…today’s secret…Left brain/right brain.

You’re committed to helping people who swim on the edges of life.

Imagine one of those whom you wish to help is sitting across from you right now. Look at em’.

Their left brain is on their left side. Duh. Their right brain is on their right side. Double Duh.

Their two brain halves are connected by the corpus callosum, which is larger in females than males. This is why your mother had eyes in the back of her head when you were young.

Right behind their forehead is the prefrontal cortex. This is the key area for you as this is where the decision will be made to believe you or not.

Here’s how their decision about you will be made…all in billionths of seconds or something quick like that.

Everything the person sees, hears, smells, or reads from or about you enters their left brain. This is where all their incoming information is organized into a series of ‘thoughts’ which are then sent to their forehead for consideration.

Before any decision can be made about you, their forehead passes those ‘thoughts’ to the right brain for any additional information.

Their right brain is an ocean of memories which holds, or once held, all that has ever happened to them. Some they can remember. Some they can’t. Good and bad memories. No order. All random. Pure chaos over there.

“YO, right side, just checkin’. You got anything for me about this you would like to add?” The right brain consciously gives up what it can, or doesn’t have, to the forehead. Things like… “My friend was here once and didn’t like it,” or “Sorry dude, I got nothing.”

Unfortunately for you, the lower-lower region of the right brain is where your helping them gets bogged down big time. It’s out-of-bounds for your information. Pretty much under lock and key.

Why?

Because hidden in the subaquatic section of their right brain are all their unconscious memories. These unconscious memories lurk like sharks …all their fears, fixations, childhood traumas, bitterness, anguish, shame, guilt, anxiety…all of these and more hide in their lower right brain where even their inner voice cannot easily recall.

Here’s the deal…

…the degree of transformation your intervention will cause is directly proportional to the degree your intervention can penetrate the subconscious right brain and attack the sharks hidden there.

I know. A little heavy.

For example, many offenders have severe childhood traumas that prohibits them from believing they are capable of loving and being loved. Neutralizing their traumas and changing their criminal thinking takes serious work over serious time.

Please, do not take this next statement wrong.

My friend Jeff says that “for those organizations hacking at the leaves, only one is striking at the root.” This is true. Not all interventions that help others include right brain shark hunting processes. Employment. GED education. Church maybe?

Plus, in many situations, there isn’t enough time or money to get that serious. Another Duh here please!

But there is good news here. Over the last few years great strides have been made to shortcut long-term right brain shark hunting through short-term cognitive restructuring programs.

These programs don’t attempt to slay ‘people sharks’, but quickly and cost effectively begin equipping people to identify and change their habits…thus jumpstarting the process of better decision making and possibly altering any criminal thinking.

These programs are designed for those who, by choice or by circumstance, are “hacking at the leaves” and leaving the ‘root striking’ to others.

I have gone into this cognitive restructuring rabbit hole and will gladly share with you what research I have discovered. There is quantitative and qualitative data to prove their effectiveness.

And, no problem if you are not interested. I thought this kinda important and needed to get this off my ‘to write’ list.