Using Your Left and Right Brain

I’ve had to learn over time how to strike an adequate balance between logical thinking and trusting my intuition. Thankfully, this journey of mines has allowed me to evolve into an innovative and intuitive thinker and decision-maker.

Although I’ve been able to balance between the two methods of thinking, based on the left-right brain evaluation featured on “Are You Naturally Creative or Analytical?”, I tend to lean more towards the right side of my brain. This section of the mind holds the more intuitive and creative methods of thinking and decision-making. My intuition always helps me think a lot sharper to avoid overthinking in making smaller decisions in my day-to-day. Following my intuition also opened many doors to professional development opportunities such as going to the college of my dreams and studying abroad multiple times. I didn’t do much thinking or utilize as much analytical data to make these decisions. I accepted those offers in no time, and I was able to figure out financial aid and other forms of support along the way.

As I got older and began thinking more long-term, I’ve learned that my intuitive thinking wasn’t always the most reliable. I came to this revelation when I decided to make a life-changing decision and move to Los Angeles for my dream job. At the time the offer was made to me, I followed my intuition and let it guide me to accept the offer. After a year or so, I ended up hating that job and living in LA. Without using any logical thought, I didn’t consider things like cost of living in comparison to my annual income, the demographic of L.A. or measure the chances of growth opportunities within the company I was working for. In this case, my intuition failed me and caused me to go through a whirlwind of professional strife, causing me to move back to my hometown to recenter and focus.

From these different experiences with using logical and analytical thinking, I’ve been able to find a professional role that allows me to do both. As a social media manager, I have free range to be creative and design new ways to disseminate information on social media. While at the same time, I am using data and analytics to track the performance of social engagement in order to improve upon these processes. Suzanne Michelle Fox of Intuitionlounge said it best, that logic is to be used as a tool to support or enhance your intuition, and I feel like my current role gives me the room to leverage this skill.

The organization I worked with previously appeared to be in its heuristic phase of development when it comes to social media. According to Roger L. Martin’s design thinking funnel, the heuristic phase is described as a period where you’re beginning to think beyond the mystery or hypothesis at hand and begin to deepen your knowledge in order to develop a solution or approach to make things more streamlined. Given that my position was fairly new, I was able to exercise my design thinking skills in order to produce a system for social media usage at the organization.

All in all, design thinking is so beneficial to making business decisions. When you have a deep understanding of the industry you work for, a creative mind, and are able to weigh the data and analytics to support your intuition, leaders in the creative field are going to have such an easy time making business decisions.

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I am a creative multi-hyphenate with a strong passion for the arts. To check out more of my journey and the different art exhibits and events I go to in real-time, follow me on Instagram at @erparrish_

If you would like to read more of my poetry and prose, as well as see some of my visual photography all in one place follow me on Instagram at @wordsbyep_