0084 - Unleash Your Brain’s Four Superpowers, & Become the CEO of Your Mind ft Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Imagine discovering four distinct “personalities” inside your brain—each with its own way of thinking, feeling, and experiencing the world. That’s exactly what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, revealed after surviving a major left-hemisphere stroke that erased her ability to walk, talk, and even recall her name. In this transformative conversation, Ben Owden dives into how Dr. Jill’s ordeal led her to a life-changing discovery: we each have four characters in our brains, and learning to embrace them all helps us live as our fullest, most human selves.

Drawing on her bestselling books, My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living, Dr. Jill explains how tapping into both the structured, logical power of our left hemisphere AND the creative, interconnected genius of our right hemisphere can spark deeper relationships, fuel business innovation, and help us truly flourish—both at work and in life. She demystifies the science behind the four “characters” in your brain, shows how to notice which one is “driving” your behavior at any moment, and offers practical strategies to shift between them by choice.

If you’ve ever felt torn between productivity and play, logic and intuition, or wondered how to heal from past pain without losing your spark, this episode offers real neuroscience to back up your intuition that wholeness is possible. 

Get a copy of Whole Brain Living by Dr. Jill.

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Transcript

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

But the beauty of pain is that it is a alarm system that the brain uses to say, hey, I got a problem. And when I was six years old, I was treated badly by a person who looked like this and who spoke like that and who treated me like this. And so now this group of cells brings in information about the present mom. And if it sets off that alarm of that alarm, alarm, alert, alert, I don't feel safe because I wasn't safe when I was 5 years old and that kind of a person wasn't nice to me, then I'm gonna push it away. So this is our pain from the past, which is designed to be a tool for us to learn from. And we have to have that part of our personality in order to grow. So in the world of business, we often end up with and you know, this is one reason why I'm, I'm popular for corporations is because the right hemisphere more open creative culture can be terrifying to the left brain structured and organized culture. And the structured and organized can feel very depressing and compressive constricting to the right hemisphere creatives. And so. And you have to have both in a business in order for any business to thrive.

Ben Owden

Being in the middle is challenging. From balancing the demands of those above with the needs of those below. Balancing between pushing the strategy forward and investing in the developments of your teams. Stewarding what is presently working while being a change agent. We understand the tension that exists with being in the middle where you ask to be everything to everyone. Dear middle Manager, we see you, we've heard you and we're here to help you. WhyLead Consultancy is bringing you Thrive in the Middle, a 12 week cohort based leadership program designed for those in middle management. An immersive program where leadership isn't just taught, it's honed, refined and brought to life through a blend of expert guidance, peer collaboration and immersive practical learning experiences. Join Thrive today and be more than just a link in your organization. Be its strongest link. To learn more and enroll, email us at yoda@whyleadothers.com 

Mambo this is Ben Owden, your leadership Mr. Miyagi. My hope is that this conversation will help you find the clarity and conviction you need to lead a more meaningful and impactful life. I have curated some of the best thinker practitioners from all over the world to help you get to your leadership nirvana. So sit tight and let's go on this journey together. 

Greetings to you. I hope you are at peace and are having a meaningful day. Welcome to another episode of the WhyLead Podcast. I am your host, Ben Owden. Do you wish to have superpowers that you can use whenever you want? I know I do. When I learned about our guest today, I realized that tapping into our superpowers might be closer to reality than I had ever imagined. Through her books, My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living, she shows us how to access the four distinct personalities inside our brain so we can choose who we want to be in any moment. We'll explore how understanding the four characters of our brain can help us heal, transform our relationships, and even rewrite the stories we tell ourselves. If you've ever wanted an owner's manual for your brain, an indispensable tool to cultivate deeper well being and more meaningful connections, this episode is for you. To have this conversation, I am joined by a Harvard trained and published neural anatomist whose research specialized in understanding how our brain creates our perception of reality. In 1996, at the age of 37, she experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain. And on that afternoon, she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for her to completely rebuild her brain to recover all physical, emotional and thinking abilities. She's the author of the New York Times best selling memoir, My Stroke of Insight and her second book, Whole Brain Living the Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters that Drive Our Life was published in 2021. She has a TED talk that has over 27 million views and she has been listed as one of Time magazine's 1 Most Influential People in the world. And this list can go on and on and on. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jill Bolt. Dr. Jill, you're most welcome.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Nice to be with you. Thank you so much, Ben, for reaching out to me.

Ben Owden

I think anyone who's come across your story, you know, there's the TED Talk and that's how I think it was. It was a TED Talk. And Big Think is how I discovered your work. And it sounds like a fairy tale, so to speak, because you recovered from something that a lot of people find it hard to recover and then not just recovered, but it seems like you're a much better person after your recovery. And you and I were talking earlier and I shared an example of a family member who's experiencing maybe, you know, like you talk about in your book. No, stroke is the same, basically, because while our brains are similar in structure, maybe, but you know, the wiring of it is different. And so different people who experience stroke make different choices that determine how quickly, how strongly they recover as a result of it. And in your book, you talk about this idea of owning your power, understanding that you have a choice, that you have the power to respond to what is happening to you in a way that can be triumphant, so to speak. But that's something that maybe a lot of people who experience any sort of trauma don't believe. And so at what point did this become very clear to you that actually I have a power to choose and decide what happens or how I can rebound from this? Is that a belief that you shared before you experienced the stroke? Is that something that happened while you were processing it all? At what point was this belief clearly cemented in who you are as a person?

