One of my favorite humorists talks about differences among people who are left brain or right brain. I decided to see which I am.
If you’ve never heard of Jeanne Robertson, do yourself a favor and check out her YouTube channel. One of the things she discusses is whether someone is more left brain or right brain.
Robertson is a professional speaker who holds speaking tours nationwide — or at least, she did before COVID-19. I hope to see her show in person some day. But in the meantime, I check in on her YouTube channel from time to time. Once before, I shared a video of a story she told about sending her husband, whom she affectionately calls “Left Brain,” to the grocery store. (It didn’t go so well, but it’s a funny story!)
She also tells a story about a Garth Brooks concert she was invited to attend. She invited her husband to fly to Arizona to see the concert with her, but he didn’t seem to realize who Brooks was, despite liking some of his music!
Before she gets to the story, she offers a quick description to help decide if you’re left brain or right brain.
She described going to a family wedding with her husband early in their own marriage. Since they had a week off, she decided they would “meander” their way to the wedding, taking a more scenic route.
That, she says, is how a right brain person thinks.
“We’ll see a picnic table and we’ll just stop,” she told him.
“Where will we get the food?” he answered.
“Don’t worry about the food,” she said.
To put a finer point on it, she said left brain people (like her husband), like things in order.
“Right brain people, when we hear the word order, we’re waiting on food,” she says.
You can watch the entire video — which I highly recommend — here:
There are times when I can relate to the things she says she would do. But there are also times when I can definitely relate to things she says her husband would do.
So where does that leave me?
I decided to take a test to find out.
Actually, I took several tests, just to see how the results might compare.
The first test, from mentalup.co, gave me results I couldn’t agree with at all: It claimed I was 87.5% right brain and only 12.5% left brain. Sure, I’m a creative type, something I hope longtime readers of this blog might already know. But I also like at least some degree of order.
(And I think more than 12.5% of my brain appreciates some degree of order.)
So I took a few other versions of the test.
The brain test over at Sommer-Sommer.com congratulated me for using both sides equally. It said I’m 53% left brain and 47% right brain.
The test at openpsychometrics.com said I was slightly right-brained, but almost dead center.
I don’t know that the test results tell you a great deal of useful information. I’ve read that there’s a lot of disagreement over what it means when you test left brain or right brain. (Or whether it means much of anything at all.)
But it’s at least interesting to think about how we think.
I invite you to take the test and see what you come up with!
