Brian Gubernick explains how to improve your health by exercising the weaker half of your brain. If you're left-brain dominant (logical, analytical), try art, music, or dance. If you're right-brain dominant (creative), try puzzles, coding, or language learning. The practice builds cognitive balance.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it today. I want to talk about, well, I guess this is kind of a mixed topic. Uh, it's around health, but it also impacts us in business. Life and everywhere else. When I look at health across the board, as I've been guided by many mentors in this space, uh, one such— one, one mentor, Dr. John Thoma, has explained to me that there's, there's really multiple areas or multiple priorities that pertains to your health. Things like light and darkness, like how well you sleep and how exposed to outside light you are. Things like movement, and metabolism. These are all components of health. Well, one thing that John introduced to me in terms of your health, and more specifically needing this, this area, or excelling in this particular area, if in fact you are healthy, one area that he introduced to me was, was called expression. Expression. And what, what John was really referring to was that each of us likes to do more right-brained things or likes to do more left-brained things. And John believes that in order to have a healthy body, a healthy brain, you've got to flex the opposite side of your brain that, that maybe you're not up to or prone to flex as often. Let me explain a little bit more. So there's obviously a right side of your brain and a left side of your brain. Some of us live more on the right brain side of things. Right brain functions include creativity and imagination, uh, emotional processing, intuition, holistic thinking, spatial awareness. Now some of us live more on the left brain side of things, which is your logical reason— reasoning, your analytical thinking, your language processing, maybe your mathematical skills and your sequential processing. So left tends to be more logical and analytical. Right turn tends to be more creative and imaginative. As you're thinking right now, some of you obviously default quickly to the creativity side. Some of us are quick to the left side, which is the more analytical, logical side, which is frankly where I live. So John believes that one aspect of being healthy is clearly having a healthy brain, and one way to go about improving your brain health is to challenge or flex the side of your brain that you are less prone to flex on a regular basis. So for me, for instance, I am, I do tend to lean more into left brain activity. So John would tell me, Brian, where are you flexing that right brain? You know, where, where are you flexing that? What functions are you doing it, doing? In other words, What creativity or creative tasks are you introducing into your world? How are you flexing your imagination? How are you challenging your emotional processing? Really, how are you more deeply thinking? Not analytically, but more philosophically or holistically. And so when he asks me that question, you know, my follow-up is, well, John, how do I go about flexing, let's say in this situation, the right side? Here are some things to think around. If in fact you're like me, you lean more towards the left side activity, but you want to flex that right side. So you want to have expression of that right side. Artistic expression challenges that right side. Things like drawing or painting or sculpting, all things that I do not do because I'm not, you know, that's just not, I'm not built for it. John would say, go do those things. Music and dance, maybe playing a musical instrument, composing music, maybe engaging in dancing, more mindfulness, more meditation. These are right side activities. So if you are looking to flex the right side, more mindfulness and meditation practices, uh, anything that pushes your imagination like story writing or just letting your mind wander, daydreaming, things like exploring nature, like spending time just taking in your natural surroundings and observing. Video games, believe it or not. Photography. Playing with colors, engaging in improv, and just participating in different creative workshops. Pottery, creative writing, things of that nature. Those are right side activities, right brain activity. So if you're, if you lean more left side, if you want to practice your expression and flex the right side, there's things you can be doing. Now, If you're the opposite, if you are more right brain inclined and you want to flex the left side, and again, the, the spirit, the spirit of doing this is to create a healthier brain, to challenge the other side of your brain that does not get as much activity. The brain gets universal activity but does not get flexed as often. Then here's some things you do for the left side of your brain. Solve puzzles, do brain teasers, learn a new language. Practice mathematics, like solve math problems, reading and writing. Take up coding. Coding is very much a left brain activity. Uh, engage in critical thinking. Do anything that involves memorization, develop memory skills, memorize lists or sequences or information. Take an academic course, actually enrolling in a course that, that requires some degree of logical reasoning and analytical thinking. Things like math or science. These will flex that left, that left side. Finally, engage in discussion or specifically debate. Participation in debate requires this logical thinking and the ability to think critically. And lastly, practice left-handed activities. Engage in activities with your non-dominant hand. So I guess it's not always left-handed activities, but your non-dominant hand. That'll stimulate the opposite side of the brain. So if you're right-brained, looking to flex that left side, use your, use your non-dominant hand. Now I share this because we are all looking to improve our brain functionality. And so per John, per Dr. John, research has shown that even though the brain is highly interconnected, and most cognitive function involves both hemispheres working together, it is great to, to work that side of the brain that you're not more naturally inclined to work. In doing so, you will make a healthier version of you. So the focusing question today, which is actually beneficial for many of you to think around the focusing question because that's going to flex the side of the brain that you're not accustomed to flexing. The focusing question today What can you do in terms of expression that gets you outside your normal activity, gets you in maybe even some sort of uncomfortable space, learning space, whatever it may be, that prompts you to express or flex the side of your brain that you're not naturally doing? And in doing so, how do you develop that, making you probably a even healthier, at least with respect to brain health, than you were just the day prior. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