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Well, you know, I didn't get to Harvard by not thinking that I could succeed. So first of all, I was determined before I ever had the stroke. But the thing about having a stroke is that what that really means is that cells inside of your brain stop functioning normally. And if the brain cells stop functioning normally or they actually die, then that means I no longer have that ability. Because every ability we have is because we have brain cells that perform that function. So I can speak to you because those cells are working. Okay, but speaking might be 30 different steps that I have to take in order to get to speaking. Or if you say squeeze my hand, that means cells that do first of all know what a hand is, know what a squeeze is, and are still connected to my hand, are still connected and functional. But if any of those cells go offline, then I don't know what you're talking about. And the real secret to my recovery was that I was true to myself abilities and we focused on what I could do, not on what I could not do. Because if you say to me, do something, and that's like step 30 for me to be even be able to do that, I have to figure out how to get from step one to step two to step three. But the external world perceives me as having a deficit. And you're in, in the real world functioning at a fast speed. So the real secret for the external world is to slow down, minimize your expectation, and come and actually look at the person and see what can this person do and what does this person need to do? What's the natural next step? You're not going to come in and say, jill, I want you to sit up, you're going to come in and say, jill. Do you even know your name? Can I Communicate with you? Can you roll over? Can you move your body? You have all these steps before you even get to me sitting up. So I think it's an assessment, a reassessment of what is reality. And then am I willing to try? And this is whether I'm a stroke survivor or just a normal human, am I willing to try to take that next step in order to achieve whatever my goal is? But what I know my next step is, may be different from what other people think my next step is. So I always had a desire to achieve, a desire to try. And so when I had the stroke, I was willing to try, but it was a try I had to make a thousand times a day. So it wasn't just a choice. It was a choice a thousand times a day in this moment, do I have what I need to have in order to take that next step?

Ben Owden

And I think this ties to something else that you talk about as well in the book. And it might sound unrelated, so to speak, but when you talk about the amygdala and doing the kind of work that I do, you know, I, every now and again, I would like dabble in neuroscience and learn a few things just to understand human behavior. And there's something that you, you know, you. The way that you've explained it is this, you know, it's. It's something that's in your brain that is there to almost to play a protective role, right? To assess, see if there are any threats, and then to override some of your responses so that you can act quickly and survive. And it's probably been useful for thousands of years as we have evolved as people, so to speak. And you talk about both the one that exists in the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of your brain. And the main thing that you talk about there as well is this idea of assessing what's familiar. So when something is unfamiliar, then the reaction will most likely be to reject it, is to flee from it, to run away from it. And when I, when I read that, I thought about, okay, does this mean that the more we lead a comfortable life, the more we stick to what we understand, the more we stick to what we know, the more we don't put ourselves in challenging situations. Does that mean that the more we are at the mercy of the amygdala because it would always reject whatever comes in and connecting it to what you just said. Now, you already had the habit of wanting to strive for something, right? And, you know, that led you to. In your success in your career. And so when you were experiencing this, there was already a history. Although, you know, you say that the left hemisphere of your brain, which keeps a record of all of those things, was what was affected. Still, that history of wanting to strive for more probably played a role in giving you the courage and the strength to say yes a thousand times a day. You could otherwise say no. And so I think that just reminds me of maybe how important it is to engineer struggle in our day to day life, because you just never know when you might need it, I guess, later on.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

So I think that as you look at the brain, it has these two very different hemispheres and they each have an amygdala. And you're absolutely right, the amygdala is asking the question, based on the information coming in through our sensory systems, am I safe? So in the case of my stroke, I really needed to feel safe physically, but emotionally, you can imagine I didn't feel very safe because I'd never had a stroke and I was now a wounded animal and it was clear that other people didn't know how to communicate with me. Right? So, but we have these two hemispheres. And so the right hemisphere, it's right here, right now. And so information is streaming in through our sensory systems. And right here, right now, am I physically, emotionally, spiritually safe? Do I feel any alarm, alarm, alert, alert, or the left hemisphere has linearity across time. So that amygdala brings in information about the present moment through our sensory systems and compares it to our past experience and then it makes the decision, does this feel safe? So we have these alarm systems, but we have to have that because we are biological creatures, and as biological creatures, our cells are alive or our cells die. I am either a living being that is vulnerable to an external world, or I am dead and I don't want to be dead. So the amygdala are designed to look and span the present moment, experience change, compare it to everything in my past to determine if I'm safe. Now. This is happening on automatic. So if I set myself up for success and I, I'm around people who I'm familiar with and I'm in an environment where it's familiar. The smells of the food are familiar and the clothing and the colors are familiar, then I feel familiar and I feel safe. And from that place, then I can live a life of curiosity. So when my amygdala are calm, then I'm capable of really exploring the world with a level of curiosity. And it is only through curiosity that I bring in new information that isn't so familiar. And then I compare that with everything and then I become more familiar with that which I was not familiar with, and I grow as a person. So you're right. The amygdala are designed to protect us. And when we don't feel safe, we tend to shut down, push away from, say, I don't want that. We're not curious about it because now we're in the fear mode as opposed to, okay, enough of me is. So think about yourself as a little person. If you're a little child and you're brought up in an environment where you, you are familiar with, with the, the people, you have diversity of people. Let's say you have people of different genders and people of different cult races and, and, and you have different food smells and you get this broad understanding of what is safe, then you're going to explore the world through different. Through a different filter than if you don't have that opportunity.

