OUR BRAIN’S TEAM : THE FOUR CHARACTERS
The unsung beauty of the split-brain experiments that I described in the last chapter is that they support with convincing neuroanatomical evidence the existence of the Four Characters. Surgically separating our two brain hemispheres has scientifically shown us that they are not simply two anatomically separate halves of a whole. Instead, the two halves of our brain house completely different character profiles that each exhibit unique wants, dreams, interests, and desires. (Just imagine what pearls of wisdom we might have gleaned if Gazzaniga had chosen to give a Myers-Briggs test to each of the hemispheres of those commissurotomy patients.)
For some reason that I am unsure of, modern science has backpedaled away from many of the insights we gained from the split-brain research of the ’70s, specifically concerning the diverse and often antagonistic characters residing in each half of our brain. Perhaps this idea faded simply as collateral damage when scientists rushed in to squelch the exaggerated public hype. Or perhaps not everyone, including the scientists involved, was cognizant of their own multiplicity of personality, and as a result those original seeds of knowledge did not receive the water they required for future growth.
In the “My Stroke of Insight” TED talk, I purposefully went out on a limb when I stated, “Our two cerebral hemispheres think about different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.” Be it a popular idea or not, I am bringing buckets of water to revive this very important conversation.
HOW YOUR FOUR CHARACTERS THINK AND FEEL
Here is a brief list of some of the attributes exhibited by the Left Thinking Character 1 and Right Thinking Character 4 parts of our brain. Notice that these two thinking characters are virtually opposite in how they perceive and process information:
Left ThinkingCharacter 1
Right ThinkingCharacter 4
(Serial Processor) (Parallel Processor)
Verbal Nonverbal
Thinks in language Thinks in pictures
Thinks linearly Thinks experientially
Past/future based Present moment–based
Analytical Kinesthetic/body
Focuses on details Looks holistically at the big picture
Seeks differences Seeks similarities
Judgmental Compassionate
Punctual Lost in the flow of time
Individual Collective
Concise/precise Flexible/resilient
Fixed Open to possibilities
Focus on ME Focus on WE
Busy Available
Conscious Unconscious
Structure/order Fluid/flow
Here is a brief list of some of the attributes exhibited by our Left Emotional Character 2 and Right Emotional Character 3 parts of our brain. Notice that these two emotional characters are also virtually opposite in how they feel when they experience emotion:
Left Emotional
Character 2
Right EmotionalCharacter 3
Constricted Expansive
Rigid Open
Cautious Risk taking
Fear based Fearless
Stern Friendly
Loves conditionally Loves unconditionally
Doubts Trusts
Bullies Supports
Righteous Grateful
Manipulates Goes with the flow
Tried and true Creative/innovative
Independent Collective
Selfish Sharing
Critical Kind
Superior/inferior Equality
Right/wrong, good/bad Contextual
In Part II of this book, we will take a much deeper dive into the skill sets and personalities of these Four Characters. I will not only help you identify each of these characters inside of yourself, but we will explore how your Four Characters can work together to become a healthy team inside of your brain. In Part III we will observe the Four Characters in action, or as I like to say, “in the wild.” There, we will first take a look at how the Four Characters view their relationship with our body and then get a glimpse at how they each interact predictably in romantic relationships. Because it is our ultimate goal to create more connection and consequently greater health within ourselves and with others, we will take a peek at how devastating addiction can be to our Four Characters, and gain some insight into why it is that recovery may be effective for one person and not another. From there we will look at the evolution of the Four Characters over the last 100 years, and the profound impact that new technologies have had on the different generations.
As we go along in Part II, for clarity’s sake I will share with you the name that I have chosen for each of my Four Characters, along with some of the things I know about her. I do this in an attempt to help you better relate to and identify that specific character inside of yourself. I believe it is vital that you take ownership of your own Four Characters, which is why I have chosen to not give each of these characters a generalized name other than Character 1, 2, 3, and 4. I think it is really important that you spend a little time contemplating a name for each of your Four Characters that is meaningful to you.
With naming your characters, please feel free to be as tame and proper or as absolutely outrageous as you want to be. Some folks have chosen names of their parents or friends, while others have selected mythological or fictional designations. Feel free to use a derivative of your own name or something completely off the wall. The point here is that you choose a name that will bring that character full force into the forefront of your mind when you refer to it.
Anatomically, each of us has a whole brain, and we each have all Four Characters. You may find, however, that one of your Four Characters may be dominating, or another part may rarely show up. If it turns out that you absolutely cannot identify with any of the Four Characters, you might ask your spouse, or a trusted friend, if they know that part of you. Please note that although we all exhibit thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we are
not proud of, none of our Four Characters is bad, wrong, or not worthy of our love and respect. In addition, it is not unusual that our perspective of ourselves is different from how others view us. Hopefully, whatever insights you gain will prove to be an important tool for your own personal growth.
