Linda Pastam wrote a marvelous poem called “Driving West” in which these lines appear:

We are the pioneers

of our own histories, drawn

to the horizon as if it waited just for us

the way the young are drawn

to the future, the old to the past.

“…the way the young are drawn to the future, the old to the past.”

I need you to hold those words tightly in your hands, even though they wriggle and thrash like slippery fishes anxious to escape your unfamiliar fingers and return to the quiet darkness where they can breathe water and feel entirely at home.

Hold on to those words.

Dr. Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of the differences between the two hemispheres of our brains.

One half of your brain puts you in touch with this Present Moment in this Real World.

The other half puts you in touch with the Past and the Future in that mystical – magical – hallucinatory unreliable World of Imagination.

Dr. Sperry discovered that what appears to a brain divided into two halves could more accurately be described as two separate, competing brains.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Sperry said,

“Each brain half appeared to have its own, largely separate, cognitive domain with its own private perceptual, learning and memory experiences, all of which were seemingly oblivious of corresponding events in the other hemisphere.”

Dr. Sperry later said,

“Each hemisphere of the brain is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting,mental experiences that run along in parallel.”

Regardless of which half you prefer, both halves are equally important.

One half of your brain puts you in touch with This world.

The other half puts you in touch with Possible worlds.

One half puts you in touch with the sciences.

The other half puts you in touch with the arts.

Now let’s get back to those wriggling fish that I asked you to hold.

The Future to which the young are drawn, and the Past to which the old are attracted, are different time zones in the world of imagination.

The young live in the brightness of the noonday sun. The old live in the twilight and remember the light of day.

Most Americans attempt to persuade each other with facts. We do this because we trust Science and we worship Mathematics, and that is why we write such terrible ads.

Most of us, most of the time, trust our instincts.

We trust our intuitive hearts.

This is what Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman described as System 1 or “Thinking Fast” in his book, “Thinking Fast and Slow.”

Behavioral scientists estimate that roughly 90% to 95% of our daily decisions are made automatically and unconsciously using System 1 thinking.

Most people don’t want to admit it.

In fact, most people refuse to accept it.

But the scientific truth is that we make at least nine-tenths our decisions in that half of the brain where the darkwater fish glimmer effortlessly and thoughtlessly, silver and gold in the moonlight.

Study the arts. Learn to win the heart.

If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.

Roy H. Williams

Paul Kesig uses the acronym L.O.V.E. to encapsulate his approach to sales.

L is for celebrating Little wins.

O is for asking Open-ended questions.

V is for creating and communicating Value.

E is for building an Emotional connection.

Paul says that pairing love with sales strikes many people as contradictory. This is usually because their experiences with bad salespeople have taught them to truly hate the sales process.

Listen in as Paul explains to roving reporter Rotbart that those who have adopted his approach have quickly discovered that L.O.V.E. really can spell success; MondayMorningRadio.com