Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you
do, other people begin to sense that you're not being driven by everything that
happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you're trying to do and
you are excited about it.
Using Your Whole Brain
Our self-awareness empowers us to examine our own thoughts. This is
particularly helpful in creating a personal mission statement because the two
unique human endowments that enable us to practice Habit 2 -- imagination and
conscience -- are primarily functions of the right side of the brain.
Understanding how to tap into that right brain capacity greatly increases our
first-creation ability.
A great deal of research has been conducted for decades on what has come to
be called brain dominance theory. The findings basically indicated that each
hemisphere of the brain -- left and right -- tends to specialize in and preside over
different functions, process different kinds of information, and deal with
different kinds of problems.
Essentially, the left hemisphere is the more logical/verbal one and the right
hemisphere the more intuitive, creative one. The left deals with words, the right
with pictures; the left with parts and specifics, the right with wholes and the
relationship between the parts. The left deals with analysis, which means to
break apart; the right with synthesis, which means to put together. The left deals
with sequential thinking; the right with simultaneous and holistic thinking. The
left is time bound; the right is time free.
Although people use both sides of the brain, one side or the other generally
tends to be dominant in each individual. Of course, the ideal would be to
cultivate and develop the ability to have good crossover between both sides of
the brain so that a person could first sense what the situation called for and then
use the appropriate tool to deal with it. But people tend to stay in the “comfort
zone” of their dominant hemisphere and process every situation according to
either a right- or left-brain preference.
In the words of Abraham Maslow, “He that is good with a hammer tends to
think everything is a nail.” This is another factor that affects the “young lady/old
lady” perception difference. Right-brain and left-brain people tend to look at
things in different ways.
We live in a primarily left-brain-dominant world, where words and
measurement and logic are enthroned, and the more creative, intuitive, sensing,
artistic aspect of our nature is often subordinated. Many of us find it more
difficult to tap into our right-brain capacity.
Admittedly this description is oversimplified and new studies will