Left Brain - Right Brain and Taking care of myself.

I had a good productive and actually fun week. I decided I needed to make some changes to get flow of my happiness moving again.  First I decided I should eat more regularly instead of the hit or miss eating I have become accustomed to over the past  few years. I have deemed it conscious eating meaning actually making better choices and eating some sort of breakfast and then taking vitamins.

The second thing is physical exercise. I am physical person for the most part cleaning and moving furniture. Sometimes cutting limbs from trees and cleaning the roof but this kind of stuff is not regular. This week I did two things towards movement I joined the $10 a month gym and I started jumping rope.  Any time I make changes I have to start small and not have some lofty goal that I can never achieve. I have to put it in the column of doing something more than I was doing before.

I decided jumping rope during the commercials of  So You Think You Can Dance was a good start. It worked and I was surprised that I could actually do it without too much effort. I picked a room in my house that has wood floors and is off grade so it would help with the bounce and save what is left of my knees.

The third thing I did towards happiness this week is that I started listening to Ted Talks instead of TV watching. I found that I could do this and paint at the same time. 

I was struck by Jill Bolte Taylor's talk. She was the brain scientist that had a stroke on the left side of her brain. It wasn't a come back story but more about the spiritual experience she had during the actual stroke. She said without the left side she felt completely euphoric and one with the universe she actually didn't see her own separateness from anything or anybody. With only the right brain working she was happy even though she knew she was having a stroke. 

Of course we need the analytical left brain with all its sorting and categorizing but the left side causes most of the fear problems and regualarly screams "what about me?" When she showed the an actual brain with two distinct sides I actually understood for the first time that there is two actual sides when people said that people were left or right brain I wasn't thinking literally. 

Her point was we can choose to use the right more without having a stroke. We can decide to favor the right side at any time. At this point I realized this is what I have been moving towards these last few years. I have been choosing the right brain more often and causing a lot of conflict within myself. I am heading more towards the person I was before I moved into survival mode.

So there is actually a war going on in my head. I think I understand things a little better now. It is like have two different parents with two different parenting styles. One trying to encourage my creative side and the other trying to protect me from any and all potential danger. Both mean well. 

This week happily the right brain won. I have some new customers, I exercised, ate right  and I painted three pictures.