like, try for five seconds. Think about your breath. You know, this is why a lot of people do yoga. A lot of people do breath work. Well, why? Because when we breathe, we breathe in the present moment. And in the present moment, I can, really simple, I can increase the frequency of my breath, the amplitude, the depth of my breath. I can hold my breath. Human is the only animal who can, you can say, hold your breath and you can hold your breath. So really bringing your mind into the present. And so that's the doo-doo. But then there's this spiritual connection.

1:20:07And I know a lot of people say, ooh, the word spiritual, you just freaked me out. And it's like, so call it whatever you want, but it's that sense of awe that I exist at all. Oh my gosh, I was born. I have a life. I have a voice. I have manual dexterity. I even have bladder capacity. Oh my gosh, if I can't get excited about the fact that I have bladder capacity, then I'm not paying attention to the miracle of what we are as living beings and how grateful I am that I'm here in this world at the same time you are. And oh my gosh, look at you and look at how wondrous you are and all the things that you can do.

1:20:49And wow, I mean, wow, it's just a big wow. And it's the feeling that one gets when you stand on a mountaintop and you just look out over those mountains and the vastness and the openness. And it's the part as we're standing on a beach and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm alive. And I have this time here in this form, in this place. And I can do anything. I can do anything I want to do. what do I want to do and who do I want to be with and how do I want to connect and how do I want to bring my gratitude into my life and if I can hold on to that and I come from that place then I'm going to be more consciously aware of what I'm building over here and how much time I'm spending in that beautiful left hemisphere this is not about be a right brain or be a left brain this is about being a whole human, being a whole brain and fueling all these different parts of who we are and loving all these parts of who we are.

1:22:01Hala Taha:After everything that you've lived through and been through, what do you want people to understand about who they really are? I want them to understand that every ability we have, we have brain cells that perform that function and that this brain is this really precious, vulnerable thing. So I encourage people to take care of it. We exist in a society where we do drugs and alcohol that just, you know, I lost my mind. I lost so much of my brain and I worked so hard to rebuild it that I, you know, I'll drink a beer maybe twice a year and love it, but that's enough for me because I want to preserve and protect what's going on inside of my head.

1:22:53And I think that if people really value all four skill sets of what these four different parts of their brain bring to their life, they will see that they can truly live a life on purpose and that they can gain the power to in any moment be who they want to be.

1:23:17Hala Taha:And to me, that's freedom. I totally agree. Well, this was such an awesome episode. I feel like we learned so much. It was just an influx of information. I personally learned so much. I did not know the major differences between the left and right brain previously. So thank you so much for your wisdom. So I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profiting tomorrow? So just an actionable tip. And I know your expertise is around the brain, so it can be related to that. So I am. And since your population is entrepreneurial and probably spends most of its time doing in the hard work of the left brain.

1:24:05I think that the actionable is to pause every now and again and ask yourself, which part of my brain am I in right now? And what choices do I want? Do I want to stay there? And this is also for if I become upset. Our emotional reactivity, we have the power to watch an emotion. We have a thought. It stimulates the circuit of an emotion. the emotion stimulates a circuit of physiological response and from the beginning to the end takes less than 90 seconds so if i'm staying angry for longer than 90 seconds or sad or jealous or whatever for longer than 90 seconds then i need to ask myself do i really want to stay in that loop or am i ready to let it go i love that and that was also like getting outside of yourself like

1:24:58Hala Taha:you were mentioning before. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? So profiting can go beyond finance and business. I truly believe that our number one job is to love one another. And I think if we come from that and we have in our mind that whatever I'm going to use my energy on benefits all of us, then we all profit. Dr. Jill, thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? DrJillTaylor.com is my website and off we go. Amazing. I'll put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. It's been nice.

1:25:40Hala Taha:Thank you so much. I was looking forward to this. Yeah, likewise. Well, yeah, fam, what an incredible conversation with Dr. Jill. And I'm still processing everything we learned about the brain today and consciousness. We covered so much ground, and it's something that I don't often think about. But I do think about and study productivity and performance, and I've always thought about optimizing my brain. But Jill showed me that we've been missing three quarters of the picture. We've been taught that only our left brain thinking is conscious, but that left us running on a single cylinder when we have four powerful cylinders or characters inside our heads.

1:26:16Hala Taha:And here's what really struck me. Your genius is not hiding in your to-do list or your relentless productivity. It lives in your right hemisphere or right side of your brain, in the present moment, in play, in creativity without purpose, like Jill said. When you're grinding through your day, checking off task after task, analyzing everything, you're stuck in that left brain loop. You don't want to be there because when you pause, get in your body, and actually taste your food instead of scrolling through emails while you're eating, that's when all your breakthroughs are going to happen. And I just love how Jill explained our four characters.

1:26:50Hala Taha:Once you recognize which one is running the show in any moment, you can gain the power to choose differently in that moment. You can say, hey, I want to use more of my right side of my brain right now. And I know it's my left side dominating. When that left emotional fear kicks in, the imposter syndrome, the who am I to do this, you can tap into your right thinking wisdom that says, I got you. You could do this. And that's not arrogance. That's just accessing your whole brain. That's whole brain living. For my fellow entrepreneurs grinding nonstop, remember what Jill said. Your drive and your ambition are beautiful, but they're just one quarter of who you are.

1:27:26Hala Taha:The magic happens when you balance that hustle with presence, play, and connection. So get out of your head and into your body. Move without competing. Create without analyzing. Breathe in the present moment. And here's something crucial. You also want to know the warning signs of a stroke. Speech problems, tingling, memory issues, balance troubles, severe headaches, vision changes, these are all signs. And if migraines won't respond to medication, get scanned. Your brain is precious. We want you to protect it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Young and Profiting. If this conversation opened your eyes to a whole new way of thinking about consciousness and success, then share it with somebody who needs to hear this message.

1:28:05Hala Taha:And if you learned something valuable today, please drop us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or CastBox. Your views mean so much to us. If you want to watch this episode as a video, head over to YouTube and search Young and Profiting. You can't miss us. You can also connect with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. As always, I got to shout out my Yap production team. Shout out to the guest outreach team. Shout out to my scripters, my production support, my YouTube team, my social team. You guys are all so hardworking. I appreciate everything you do for me and the show.

1:28:38Hala Taha:This is your host, Halataha, a.k.a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.