Tag: drawing

I read a lot. A few books, maybe ten, have revealed something so helpful that I believe they actually improved my life. One of those books is an art book–not a self-help book, not a psychology book, not a philosophy book, not a theology book, an art book. The book is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I want to explain why I believe the method of drawing taught in the book is a powerful tool for mental wellness.

In the field of Psychology, especially the Psychology of Mindfulness, researchers have identified two modes of the mind: being mode and doing mode. The mind is in doing mode when it is focused on accomplishing tasks, solving problems. It’s in being mode when it is focused on the experience of the present moment, not trying to accomplish or solve anything.

Both modes have important functions, but in a culture hyper-focused on work, success, status, wealth, and power, the doing mode often dominates. A person can become so obsessed with identifying and solving problems that they forget to spend any time experiencing the present moment. Because of this, their mental health deteriorates, their life feels meaningless or painful. Keeping the mind constantly in doing mode is especially toxic when a problem cannot be immediately solved.

When the doing mode mind encounters a problem that can’t be solved right away, it ruminates. It wants to keep thinking through possible scenarios and solutions over and over. This is very useful when there is a serious problem to solve and a person needs to find the most efficient and effective solution. But it can be detrimental if it starts identifying every little discrepancy or every little piece that’s slightly out of order as a serious problem.

A person can become stuck in the excessive rumination of the doing mode. That certainly disrupts one’s sense of peace, but it can get even worse. It often manifests as neuroses like anxiety, obsessive-compulsion, ADHD, or even depression. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Switching the mind into being mode can disrupt that cycle, giving the person a shift in perspective or at least a few moments of peace.

Those moments of peace aren’t the only good thing about being mode. Being mode means experiencing the richness of the present moment. If reality is important, then experiencing the present moment is important. Living in the past is living in a memory, which is not the most realistic representation of an experience–memories become distorted and skewed. Living in the future is living in a prediction, which is not the most realistic representation either because the mind often makes unrealistic predictions.

The most realistic experience we have is the present moment. Reality happens in the present moment. It’s good to experience it sometimes. As the wise Ferris Bueller famously said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Stopping and looking around is what the mind is doing when it’s in being mode.

Getting the mind into being mode is one of the main goals of mindfulness training, and the evidence of its benefits for mental health keep stacking up–reductions in anxiety and depression, lower blood pressure, and improved sleep. But mindfulness training isn’t the only way to get the mind into being mode.

The whole idea of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is to draw exactly what you see. To do that, you have to stop and look. You have to look intently. You have to notice the lines that separate parts of what you see, the angles of those lines, the distances between the lines, their colors, the colors within their bounds, the lightness and darkness of the colors, etc. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is about seeing what’s in front of you not as a symbol or a word (for example, beginning drawers often draw noses as triangles or eyes as circles) but as it actually is.

Seeing things as they actually are can be difficult. The left side of the mind interprets what we see into symbols so that the mind doesn’t have to put so much energy into understanding what is happening, and instead can use that energy in doing mode, solving problems. The exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain are designed to switch off the left side of the brain, allowing the right side to take the reigns.

I believe that drawing this way, like practicing mindfulness, switches the mind into being mode. And the more one practices doing that, the more able they are to switch the mind into being mode on demand.

Not every creative outlet can boast such positive mental health benefits. The massive number of artists with mental health issues is evidence of that. My own experience has been the same. I’ve been creative for almost my entire life, but I haven’t always been mentally healthy. Drawing with the right side of the brain, though, seems special. Not only does it get the mind focused on the present experience, it shows us that there are ways of being creative that can promote mental health.

This is great news. For many of us, especially those of us who enjoy being creative, drawing is a fun way to exercise our mind’s being mode.

The bad news is that sitting down to draw in the first place isn’t always easy. In a world so full of distractions, focusing on drawing what you see for a few minutes can be difficult. The benefits, though, are real. It means being able to experience life instead of getting lost in negative thoughts about what has happened or what might happen.

I highly recommend giving Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain a try. Just read a couple chapters and you’ll start to understand how to do it. Then, if it’s too hard to draw for fifteen minutes a day, start with five. After a while, your ability to focus your mind on the present moment will strengthen. And the benefits of doing that, of switching the mind into being mode, are numerous. The peace of a focused, present mind is just a couple drawings away.