Leading a healthy, happy, successful life depends on both [the left and right brain].I am someone who is very much high concept and high touch, because as Pink says, I can detect patterns and opportunities, create artistic and emotional beauty, craft a satisfying narrative (I try at least), combine unrelated ideas into something new, empathize with others, understand subtleties of human interaction, find joy in myself and try to bring it out in others and search for purpose and meaning BUT I also tend to analyze details instead of seeing the big picture.
As Part One continued on, I continued finding connections, especially when Pink began talking about jobs going to Asia. When I was working as a graphic designer at the Springfield News-Leader during undergrad, our creative department began sending out some of our basic designs to a company in India. It didn't put any of us out of a job, but since the time I left Springfield and the News-Leader, they have sent more and more work out to this company. Because they were creating advertisements with English text, there were quite a few issues, but those same workers, and others in Asia, are definite competition for the "Knowledge Leaders" here in the U.S. As Pink states, India's colleges and universities produce 350,000 engineering graduates each year, and those graduates are willing to work for $14,000 a year; it's no wonder American companies keep outsourcing jobs overseas.
I loved Pink's message in the Play chapter. As I mentioned in class today, I got to participate in a laughter club during my time student teaching at Hickman with a teacher named Jana Fick. She utilized many of Madan Kataria's laughing techniques including the "Lion Laugh." I can tell you from experience, it's IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO LAUGH. As Pink said, at first you might just be going through the motions, but then you start laughing at how ridiculous you sound doing that, and then—Oh my goodness—you're REALLY LAUGHING! There are other ways to incorporate Play into the workplace, and Pink's reasoning for why Play is important at work is this:
When you are playful, you are activating the right side of your brain. The logical brain is a limited brain. The right side is unlimited. You can be anything you want.Creating Play and laughter in the workplace is something my principal at Benton has done very well. One of my first experiences with my fellow teachers was a series of team building activities put on by Venture Out at MU. Some of the things we had to do were figure out how to get everyone on our team across a "river of lava" when you can only safely cross the river while wearing a hard hat, there is only one hard hat, AND you can only cross the river one time. Activities like this helped us to quickly build community in a fun and relaxed way. To keep up the fun atmosphere at Benton, we also had morning huddles. Not only is the huddle the time to get necessary information for that particular day/week they also included random dance parties to Gagnam Style just to get the day started off right. If what Pink says is true, I work in a building (and am in a class) full of creative people, because
Laughing people are more creative people.
I really like the idea of a laughter club, I feel like my awkwardness would make a small barrier for me but once I got through that it would make a better day for me,
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