Ben Owden

Yeah, definitely. Right. And I think, you know, again, this idea, I think what I loved about learning about all of this in your book is it has made me become more aware and given me the power to choose. As a matter of fact, today I had a number of moments where I could almost feel that, okay, I have a plan. I have to do A, B, C and D. And I could see and feel when my right hemisphere is about to dominate and completely throw away everything else that I've planned and put in place just so I can be in the here and now. Right? And that happens a lot. And, you know, you talk about examples. One example that I really love is when you talk about how someone who is very dominant in their, you know, like character, one brain, right? With just thinking and you're planning to go, let's say, you know, to the beach or something like that. You plan everything. You check, you have your book, you know, there's a program, there's an agenda. Here's what I'm going to be doing. And that has happened to me so many times. And then I get. As soon as I get there, my right hemisphere takes off. I don't touch the book. I'm just. And I just step into a world of nothingness. And so I think the awareness of how that works and to not stop because sometimes, you know, for the sake of sticking to a schedule, then I shut down this part of my brain and we'll talk about, right, that hostility that you talk about that we can have with each other as a result of not understanding that this is all a part of who you Are as a person and maybe find a way to incorporate all of who you are into how you show up in the world. Now, something that I would like to talk about, now that you've mentioned the right and the left hemisphere, right is adhd. And I know that's something that in my line of work, it comes up a lot. And I've had conversations with a number of people. Some of them are like learning specialists. I remember I spoke to Barbara Oakley, who teaches how to learn, and we talked about this as well. Right. And how someone who maybe doesn't have a neurotypical brain, so to speak, what's their relationship to learning? And I think reading your book, this is the assumption. I don't think you mentioned it explicitly in there, but this is what I, the assumption that I came up with is that would someone who struggles with attention, a person who has a right brain that has a tendency to dominate the left hemisphere of the brain.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Well, I think you just did exactly what you're talking about. I think you just made an enormous leap from normal function, which we have not yet talked about, to atypical function. And so what whole brain living does is. Whole brain living gives people an understanding at a biological level. What, what are we? Who are we? What are our choices? And then from that structure, we can look at, okay, other ways of perceiving or being. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. So, because I'm a neuroanatomist, so I care about the neuroanatomy, the anatomy of the brain, and we have these four groups of cells, emotional tissue in both hemispheres, thinking tissue in both hemispheres. And when we know the skill sets of each of those four groups of cells, then we know, what are my normal options? What are my normal choices? What is the dance that I'm doing throughout the day between these different parts of my brain? So you gave a great example. You go to the beach, your, you've set a plan. That part of your brain that is your alpha personality that says, I'm going to structure and organize my day, I'm going to take my book, I'm going to take my, my sunscreen, I'm going to take my towel, I'm going to take my notes and I'm going to go do my work. And then all of a sudden I get to the beach and I'm distracted by these cute little birds that are around everywhere, right? And it's like, oh, brought some bread. And it's like, oh, so now I want to go feed the birds and And I want to play. And it's like, okay, well, well, you know, I can come to the beach and I can play for a while and then I can go back to it and sit down and do the work. Well, these are actually two different parts of your brain that want to engage your life. And so when we understand the four ways of being that we all are, then it's like, okay, well if I'm being ADD or adhd, if I'm having hyperactivity, I'm not being my rational alpha personality, right? And I'm not in the pain from my past, which I have to have in order to draw my attention so that I can actually reflect on things and learn and grow, which is what that left emotional tissue does instead. Now I'm in my right brain, I'm in my right experiential limbic tissue of my brain and experiential wants to experience. So it's not so much that I am worthy of a label because. But that's what the world of psychology is going to do. We're going to label everything. We're going to label every behavior, we're going to label every neuro atypical activity. But for me, it actually boils down to which groups of cells are we, we using? And if you're in that, what I call character, three emotional limbic experiential tissue of your brain, it's going to be right here, right now. And it's not about that program or that book that you brought to the beach. It wants to squish, you know, sand between your toes and go and feel and play in the splash of the ocean. Well that's what it does. So it's not that that's abnormal behavior. It becomes abnormal when the societal norm says no, we don't want you doing that, do that some other time. Now we want you to go be your A type personality or we want you to go to church or to the mosque or go wherever and find, you know, your connection to something that is, is greater than you are and connect to that spiritual part of who you are that's also wired for you in that thinking tissue of that right hemisphere right here, right now, experience. So when you know these four characters and you have the power to choose and you practice choosing, then you learn a whole lot more about yourself. And maybe it's not that this is abnormal behavior or worthy of adhd. Maybe what you need to do is practice this, this link between these different parts of your brain so you have more say in when you're actually going to be one personality, one part of your skill set versus another. And as you find more balance between these different parts of who you are, then you know, the, any kind of label is going to go away.

Ben Owden

Yeah. And I think that's a great segue to go to talk about, you know, whole brain living. There's a class that I teach on feedback and I usually share this graphic in the class which is a spectrum of influence. And the idea is that these are the areas of influence that we have over other people. Right. It's very easy to impart knowledge. You say something new, someone is like, okay, I didn't know that. Now I know that skill. You know, you didn't know how to write this report, now you know how to write it. You didn't know how to fix this thing. Now you know how to write to fix the thing. But, but as we get to things like attitude, maybe habits, it becomes much harder to influence. Right. And so maybe a tool like coaching and sometimes even therapy, for example, can help you get to that point. But for a long time I've been basically telling people and leaders that the one area where we have absolutely zero influence is personality. That's you will not succeed, you will fail miserably when you go there. Right. And when I was reading your book and sometimes you would mention things and I'm like, wait a minute, sounds like you're trying to re engineer your personality here. Is that even possible? How is that? Because again, and I'm glad that you've alluded to it right now, this how maybe the world of psychology tends to label. I think there are so many assessments these days, and in the world of work these days, before you get a job, part of the recruitment process is doing personality assessments and tests just to see, okay, are you the right fit? If this is the label that we're giving you based on this assessment, maybe you're not the right one to come into our organization because the shared belief is that we can't influence that part of who you are. And so if you don't align with the kind of people we would like in our organization, then maybe it's best that you don't really come at all. So can we alter, improve our personality?

