Win the Battle of the Hemispheres

So, fear’s the new punk squatting in the pantheon of mortal sins.

That oozing narcissism, born from the left hemisphere’s tyrannical stranglehold on our skulls, lights up our amygdalas like a cheap firecracker every time our little empire of self gets a scratch. It’s a meltdown, a psychic Fukushima, fears and anxieties piling up in our heads like illegals swarming the Rio Grande when the Border Patrol’s on strike. Pretty soon, we’re just a twitching heap of neurotic wreckage.

Can we round up those fears and ship ’em back? Can we turn this clown show around?

Yup. It’s just a matter of putting the right hemisphere in control.

Yeah, I get it. That advice is about as useful as some yoga guru bleating “live in the now,” which ranks right up there with a coach yelling at a kid to “put the ball in the hoop.”

So here’s my more detailed recommendation.

We’ve got to treat our brains like a war zone, retaking turf from a dug-in enemy that’s been strip-mining our sanity. Picture a full-on counteroffensive: rockets to pound the left hemisphere into submission, paratroopers dropping behind the lines to bulk up the right hemisphere, the grunts marching in to lock it down in the day-to-day slog.

The battle plan

First, the rockets. That left hemisphere? It’s a smug, sadistic bastard, and we need to hammer it like a crooked warden getting jumped in the yard. Kick it, stomp it, mock it—hell, spit on its twitching body while you’re at it. In these unhinged times, there’s no such thing as overkill.

How do you throttle that bastard? Do everything it hates. Dawdle. Give money away. Sit and stare at the sky. Play like a kid. Chuck your phone in a drawer (it’s a left-brain slot machine, and you’re the sucker). Just don’t do any of it with purpose. Aimlessness: that’s the rocket launcher.

Second, the paratroopers. The right hemisphere’s been beaten down like a whipped dog. We’ve got to nurse it back to health, get it ready to rule. Meditation’s your commando-in-chief here—breathing slow, scanning your body, all that crap flooding the app marketplace. Call it “prayer” or “hippie mind tricks” if it makes you feel better, but channel those Nike schmucks and “just do it.”

But there are other paratroopers in the squad, too: poetry, undistracted reading, nature strolls, staring at a painting till it means something, entire days without a to-do list.

Third, the grunts. Mindfulness, all day, every day. Check out the cracked sidewalk on your lunch break. Notice your pulse quickening when that extrovert co-worker won’t leave your f***ing office and is repeating the same story for the third time. Don’t judge. Don’t offer an opinion . .. . heck, don’t even form an opinion, much less offer it. Catch yourself when you’re rushing like a caffeinated hamster. Be aware that you’re ready to honk at the gum pedal in front you a nanosecond after the light turns green.

Now, here’s where the war metaphor gets a little wobbly. You don’t do this in neat little steps like some PowerPoint slide. It’s all at once: rockets blazing, paratroopers landing, infantry charging. In a real war, you’d frag your own guys with that approach, but up here in the skull, it’s the only way. All three, right now. Kick the left hemisphere, nurture the right, practice both throughout the day.