This month I’m recommending the book Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

I’m sharing Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s work because it supports the skill of showing up with leadership presence, a skill that matters in our personal, professional, and community lives, and a skill which many executives are concerned with cultivating. With just a little understanding of Bolte Taylor’s whole brain living concept and self-reflection, the power of choice is placed in our own hands and under our own terms of how we want to show up in the world.

Specifically, Whole Brain Thinking

• Helps leaders understand the anatomy of the brain in terms of right and left hemispheres, thinking versus feeling emotions, and the four brain characters.
• Helps leaders become more self-aware of their moment-to-moment emotional/mind state.
• Offers leaders the freedom of choice and agency in terms of how to turn emotional circuitry on and off and how they want to show up. A power move for anyone!
• Questions include:
  • What emotional/mind state am I in right now?
  • Which part of my brain is activated?
  • Who do I want to be?
  • How do I want to be?
  • What can I do to activate different parts of my brain?

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor recommends understanding the four brain characters and using a practice she calls “the B-R-A-I-N huddle” when you are in a state of emotional reactivity and want to show up in a better way. It’s important to keep in mind each of the characters have an important function, represent an authentic part of who you are at a cellular level, and should be treated with dignity, respect, and honor.

Below I outline Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s Four Brain Characters and the B-R-A-I-N Huddle.

The Four Brain Characters: How Your Four Characters Think and Feel

Character One: Left-Brain Thinking

• The rational character in your brain: gifted at creating order, has language, and focused on past and future; likes to organize, be the boss, and get things done; defines right from wrong and good from bad based upon its moral compass; defines physical boundaries in terms of where you begin and end; and is the perfectionist part of the brain which can trigger a stress response.
• Descriptors: verbal, thinks in language, thinks linearly, past/future-based, analytical, focuses on details, seeks differences, judgmental, punctual, individual, concise/precise, fixed, busy, conscious, structure/order-based, and focus is on ME.
• Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor named her brain character one Helen, for “hell on wheels, she gets it done!”

Character Two: Left-Brain Emotional

• The most vulnerable character in your brain:: tends to fear the unknown because it holds all of your emotions and traumas from the past; takes present moment information in from your sensory experience and compares it to your past; perceives life through a lens of “lack of” rather than through a filter of “abundance of”; always looking for a reason to push an unsafe experience away; its mantra is ALARM, ALARM, ALARM, ALERT, ALERT, ALERT.
• Descriptors: constricted, rigid, cautious, fear-based, stern, loves conditionally, doubts, bullies, righteous, manipulates, tried and true, independent, selfish, critical, superior/inferior, right/wrong, and good/bad.
• Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor named her brain character two Abby, shortened for “abandoned,” a left-over feeling from her childhood.

Character Three: Right-Brain Emotional

• The emotional experiential self in your brain: seeks similarities rather than differences with other people because it wants to connect, explore, and go on adventures with others; creative, judgment-free, exciting, fun, and wants to come out and play; chaos at its finest; asks … what does it FEEL like to be right here, right now, in the present moment?
• Descriptors: expansive, open, risk–taking, fearless, friendly, loves unconditionally, trusts, supports, grateful, goes with the flow, creative/innovative, collective, sharing, kind, and equality contextual.
• Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor named her brain character three Pigpen for the Peanuts character in Charlie Brown who is curious, consistently making a mess, and whose chaos follows him wherever he goes.

Character Four: Right-Brain Thinking

• The most peaceful, open, and loving self in your brain: it is right here, right now, and completely invested in the gift of life with immense gratitude, acceptance, openness, and love; when present, there is nothing to worry about from the past nor fear about the future; you feel connected to a higher consciousness, without boundaries, and connected to everything; can be accessed through prayer, meditation, and being with nature.
• Descriptors: nonverbal, thinks in pictures, thinks experientially, present during moment–based kinesthetic/body awareness, looks holistically at the big picture, seeks similarities, compassionate, lost in the flow of time, collective, flexible/resilient, open to possibilities, available, unconscious fluid/flow, and focus is on WE.
• Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor named her brain character four Queen Toad because she is as big as the universe, is a bit of a goofball, and lives on a lily pad boat named “BrainWaves.”

The B-R-A-I-N Huddle

• To BREATHE is the most powerful way to hit the pause button, interrupt your emotional reactivity, and bring your mind into the present moment. Breathing and hitting the pause button for 90 seconds allows noradrenaline, the stress chemical running through your bloodstream, to flood through and then flush out of you.
• RECOGNIZE which of the Four Characters are running YOUR life right now?
• APPRECIATE whichever character you find yourself exhibiting and appreciate you still have all Four Characters available to you at any moment.
• INQUIRE within and invite all Four Characters into the huddle so they can collectively and consciously strategize your next move.
• NAVIGATE the experience by choosing which of the Four Characters you want to focus on at the particular moment.

Additional Leadership Resources

• Click here to learn more about the book Whole Brain Living: the Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
• Click here to listen to Understand Your Brain, Upgrade Your Life with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor on Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris. This podcast is useful in understanding the marvels of the human brain, the brain’s “four characters,” and how to work with these characters through a practice she calls “The B-R-A-I-N Huddle” (one hour, 28 minutes).
• Click here to watch the TED talk My Stroke of Insight with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor received a research opportunity few brain scientists could only wish for: she had a massive stroke and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story (18 minutes).