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Well, I don't think that's the question. I think the question is, can I get to know my personalities? Your personality is okay, so if you look at the brain, just the brain, just the cells of the brain, if I am in my right hemisphere and I am in the right here, right now, right Here, right now. That means all I know is what is in front of me being, I am being exposed to in this moment. It's not about my name, it's not about who I am, it's not about my credentials, it's not about me, me, me. Because me, me, me is over there in the left hemisphere. So the left hemisphere has states the value of me, the individual I am. Jill Bolte Taylor. Well, that person died on the morning of my stroke. So I know what it means to lose one's identity of self and individuality. Well, in the, of my left hemisphere, what I gained was the experience and richness of the present moment. And in the present moment I'm literally as big as the universe because there's a group of cells in the left hemisphere that says, well, I begin and end at my skin, where the skin meets the air. Well, I only have that experience of myself because of a group of cells in my left hemisphere. But when I wipe out the left hemisphere and I wipe out me, the individual, then I have a perception that I'm a big energy ball. I'm the life force, power of these 50 trillion magnificent cells that make up my form. I'm in the present moment and I value everything and everyone I'm with because I don't have a left hemisphere saying amygdala, amygdala. Alarm, alarm, alert, alert. That person looks different from me, that person speaks a different language from me, that person is different from me. So I'm going to push it away and shut and, you know, not approach with curiosity. So the two hemispheres alone are going to have extremely different personalities because they value different things. So, you know, if you go into a business and the business says, well, you don't fit in with our culture because our culture is all about hierarchy and it's all about climbing that hierarchy. And you, the individual, we want you to perform and we want you to put in 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours, hours a week because that's our culture and we value money and we value getting higher on that, that the, the hierarchy of the business. And if, and if you, if you don't share that value and instead you value family or you value loving and supporting one another and you like to be a team member instead of a, of a competitor. Those are very different value structures and we are anatomically built for those differences in anatomy. But you know that you're both of those. Now some people, they are extreme left brain dominant. It's all about me. It's all about, I want more. I'M going to get ahead. I'm going to be the kind of leader that uses a whip on others and gets the group to perform well. That's a completely different leader than someone who is more right hemisphere based, who says we are a collective and we have a goal and we are going to work together and we're going to bring our different skill sets together so that we can prosper and we can achieve. So it's not that I don't, it's not that I'm manipulating or changing my personality. What it is, is I'm acknowledging I have these four different groups of cells and they all have very distinctive personalities. And when I know all four of my personalities can figure out how do I construct myself so that I can prosper the best based on what is authentic to who I am as a human so that I can bring the best of me forward. And these are just very different ways. So it's not. But I agree with you on the personality profiles. If you take something like a Myers Briggs and Myers Briggs is used all around the world and Myers Briggs comes in and says, you're an intj, you're an introverted intuitive intj.

Ben Owden

Judgment, I think, yeah. Thinking and judgment, yeah.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

And I'll say to you, yes, I am that when I'm at work, but I am not that when I'm at lunch with my pals. When I'm with my pals at lunch, I'm the complete opposite of that. So am I really an intj or is my left brain my intuitive thinking part of me? That's a character profile of me. But I'm also an ESFP entertainer. So if you're so, then you look at different kinds of personality exams that say, okay, you're more of this and you're less of this and you're more of this and you're less of this and these are your strengths and these are your weaknesses. And so now we want to take you and we want to take you your strengths and stick you in a job where you get to thrive. Is that the right thing to do or is the right thing to do to take you and actually put you where you're going to have to grow and learn and reflect and take your weaknesses and grow them into greater strengths. But the point is that this is all just a group of cells inside of your brain. And yes, you have the power to choose moment by moment which groups of cells you want to run. Right now I am choosing to sit here with you as a left thinking part of who I Am utilizing the skill sets of my knowledge base. I'm an individual. I actually have glasses on my face, and I'm talking about the brain. Well, there's only one part of my brain that does this. The other part of my br is out playing with my dogs in the snow. So we have so much more power over who we are. But it's like, who are we? And if we don't know who we are, how do we know what our choices are?

Ben Owden

I love everything you've just said. And it reminds me of an interview I once watched of Prince. I think he was on the View and I forgot one of the hosts was asking him a question. He says, you know, you are very quiet, very introverted, but on stage you're like this whole different person. And his response was, well, I'm only this way with you. And, you know, the audience laughs. But it goes to what you just said, right? I think maybe the best way to think about personality is that personality is contextual, that we are everything, but not all at once. So if I'm in this context, certain aspects of my, you know, personhood shine through. And then when I change context, it's like a person. When you're with a child, a certain part of who you are is activated versus when you are with an adult, versus when you are with your partner. Like different parts of who you are. So maybe I like that way of framing it, then thinking about it.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Yeah, I think that's great. But consider that a personality is a constellation of abilities. So say, for example, if I'm a teacher, I'm not going to be curious and open. I have a task to achieve. So if I have a task to achieve, I have a collection of things. I'm organized. I'm timely and punctual. I'm controlling people, places, and things. I'm organized. I'm categorizing, I'm speaking. I'm hierarchically based. I'm an individual. You're separate from me. So that is a constellation of skill sets at the level of your brain. This is the left thinking part of your brain. That's what it does. It rationalizes, it analyzes, it organizes, it has language, it defines me, the individual, as separate, and it thinks hierarchically across time. So that is a distinctive personality that we all have that particular organization based on the brain. So what I'm asking people to do is to get to the brain. It's not about what's out there and how am I behaving. But your example of Prince was a perfect example. Prince in the presence of others tended to be a shy person. He opted to not be in collections of people. Lots of examples through his life of where he said no to participating in, with, with others because he was. It was a very strong part of his character. And yet you stick him on stage and this wild animal comes out. Animal. The skill set of the wild animal is he's engaging in his music, he's in the present. He's not having to think and rationalize and organize. He's experiential, he's big as the universe on that stage. He's just. I mean, he's just mind blowing away from. Because he's in the present, he's in the consciousness of these skill sets of the right hemisphere. It's very musical, it's very creative, it's very artistic, it's very entrepreneurial, it's very adventurous. It's willing to take all these different pieces and put them together in a way they've never been constructed before. Well, that drives the left hemisphere personalities insane. They want order and structure and a plan. So we look at the brain and we recognize, oh, I have these four very distinctive personalities based on the anatomy of my brain. Just because your brain is relatively organized like mine, let's go back to stroke. If you have a stroke in the exact same place, I have a stroke in the exact same place, then you and I are going to lose the similar skill set. Because your brain is a human brain, my brain is a human brain, and the human brain is organized. And so your uncle. Was it your uncle who had the stroke?