YOUR BRAIN TEAM AND YOUR POWER TO CHOOSE
We have seen how these Four Characters are the natural by-product of our brain hemispheres’ cells, circuits, and functional modules of thinking and emotional tissue, but what does this mean for you in your daily life? Just think about it. Does a day go by when you don’t experience an intrapersonal conflict? Our two hemispheres value completely different things, so when your heart says one thing and your head says another, it is simply a dispute between the different parts of your brain. For example, a conflict between your right and left thinking characters might look something like this: “Do I take that job in a new city that pays more and is an obvious promotion (left-brain thinking values)?” or “Do I keep my current job so my children can stay in a familiar school and stay connected to their friends and family (right-brain thinking values)?”
Similarly, a conflict between your right and left emotional characters might sound like this: “That person hurt me so badly, I just want to get even and hurt them back (left-brain emotional values)” or “I’ll just send that person love from afar, and create the time and space away from them that I need, so my heart can heal and I can move on with grace (right-brain emotional values).”
In each of these instances, knowing which characters are engaged in the dialogue, and what their motivating factors are, enables us to make conscious choices about who and how we want to be.
As you become proficient at identifying your Four Characters and learn to appreciate and value the skill set that each brings to your life, you will be able to make this choice more consciously and deliberately. However, just knowing your Four Characters is not enough. The ultimate goal is for your Four Characters to become so familiar with one another that they create healthy relationships among themselves. Once this happens, your Four Characters will collectively function as a healthy team that is armed with all of your genius and natural abilities.
Teammates in any situation—like a sports team on the field or a team of colleagues at work—will call a quick “huddle” to assess a situation and strategize their next moves. Your brain team, made up of your Four Characters, can huddle together at any moment to analyze what is going on in your life and then collectively decide who and how you want to be in the next circumstance.
Following up on that, in Part II not only will we explore the Four Characters in detail, but I will share with you a five-step process that I call the Brain Huddle, whereby we consciously take a pause, call all Four Characters into our awareness, and then together as a team contemplate our next best move. I will encourage you to practice the Brain Huddle in everyday moments so you can train your brain to make important decisions swiftly and skillfully. If you are willing to train your Four Characters to function as a team during the benign moments of your life, when you are in duress you will have that skill available.
For now, here is a quick preview of the steps we will take to do a Brain Huddle:
Breathe and focus on your breath. This enables you to hit the pause button, interrupt your emotional reactivity, and bring your mind to the present moment with a focus on yourself.
Recognize which of the Four Characters’ circuitry you are running in the present moment.
Appreciate whichever character you find yourself exhibiting, and appreciate the fact that you 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 your new reality, with all Four Characters bringing their best game.
You will no doubt realize that these five steps of the Brain Huddle spell out “B-R-A-I-N.” While I, of course, think this acronym is adorable, it also has a real purpose: to help you quickly remember the steps when the
pressure is on and your Character 2’s stress circuitry is running on overdrive. In moments like those, when you can barely think because the chemicals of anxiety or fear are flooding through your bloodstream and overwhelming your circuitry, this B-R-A-I-N acronym can beam like a bright neon light, reminding you of the steps you can take to call your brain team together so you can find your way back into the peace of your right brain.
This process of the Brain Huddle whereby we can consciously and deliberately bring all Four Characters into the conversation is both powerful and empowering. We have the ability to interrupt the automatic circuitry of our emotional reactivity and consciously choose which of the Four Characters we want to have as dominant in any moment. Knowing our Four Characters and being able to recognize them in others enables us to interact more authentically in a whole-brain way. We have the power to purposely build healthy and healing relationships with others.
YOUR HERO’S JOURNEY TO PEACE
As I noted in Chapter 1, this journey you are embarking on as you get to know your Four Characters and learn how to integrate them into your brain team is a mirror of the Hero’s Journey in Joseph Campbell’s classic monomyth. In addition, it is worth noting that the Four Characters coincide distinctly with Carl Jung’s four major archetypes of the unconscious mind: Character 1—the Persona; Character 2—the Shadow; Character 3—the Animus/Anima; and Character 4—the True Self.
In the classic story of the Hero’s Journey, the hero heeds the call to leave behind his rational, ego-based consciousness that processes the reality of the external world. In the language of the Four Characters, the hero must step out of the ego-based consciousness of his Character 1 left thinking brain to enter into the unconscious realm of his right brain. To embark upon this quest, the hero must be willing to let go of his possessions and worldly knowledge and embrace the death of his ego’s individuality. To paraphrase Einstein, we must be willing to give up what we are, in order to become what we will be.
As you might imagine, this is an enormous task for the hero to undertake, which is why, of course, he is described as heroic. He must be willing to set aside everything he has acquired and grown up to be. (Much like the journey of the Buddha, who famously set aside his position and worldly possessions in order to grasp the true nature of reality and attain enlightenment.) But once the hero chooses to shed the rational, ego-based individuality of his left brain, he enters into the realm of his unconscious right brain, where he will meet the Anima/Animus, the androgynous nature of his soul. The hero cannot be both characters—his individual and collective selves—in the same moment. He must lay down the justicedemanding judgment of his dominating left brain (Characters 1 and 2) if he is to embody the merciful characters of his compassionate right brain (Characters 3 and 4).
