A Stroke of Insight - The Amazing Journey of a Harvard Neuroanatomist Inside Her Own Brain

I stumbled overDr. Jill Bolte Taylor's book - "A Stroke of Insight" - just a couple of days ago, and I couldn't put it down. It tells the amazing story of a scientist who had the bad luck/huge opportunity (you can honestly say it was both) to witness her own brain's decay and recovery after a stroke and to learn a lot of counter-intuitive lessons along the way.

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I found her story fascinating - a true lesson to the amazing resources of our brain, and then I looked her up on the internet and found her TED speech, in which she describes her experience on the verge of death and the incredible lessons she learned along the long (8 year) road to recovery. I think this speech is worth watching, if one can get past her speaking style, which, after reading the book, I found appropriate to the experience she went through (but which you might find a bit...exalted).

What is her key message?

Our identities are the sum of two types of perception on the world - our left brain perception and our right brain perception.

The left hemisphere of our brain processes details, language, in helps us analyze the past and plan for the future and, maybe most importantly, it gives us our sense of ego and personal identity, of being unique and separate from the rest of the world.

The right hemisphere on the other hand, is in charge of big picture thinking, of living in the moment, of interpreting sensory information from our environment, of visual thinking and of making us feel connected to the world around us, a part of a larger whole.

Dr. Jill's discovery upon her stroke (which took place in the left hemisphere of her brain and practically shut it down, making Jill forget who she was, how to read, speak and even lose her sense of where her own body started and ended) was that the right hemisphere holds amazing resources for finding and fostering inner peace, which, most of the time, we are unable to access due to the censorship of our left hemisphere. Unwillingly, after this stroke, Dr. Jill discovered that sense of peace with the world that we all crave and that very few of us can attain.

Also, in the long years of her recovery, as she managed to bring her left hemisphere back online, she also discovered that she could have a choice on what thoughts to think and what attitudes to take on life. She realized that the negative self talk that many people have in their minds can be consciously influenced and even stopped at will, if only we start believing ourselves capable of doing it.

Why did her message impress me? Why am I sharing it with you?

This scientist's story was, to me, another very convincing argument supporting my belief that every single one of us have, within our own brains, the resources for personal change and development, that we are not slaves to our own fears and weaknesses and that, if only we believe it strongly enough, we can harness the incredible resources of our minds for living better, fuller, richer lives.

I am sharing it with you because I believe too many people look for change outside of themselves, when all they need to change is the way they think. It is definitely true that life brings our way good and bad circumstances, but the real difference lies in how we interpret those circumstances.

I also believe that, sadly, the society we live in is a predominantly "left brain" society, with too many rigid thinking patterns, with too much negative self talk. Dr. Jill's message, that urges us to start tapping into the undiscovered treasures of our "right brain" is, to my mind, even more relevant.

What would it mean to "shift to the right"?

It would mean we'd start paying more attention to the many ways in which we are all connected, instead of the many ways in which we are different, that we would manage to be more tolerant to people who think differently from us, that we would stop believing we are always right and start understanding that there is no right or wrong, but just different perspectives. Finally, perhaps we'd be able to respect ourselves more, praise ourselves more and self-criticize much less, as this is maybe the biggest obstacle that people place in the path of their own development (at least people whom I meet in my seminars or coaching sessions).

All this being said, I hope you'll enjoy Dr. Jill's TED speech and that, at least, it'll make you wonder: where do YOU stand in terms of balancing the gifts that nature placed in your two brain hemispheres? Are you more "left-brained" or "right-brained" and how can you achieve that delicate balance in your own life?

And if her story leads you to some valuable insights, please share them, so I and everyone else who reads this post can learn something that we can use in our own journey to being better, happier people.

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