Ben Owden

Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Yeah, your uncle. I could look at his brain and I could look at where his stroke happened and I could tell you, describe for you, probably what can he no longer do and what can he still do. And so the secret to helping someone recover from trauma to the actual structure of the brain, it's just like a building. If I live in a house and you live in a house, and the architecture of the house is identical, we're going to have kitchen in the same place, we're going to have bathrooms in the same place. We're going to have bedrooms in the same place. If something happens, if a fire happens and it wipes out the same part of the house, you're going to lose a bedroom and I'm going to lose a bedroom. Same thing for the brain. The brain is structured and organized. And the better you understand what's going on with this magnificent organ, then the better you, the more ease it comes in being able to be the Person that you want to be because you know what your choices are.

Ben Owden

And so can we Talk about the 44 characters right of the brain, Both the thinking and the emotion on the left side, and the thinking and emotion on the right side? Sure.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Well, first of all, let's wipe out a few myths. The biggest myth is that the right hemisphere is feeling and the left hemisphere is thinking. At an anatomical level, they both have emotion. They both have feeling limbic tissue. And then on top of that is thinking tissue. So they both feel and think, but they do it it differently. The right hemisphere doesn't have me, the individual. So the right hemisphere is the experience of the present moment. And then the thinking tissue of the present moment is my connection to all that is the left hemisphere has a tiny little group of cells about the size of a peanut that says, I have an ego, I have a name, I am an individual. I am separate from the all that energy out there. I begin and end where my skin meets, meets the air. So I now have an ego. I now am the center of the universe. So my emotional tissue is and I have linearity across time. So I have me and linearity across time. So I in my emotions, I have my emotions from when I was a child. So any of my childhood emotion, any of my childhood trauma, any of my addiction, all of my cravings, all of that is going to be in that left hemisphere emotion. But in the left hemisphere thinking. This is the part of my brain that is my alpha type personality of me. I relate to the external world and I take me and I put myself into the social norm of that which is around me. So we end up with two emotional, two thinking groups of self. I call character one, that left thinking rational personality. This is the A type alpha. It organizes, it categorizes, it plans. If I look in my drawers, this is the character that actually likes the closet Instead of the disaster in the closet. It likes everything neat and organized. That's my character one. We all have that left thinking tissue. How well developed is it? How much time do we spend being that personality? Then character two is what I call that left emotion. It's still me. It's about linearity across time. It's my all my emotion from my childhood. So this is going to be my pain from from the past. But the beauty of pain is that it is a alarm system that the brain uses to say, hey, I got a. And when I was six years old, I was treated badly by a person who looked like this and who spoke like that and who treated Me like this. And so now this group of cells brings in information about the present moment. And if it sets off that alarm of that alarm, alarm, alert, alert, I don't feel safe because I wasn't safe when I was 5 years old and that kind of a person wasn't nice to me, then I'm going to push it away. So this is our pain from the past, which is designed to be a tool for us to learn from. And we have to have that part of our personality in order to grow. And then in the right hemisphere, character three is what I call that emotional tissue. And that's the present moment. This is your ADHD personality. It's just in the present moment and it's bouncing off the walls and it's into possibility and it's excitable and it's distractible because it's right here, right now, and it's not on that agenda of the left brain, which has linearity of right and wrong, good and bad. So there personality of play in that character three emotional tissue. And then in what I call the character character four, thinking tissue of that right hemisphere, that is our ability to ex. To connect to something that is greater than we are. Because again, me, the individual, if I'm a group of cells in my left hemisphere, then in the absence of my left hemisphere, I simply am literally as big as the universe, a big ball of energy. I'm this massive conglomeration of 50 trillion cells that are working together to manifest all my systems that allow me to be a living organism. Me, you. The human design is this magnificent miracle of life, and that character four honors and is in awe of and celebrates and loves simply because it exists. But the left hemisphere isn't about that. The left hemisphere is about achievement and grading and scoring and on that hierarchy. So as we know those four parts of who we are and we really can learn to identify each of those parts of who we are, then it's like, okay, yeah, I can live my life by choice instead of just kind of bouncing around through them all without any kind of understanding.

Ben Owden

Yeah. And I think, I think as you were saying, as you're responding, I was trying to figure out what part of my brain is actively engaged at the moment. And I think it's my right hemisphere. But you remind me of something. That study was done, I think, in 2016 at Google to try and figure out what are some of the most productive teams at Google and what are some of the character traits of those teams. And, and the number one quality among the most successful teams was psychological safety. And in our leadership training programs, we talk a lot about how to create a psychologically safe environment when I'm trying to connect it to the four parts of our brain. Because you talk about it in the book as well. The second character, which is the left emotional brain, which has a record of all the traumatic experiences we've had in the past, everything that we've experienced and sometimes even in the workplace. It's very hard for people to explore all four parts of their brain actively in the workplace if we've not created a very safe environment. Because the second character of the brain will most likely win all the time. Because as long as I remember the last time I spoke openly, the last time I allowed my right hemisphere to dominate and I could, I was creative and I said, you know, I shared some ideas, I asked questions and maybe half of them were completely irrational. But someone laughed at me, someone ridiculed me, someone called me stupid, someone was condescending towards me. If that memory is locked in, in and in that moment, you're inviting people to brainstorm and let's work on this project. You know, what are some of the ideas that are out there? I would have to feel very safe to override the, you know, sort of like left emotional brain that's telling me, listen, we've been down this road before, it didn't end well for us, so maybe let's not go there, right? And so I think that just has emphasized the importance of having psychologically safe workplaces to truly allow people to explore all four parts of their brain, to bring all of those four parts in the place of work.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

