92 11111 00 W00 W00 W00 W00 Ways tays tays tays tays to Motivo Motivo Motivo Motivo Motivate Yate Yate Yate Yate Yourourourourourselfselfselfselfself
street or the burning down of their home or an unwanted
divorce, or a war, to kick in their whole-brain thinking.
But that passive misuse of the brain leads to a life of
reaction rather than creation. When Oliver Wendell
Holmes said “most people go to their graves with their
music still in them,” he just as easily could have said
that most people live in their left brain only. When
Thoreau said “most men lead lives of quiet desperation,”
he was describing what life is like if you stay trapped in
left, linear, short-sighted thinking.
But the irony is that the left brain has gotten an un-
fairly negative reputation, simply because people stay
trapped there. When people learn that the left brain is
there to connect with the right, then it takes on new
power and function. When people stay trapped in lin-
ear, flat, and logical left-brain thinking and never acti-
vate the creative right side of the brain, they lose their
love of life. The right brain comes alive during dream-
ing at night while the left brain sleeps. But it is pos-
sible (as artists, poets, and saints can attest) to have
the same two-sided interplay that we had as children,
while we are awake. We simply have to fire it up by
using the left brain to call on the right. This is what
happens when we make love, play games, write poetry,
hold a baby, or face a threatening crisis: The left brain
commands the right brain to come alive and get involved.
That is when you get whole-brain thinking, or what psy-
chologist Abraham Maslow called “peak” experiences.
The three best ways to activate whole-brain think-
ing are through 1) goal-visualization, 2) joyful work, and
3) revitalizing play. Rather than wait for external cri-
ses to appear, create internal challenge games of your
own—goals and purposes—that lead you in growth to-
ward the motivated person you want to become.