Brain Food for Writers

Brain Food for Writers

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
—Albert Einstein


As writers, whether we're using the left brain (logical, factual, detail-oriented) or the right brain (feelings, imagination, symbols and images) good brain health is vital to our creativity.

Speaking of left brain/right brain . . . actually, it's better to have an integrated brain so we can use both hemispheres at once. If all this sounds a little dry and scientific, let me explain how I came to be so interested in having an “integrated brain.”

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Chronic insomnia, thyroid dysfunction, asthma and other ongoing health problems were making it difficult for me to carry on my career as a writer. Add frequent burn-out to the mix and I finally crashed and burned one too many times.

In July 2002 I quit doing writing workshops and let my Website grow cobwebs. Whenever I had some energy, I would try to do projects at home—such as publishing e-books and starting a new chat room for writers. But the burn-out always got the better of me and I would have to quit yet another project.

Being a natural health freak, I tried every supplement and cleansing program under the sun to try to rectify my poor health. But, until the Spring of 2005, I was always coming at it from the wrong angle (I say this, of course, with 20-20 hindsight). I didn't understand that there was one condition underlying all of these seemingly unrelated problems.
During the Spring of '05, my problems with noise sensitivity and stress overload got so bad I don't know how to describe the nightmare. Miraculously, one day on Amazon, I stumbled across a book called Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight that exactly described my problems. The book labels the condition “sensory defensiveness” and the resources section of the book set me off on a journey to heal my nervous system and rewire my brain.

It was a learning curve and not everything I tried worked. But by September my condition was so much improved, I could work 14-hour days building this Website with no sign of burn-out.

Not only that, but for the first time since I was a kid I have abundant energy. Learning to take care of my brain has been a phenomenal turning point in my life.

You don't have to have a condition like sensory defensiveness to benefit from tuning your brain.

-Milli
(see Milli's bio & photo)

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Don't Wait For a Crisis To Learn What I Learned:

1. Slow down. This is your life!
2. Relax.
3. Remember to play.
4. Reevaluate your life frequently. Is it working?
5. Reevaluate your goals. Are they the right ones?
6. Take care of yourself first.
7. Say no. You probably don't have to do most of those things you think you have to do.

-Karin Ireland, author of Learning to Trust Myself: Lessons From Cancer and Other Life Dilemmas