You know, that goes straight back to what you brought up earlier was okay, if you have a temperament type and you don't fit into our culture. The culture at Google is, is very open. They have laundry, you can bring your laundry so that you can, you know, and doing laundry is a very self soothing thing. It's also something we all have to do, right? And so if I can do my laundry, if I can bring my laundry and I can do my laundry, because they have a laundromat there and I can get that done and I can take, take a break from working my left brain or my character three, and I can do something that is nurturing for myself. They also have like a meditative room where I can go in and I can take a break and I can go sit in some kind of a pod and I can listen to whatever music I find soothing and I can go there. So Google is an environment that is actually designed for people to feel safe. Safe. And so, and this was long before 2016 that they've been providing this kind of an environment. Well most environments are not like Google so. But you're right, if I'm in an environment and I'm a creative type and I'm brought in and I'm on design ideas or product design and creative new products and whatever innovation I need to be in an environment that supports my desire to be innovative. And in innovation there are no bad questions, there are no stupid questions. There's only new ideas and new possibility. So if I'm going to be a creative I need to be in order to feel safe in an environment where I feel like I'm open to anything's possible. But if I'm in the finances of the business business and I have to report to the stockholders and I am part of what, what is kind of the financial bean counter, then I don't care about your designs. The only thing I care about is that you give me the information about how's that going to influence my bucket of beans. Am I going to, are we going to make more money? How much more money is it worth the money that it's going to cost in order to create the new product or change the design of the product we currently have. And so they're all what feels safe to them. So in the world of business we often end up with and this is one reason why I'm popular for corporations is because the right hemisphere more open creative culture can be terrifying to the left brain structured and organized culture. And the structured and organized can feel very com depressing and compressive constricting to the right hemisphere creatives. And so and you have to have both in a business in order for any business to, to thrive and the business and the better the business can do both of these and have appreciation and value one another like an organization like Google. I mean Google is, is designed so that part of your time is actually go work on anything you want to work on. Go think about anything that you think is fascinating and interesting. Well that's a very different invitation than the, the more left brain dominant group that says okay, you're going to work, you know, 12 hour days and you need to be here and you blah blah, blah blah blah. So, so you know that safety if we're, if I'm a human being and I have these two hemispheres and I'm wired for creativity and I'm wired for structure and hierarchy and control and I allow myself to be a Whole human being, whole brain, living a whole brain. Then I get to bring the wholeness of myself and my understanding and my compassion to the bigger corporation, which also then is the macrocosm of the, of the microcosm of us as human beings. So if you're going to have a business or you're going to be a leader who, who, who is whole brained. Now you're open to the possibility of how do I, how do I work with other human beings who have very specific skill sets and help them feel welcome and valuable and safe so that they can bring their best forward?

Ben Owden

Yeah. And I think as you're explaining all of that, right, there are two things that I wanted to explore with you and hopefully we'll be able to do that. Right. One is creativity and the other one is leadership. Because I think sometimes leaders tend to people who are recognized and we have this challenge with some of our clients as well in terms of what are the attributes that you're paying attention to in someone to promote them for leadership. Right. And most of the time you would find that there are left leaning attributes. And so you find there's a very homogenous profile of people who end up in leadership, who are more analytical, rational thinking types of people. And sometimes some people have to camouflage and appear in society as if they're more left hemisphere leaning people so that they are recognized for that and then they get promoted. And then of course there's creativity on the other side. But as you're explaining all of that, one skill that stands out to me is metacognition. Right. The ability to think about your thinking. And in the book you say, I have learned that the more attention my higher cortical cells pay to what's going on inside my limbic system, the more say I have about what I am thinking and feeling. Right. By paying attention to the choices my automatic circuitry is making, I own my power and, and make more choices consciously. And I was sharing this example, like after reading this, I've been more intentional about not going with whatever sort of like stimulus flowing, but I'm like, wait a minute, what's happening? Sometimes I would experience offense. Someone does something and I am troubled by it, I am repulsed by it. And I can see that a part of my brain is cooking up a narrative, a story that's not true, but it's a very compelling narrative that's coming. And when I am conscious of that fact, then I can actually make an argument and say, actually that's not true. We're not going to Focus or pay attention to that narrative, we'll just move on after the fact. Whereas before, I would just respond and accept and agree to whatever is happening. And then of course, by the time you figure out, oh, that was actually false, it's very hard to undo the damage, even mentally, like, this narrative is already settled. I actually believe this thing to be true, although now I'm coming to learn that technically it is not. And so how do we develop our metacognition? How do we do that? Because it seems to me that it's a very important skill in being a whole brain person.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Oh, absolutely. Because everything that you just described, that narrative that comes online, it is, it is instantaneous reactivity of my amygdala saying, that guy is dissing me. This is not good. I don't like him. I'm going to push it away, right? I'm going to come out aggressive or I'm going to come out against whatever that is. Well, you're wired for that by your amygdala to be safe. But you're absolutely right. The left hemisphere has you, the individual, and it has language. So it brings up this story. It starts making this narrative and it's like, oh, I hear that tone. And every time that tone, it reminds me, even if it's subconsciously, of the way my dad used to speak to me and when he was mad and then it got ugly and it was like, you know, and so that's my natural response. And so I'm going to have this reaction, this reactivity with you. Well, when you know that that's a part of who you are and that you are wired for that in order to protect yourself, then you can say to yourself, you know, this guy, he's really starting to, like, make me angry. And it's like, o, okay, that's a part of my brain specifically designed to save my life. But this guy, he doesn't have the power to hurt my life right now. I'm okay. And the other parts of the brain, the power of whole brain living, is to be able to take that reactive part of who I am that is, is coming out with react. Now, that's not to say sometimes we really need this part of who we are because we are in danger. We're in physical danger, we're in emotional danger, we're just in danger. And we need to protect ourselves and push. But the storyline that you gave where now you're making this, this whole story up about this person and it's like you're putting all the energy, your Your brain is this collection of cells and cells run in circuits and circuits require energy. And if you're running that circuit, that is the push away, push away emotional reactivity. To know that I have three quarters of my brain that is not that, that it is not that away to know that I can pull the energy out, but I have to have the roadmap of my brain in whole brain living to be able to say, no, I'm not going to feed that little hurt part of me right now. I'm going to go back into my rational, analytical part of me. Or it's like. Or in this moment, I'm actually going to become playful and I'm going to let my sense of humor come out. And so, so this guy might be saying something and it's like, you know, I can jive with this guy and I can have a sense of humor about what he's talking about and then I can go back to working with him with my character. One or this guy, maybe he's the same religion, I am the same belief system. And maybe we can hook into that part of who we are that is in common and similar and we can reconnect and I can get, I can cool the emotional reactivity of my little character too. So the power of knowing the four parts of my brain isn't just that I can recognize them as they show up, but I can actually save myself and save my relationships when I move into my little disgruntled, unhappy, aggressive pain from the past piece of who I am, bring myself back into the present moment and pull the energy into these other personalities by choice. And so that's the power of this book. Whole brain living the anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life because they're there. So if I know who they are and they're driving my life. The power of choice. Oh my God. The power of choice to choose, pick and choose, moment by moment, moment. Who and how I want to be. Now, if that's not personal freedom, I don't know what is.