When we are born, we have no sense of individuality, and our two brain hemispheres are similar in both their structure and in what they value. Over time, however, our left-brain cells develop the ability to define the physical
boundaries of where we begin and end, and with that identification of self, we gain the ability to perceive ourselves as individuals who are separate from the whole. It is in those moments that the droplet of our left brain’s individual consciousness becomes separate from that sea of cosmic consciousness from which it came. Before the hero’s left-brain ego-cells developed his perception of himself as an individual, he possessed the collective knowledge of his right brain’s unconscious mind. With time, as the individuation of his left brain developed, it grew to dominate and inhibit the knowledge of his right-brain mind. Consequently, the cosmic consciousness of his right brain shifted into the background, becoming his unconscious intuition.
It is said that in that moment when the hero lays down the sword of his left-brain righteousness and ego, he is emancipated from his left-brain individuality, dissolving back into the cosmic consciousness of the universe from which he originated. Like the droplet returning to the sea, the hero is instantly enveloped by the blissful euphoria of the eternal love that his soul once knew before he was born. Like the great whale that he had forgotten he was, his soul returns to gliding through the sea of silent euphoria at One with all that is.
Once the hero has battled his fear of death and all the other left-brain monsters he had been clinging to throughout his everyday life, he is now free to gain the insights of his heroic quest while enveloped in the wisdom of his euphoric right brain. At this point, however, the hero must choose to either return home and share his hard-won whole-brain knowledge or keep for himself the lessons he has gleaned. Returning home, he is different now, and it is his challenge to figure out how to live a balanced life in the external world while remaining aware of both his conscious and unconscious characters and their conflicting values.
The Four Characters, as I outline them in this book, provide a neuroanatomical road map of the time-tested paradigm of Jung’s Four Archetypes. Like a house with four rooms, two upstairs and two downstairs, our brain is the home of all of these Four Characters. With minimal effort, we can train ourselves to identify each of them within our own psyche, purposefully create healthy relationships between them, and then let them collectively, as our brain team, lead our lives in peace.
If you are willing to pause and recognize what is already going on inside of your brain, if you are game to observe how you present yourself under
different circumstances, and if you are prepared to bring your presentmoment awareness to your current thinking and emotional patterns, you will be well on your way to living a life of choice. I invite you to embark upon your own Hero’s Journey as you explore the Four Characters inside your conscious and unconscious whole-brain hemispheres.
Peace really is just a thought away.
A NOTE TO YOUR FOUR CHARACTERS
As you continue through this book, to each of your Four Characters I say this:
Left Thinking Character 1
My message to your Character 1:
Breathe. Be open. Exhale. I dare you to finish this book. Feel free tojudge this material with caution, but please do it with an open mind. Iknow you are going to be focused on my typos or errors in semantics,but if you allow yourself to look beyond those details, you will berewarded with tools you can use to create more order in your worldand obtain a greater feeling of connection with those around you.
Titles your Character 1 might give this book:
Know Your Brain, Own Your Power
Control Your Brain: Live Your Best Life
Your Success Starts in Your Brain
The Why behind Emotional Intelligence
What your Character 1 might say about this book after reading it:
“Left brain, right brain, breathe.”
“I’ll be damned, those other parts of me actually have value.”
Left Emotional Character 2
My message to your Character 2:
It’s okay. You are not going to like this, and it’s still okay. I hear you.You matter. You are the voice of alarm that protects us all, and as suchyou are an important part of the whole. This material will help theother characters better understand you, keep you safe, and value you.You are indispensable, as you are our growth edge. Without yourguidance, we cannot stay safe and we cannot evolve into our bestselves or live our best life.
Titles your Character 2 might give this book:
Feelings Matter
Your Feelings Are Valid
Master Your Pain
We Are Feeling Creatures Who Think
What your Character 2 might say about this book after reading it:
“It’s okay for me to feel what I’m feeling.”
“I can be happy. I can accept. I know why I feel the way I do. I matter. I am okay. I feel empowered. I am the key to living our best life.”
Right Emotional Character 3
My message to your Character 3:
Of course this book is available on audio! You can stay in actionand enjoy this book too. I know you would rather go do somethingreally exciting right now, but if you are willing to grasp this materialand incorporate it into your life, the other characters will recognizehow important you are and give you more time for play andinnovation.
Titles your Character 3 might give this book:
My Brain Is Super Cool
The We inside of Me Are Total Rock Stars!
Four Play
Our Brain: The Whole Enchilada
What your Character 3 might say about this book after reading it:
“Life is better than I even imagined.”
“I love being connected to us all.”
Right Thinking Character 4
My message to your Character 4:
Here lies the key for you to unlock all that keeps you small andcontained in this life. You are our connection to our Higher Power, asyou are clear that it is our number one job to love one another. Not justthose outside of ourselves, but the various characters within. Thismaterial will help your left-brain characters find the balance betweenwhat they do and who they are. You are the peace that is just a thought
away.
Titles your Character 4 might give this book:
Free to Be You
We Are the Life-Force Power
Befriend Your Brain
Peace Is Just a Thought Away
What your Character 4 might say about this book after reading it:
“We are One.”
“Keep reading . . . the jelly is in the center of the donut for a reason.”
CHAPTER 4