Right Brain / Left Brain

Are You Left-Brained or Right-Brained? (And Does It Even Matter?)

You may have noticed it's been a hot minute since I posted anything. I've really been trying but nothing was flowing. I'd get, what I thought, was a great idea and start to write, but then I would stop. The words just weren't coming to me like they normally do.

Then I started questioning my creativity. I wondered if creativity really belonged to “other” people. You know — the ones with paint on their jeans and big ideas scribbled on napkins. The “right-brained” ones. I honestly had myself convinced that I had lost my flair to write. I told myself that I was more of list-maker, spreadsheet lover, planner, a nine to fiver. I told myself I was too practical, and too logical to be imaginative.

But can I tell you something? That was utter and complete bullshit.

Creativity isn't a gene you either get or don’t. It’s a muscle. And like any muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. But if you keep at it — even in the smallest, most ordinary ways — it wakes back up. And then it's just like riding a bike.

In life, we seem to try to split ourselves into tidy little boxes. Right brain = dreamer. Left brain = doer. But I don't think real life works that way. Not personally and not professionally. I think real life needs both. The dreamer imagines the thing, and the doer builds it. The artist inside you needs the planner inside you to make her vision real — and vice versa. But they are BOTH inside of you.

You can be wildly creative and still color-code your closet. You can crave structure and still write poetry in a journal. You can be analytical and inspired. These parts of you don’t compete — they collaborate. They are buddies that work together.

You want to know what kills creativity? Not being left-brained or right-brained — but being afraid. Afraid of looking silly. Afraid of failing. Afraid of wasting time on something that doesn’t make “sense.”

But here’s the truth: creativity doesn’t care if you’re an accountant or an artist. It just wants you to show up and play. Creativity is letting your mind play.

Paint a wall a color that scares you a little. Write a bad poem and don’t delete it. Take a different route to work. Cook without a recipe (Jim would disagree with this one). Rearrange your furniture. These small acts of rebellion against the predictable are what crack creativity back open.

And for the record, creativity doesn’t have to mean you’re starting an Etsy shop or writing a novel in a cabin on a mountaintop. It can be as simple as dancing in your kitchen while dinner burns just a little, or adding glitter to your grocery list because, why not?

Sometimes the most creative thing you can do is shake up your own routine. Wear the bold lipstick. Play a song you loved in high school and sing like you’re auditioning for American Idol: Laundry Room Edition. Life gets a lot more colorful when you stop worrying about being “artsy” and just start being alive.

So no, you don’t have to be right-brained to be creative. You just have to be brave enough to start.

Because creativity isn’t about talent. It’s about permission.Permission to experiment. To make a mess. To see what happens next.

So go ahead and give yourself a permission slip. The masterpiece isn’t the thing you’ll make one day. It's you, right now, daring to let your mind.