Ben Owden

Yeah, and I think I love what you said and I would highly encourage everyone to just read the book and because I'm trying to imagine a world where a couple, both of them truly understand how this works and the type of conversations that they would be having and probably a lot of the conflict would disappear. Because I'm realizing that sometimes even in my own marriage, for example, that an argument, some of the arguments, I can now look back and say that was my left thinking brain arguing with my wife's Right emotional brain. Or that was her right emotional brain arguing with my. And so we're speaking two different languages. You know, maybe one is immersed in the here and now, and one is looking at the historical sort of like narrative and the sense of self, and. And then the whole thing just breaks down. It doesn't really go very well. But now in retrospect, I'm like, huh? And I've been paying attention even in the last couple of days, just how I'm taking and responding to the things that are happening around me and how I'm responding. And this idea of peace that you talk about as well, right? This. How whole brain living so leads to peace, because you understand, because you figure out that maybe not everything that emerges is gospel, Right? It's just my response based on so many layers of cell connections, and now I know how to respond and what are some of the questions to be asking myself and some of the steps to take to move forward? So it's just like the understanding how empowering it is to make me exist in a more fruitful way, I guess, in my relationships and in the world generally. And I think for couples specifically, I know we're talking about leadership and everything, but I think it would save a lot of conversations that sometimes tend to deteriorate and, you know, just spiral into the abyss of confusion and misalignment.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Yeah, no, that was beautifully put. I mean, if there's four inside of me and four inside side of every other person, then whether it's an intimate relationship with a spouse or a colleague at work, there's eight of us in every relationship. And when that little character, too becomes offended and it's kind of wired with a radar saying, are you offending me? Are you offending me? Are you offending me? Do I need to push away or do I need to make you bad? Do I need to blame you for things? Do I need to push away? Two character twos, in conversation or in argument, will never find a resolution because neither one of them is designed to find a resolution. They're designed to argue and push away. So if I come home or you're like 20 minutes late and I needed you, you promised me you were going to be here on time because we were going to catch a train, and now we can't catch the train, and you come home and you're late, and I'm in my character too. If you come home in and move into your character two and you argue with me, it's like, we gotta go to different corners now. But if. If if you come home and you're 20 minutes late and I'm feeling, and I'm in my character, one more structured, then maybe I went and I looked at the schedule to see, okay, there's another train. At this amount of time, now we have time. We can grab a bite to eat beforehand so I can make choices about how much time do I wanna spend fighting with everybody around me. Gee, what a concept. Minimize the amount of conflict in my life by choosing to be a different part of who I am and practicing that part and really getting to know me better.

Ben Owden

So I think something else that I wanted to touch on. And then I'll bring up the question that we talked about earlier, the 1, 1, 1 and this part of it, I'll connect it to Michael Jackson. It's funny that we're talking about Prince and Michael Jackson where you talk about, you know, music and how learning an instrument, learning the laws of music, whether you're playing instruments, whether it's songwriting, everything that a left part of our brain is active when we're doing that, right? But when it comes to creativity and, you know, maybe putting together a song and choosing the lyrics and the words and the melodies and all of those different aspects, the right side of our brain is what becomes active as a result of that. And this reminded me of Michael Jackson's journal that I think he wrote this in the late 70s. This is pre thriller. And it's like post Jackson 5 where he basically said, I'm going to dedicate my life to study all the greats, everyone, the Elvis Presley's of the world from all disciplines, music, dance and everything. I'm going to study everything and then I'm going to create something original. And I think when I read this part of your book reminded me that, and I think it expanded maybe my idea of creativity. That is creativity at its strongest when we, we take time to study the elements or the fundamentals of a discipline and then choosing to trust and allow the right side of our brain to sort of rewrite and maybe break some of those rules and can we consistently be creative in that way? And I'm using Michael Jackson because of, I guess, the consistency and the longevity of his career. And when I read this, I was like, huh? Does this mean that him taking the time to truly understand, you know, what songs tend to connect with people, what genres of music tend to be more popular, what instruments tend, like maybe taking the time to study all of that and then saying, okay, now let my right side of the brain take over, is that the Key, so to speak, to sustainable creativity and maybe even like the highest form of creativity we can experience. It's allow your left side to truly understand the rules of the discipline you're engaged in and then give space for your right hemisphere to truly be immersed in everything all at once and see.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

