Shake Up Your Routine: Fun Ways to Stimulate Your Right Brain

We tend to get stuck in our daily routines, leaning heavily on the analytical left side of our brains. But giving the creative right side of your brain some exercise can bring fresh ideas, new solutions, and valuable innovations. So how exactly can you shake up your routine and tap into the power of your right brain? Incorporating music, art, imagination exercises, humor, and games into education are examples of right brain education methods that develop creative potential.

Engage Your Senses

A great way to shift from left brain to right is to stimulate your senses through art, music and imagery. Visit an art museum or gallery and observe the paintings, photographs and sculptures. How do they make you feel or what do they inspire in you? Put on music that is outside your usual genre and pay attention to the instruments, tempo and emotions the song evokes. Look through visually striking magazines or books with lots of color photographs. Really engaging your senses helps activate creative connections in your right brain.

Try Unconventional Arts and Crafts

Arts and crafts aren’t just for kids! Dabbling in creative hobbies you’re unfamiliar with gets your right brain sparking with new neural connections. Try pottery, jewelry making, woodworking, collage art…anything that feels new and interesting to you. Don’t worry about judging your work or doing it perfectly. The goal is simply to stimulate and unlock fresh ideas. Incorporating concentration exercises for students like mindful coloring, memory games, and puzzles also activates unique neural connections.

Play Brain Games

Some specific types of games and puzzles are great for engaging the right side of your brain. Spatial reasoning activities like mazes and Tetris challenge you to perceive objects in space. Creative word games like Pictionaryand charades get your mental juices flowing in innovative ways. Optical illusions are another way to get the right brain working on overdrive. The novelty of these activities forces unique neural connections you wouldn’t use otherwise.

Change Up Your Environment

Shifting your physical surroundings can immediately give your brain a jolt in perspective. If you always work at your kitchen table, set up in the backyard instead. If you usually practice your instrument in the music room, play it in a different corner of the house. Sometimes a minor change is all we need to stimulate the creative elements in our mind and gain clarity. Exposing your brain to varied environments taps into your childlike beginner’s mind where creativity flows more freely.

By regularly engaging your senses, challenging yourself with unfamiliar creative pursuits, playing right brain games and changing your scenery once in a while, you can exercise and enhance your brain’s creative capacity. Shake up mundane routines and make time for right brain stimulation through workouts like painting, dancing, creative writing, or theater games. Keep your inner innovator active with these right brain workouts and you’ll reap the rewards!