What happens after that that you just described. Whole brain living. Whole brain living. You're a biological creature of both right hemisphere skills and left hemisphere skills. And you have the, these multiple constellation of skill sets that result in these personalities. You're designed to be a whole human. You have the hardware. And so yes, the hardware of the left hemisphere says I'm going to learn how to read music, I'm going to learn language, I'm going to, so that I can create lyric, I'm going to learn how to read music so I can write music. And once I've created, move that over into the right hemisphere and I create, create a new song, then I can actually jot it down and keep track of things. Or I can learn how to use this synthesizer and all these different sounds and all these different things so that then I can go and I can create a song and I can actually use that synthesizer because now I know how to use it. So we are biologically programmed to be a whole brain. The problem is in our society we have moved so skewed to the value of the left hemisphere. That is all about me, all about the hierarchy, all about getting more, more, more that taking stealing time away to be creative feels like we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing where I'm supposed to be a whole human. I mean, that's the beauty of whole brain living. When I know the skill sets of my whole brain and, and I, I work all of them and I create communication between these different parts of who I am, then I get to be a whole human. That is the evolution of humanity. And we are, we're just, we're not there yet because right now we're so skewed to the left and you know, will we, will we will we develop and learn to value again the whole person before you know, somebody pushes a button and humanity's gone and you know, the universe. I mean, I'm serious.

Ben Owden

Yeah. And I think even the part of the hysteria right now with AI is because we are left leaning people. And so we can see how the development in AI might take away a lot of our function because again, we're not whole brain people. And so we can see that clearly. If we can do this faster than I can. It's only a matter of time before it can do this, probably better than I can. But I think for people who are whole brain people, there is absolutely nothing to fear because there are aspects of who we are and how we show up that no amount of creative technology can replace. So I think, think whole brain people tend to be less insecure about technology and all these advancements that are happening around us compared to people who are, you know, left brain hemisphere leaning people. Now there's a question that we ask.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Let me say this about that. You're absolutely right. Because the left brain is processing data, Processing data, processing data. The AI is going to replace the data processors because it's going to do it at quantum levels. I mean, it's going to be this enormous leap of information data processing, which the left brain is designed to do, much slower than what AI is going to do. But all AI can do is take this, take that, take this, take that, take this and reweave what is already there. It doesn't make something, it doesn't bring in new information. That's the beauty of the creative spirit. So the right hemisphere of the human is going to, to contribute to and set structure for AI. And so I think that's part of why those of us who are more curious are, are not looking at, we're worried that we're going to become automated because it doesn't automate creativity, it automates what it already exists. So, so the more whole brain we, we become, there's actually going to be a new value on our ability to manage. So yes, even with AI coming in, there's going to be, we're still going to need people to manage all of that AI, but it's going to be the creative side of us as humanity that is actually going to contribute that which AI is not designed to create.

Ben Owden

Thank you. That's well put. So the one, one, one question that we ask all of our guests. What is the one book that you've read that you wish you read earlier? The assumption here is that the book was published at that time. What is the one habit that you develop, you know, much later in life that you wish you had started earlier? And then what is the one personal value that you will not compromise, no matter the cost?

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Okay, first book is going to be the Alchemist. Are you familiar with this book? Yes.

Ben Owden

Paulo Coelho, right? Yeah.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

And what I love about this book is that everything in its time, to me, the message is everything's going to happen in its time. I can push it, push it, push it, work it, work it, work it. But it's still going to happen when it's going to happen. And if I just trust the universe, everything in its time, I think I would be more peaceful. Peaceful. I would have been more in, in my youth, my habit, the habit that I wish I had younger, I think would have been kindness, kindness, purposeful kindness. I think that, that instead of com, being more competitive, I was more compact in it. I, I would have, it would have influenced me and my world differently. And then the, the last thing that I won't compromise is my integrity. I, I, I have to be true to me. I have to be true to the values of what I am, even when others don't share that. And I'm as, I have become more compassionate, which is why I wish I had been probably more compassionate growing up. Then I am compassionate towards those who are different from me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be more like them. That means I'm going to be me and more compassionate of our differences.

Ben Owden

That sounds like your right hemisphere talking, but yeah, thank you for sharing that. So, you know, we've basically come to the end of our conversation. Any final thoughts before we call it an episode?

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

You know, I think it's just important that people recognize we have so much more power over what's going on inside of our brains than we've ever been taught. And I think that getting to know who we are and how the anatomy actually influences our options of how we live our lives really can lead towards a more peaceful life. So I'm grateful for you, I'm grateful for your podcast, I'm grateful for you inviting me along for the ride, and I'm grateful for your audience. So thank you, Ben. It was a good morning. Thank you.

Ben Owden

Yeah, thank you. And I think for me, at WhyLead, our mission is to live in a world where Mondays are as exciting as Friday. We spend a lot of our time at work and we want it to be as exciting. And I think part of the agony that people have with the end of the weekend, it's because maybe I know that I'm going to shut down two aspects or two regions of my brain for the next five days until the weekend. So it feels like in a seven day week is going to get to experience all four parts of it. But what if we live in a world where I can go to work and, and be a whole brain person? And so that's the world we aspire to be and that's why we're having this conversation. That's why we invited you to be a part of this. And hopefully all the leaders who were listening or are listening, they will process this and maybe go back to their workplaces and say, huh, maybe we need to change how we think about this, how we think about that. Maybe we need to start having these conversations. Maybe some policies need to be reviewed so that we see how we can incorporate more of who we are in the workplace place and, you know, drive up the level of satisfaction that people and a sense of belonging as well that people have with the organization that they dedicate their lives to. So thank you so much for saying yes. And to our dear listeners, this has been the Why Lead Podcast. I am your host, Ben Owden. This podcast is brought to you by WhyLead Consultancy. We are dedicated to helping organizations develop leaders who inspire conviction, commitment, and congruence. If your organization wants to develop leaders worth following, please email us at yoda@whyleadothers.com or visit our website at www.whyleadothers.com.