On the Sweetening Power of Meaning

By Christine Carron

Continuing our Whole Brain Thinking series, today we will explore one of the most powerful applications of the model: helping you to situationally shift into less preferred modes of thinking, i.e., helping you do things that you don’t like doing. An application which may leave you scratching your head. Is she really telling us to do things we don’t enjoy doing? Isn’t the Goodjelly mission about expanding writerly confidence, equilibrium, and joy?

Do not fear. Goodjelly is still about the joy. It’s also about supporting your success on the writerly adventure. Sometimes doing things we don’t like doing will help us big time. It’s the medicine we need to improve our writing, our stories, our querying, our critiquing, or our whatever.

What often happens when we do something we don’t want to do is that we slide into Should-n-Suffer mode. I should be doing this. So I must suffer through it. Should-n-Suffer is not a recommended Goodjelly protocol. And our Thinking Preferences can help us ditch the suffering and find the sweet, i.e., the proverbial spoonful of sugar for the medicine we need and want.

The secret to getting the sugar is in the meaning we assign to something.

We’ve used plotting as a recurring focus in this series. Let’s stick with that. If you struggle (are suffering) with plotting, you might have a lower preference in the Green/lower left quadrant. Plotting is about organizing, planning, containing the infinite possibilities of a story.

Which could lead to Should-n-Suffer mode for anyone without strong Green preferences.

Let’s imagine someone who has a crazy strong preference for the Blue/Upper Left mode of thinking and an extremely low preference in Green/Lower Right thinking. This person finds plotting tedious. They currently have six binders chaotically bursting with research notes for their nonfiction picture book.

If this person tries to convince themselves to plot just because they are supposed to plot or organize or get orderly about what they are doing–i.e., all Green meanings/justifications for plotting, they may get to the plotting, but it won’t be fun and no fun equals more struggle.

But what would happen if that person spoke to themselves about plotting in Blue language/meaning? Talking about the efficiency of plotting. Getting real about the facts: they have over 1,200 pages of research for a book that by industry standards will be 250-700 words. Is that rational? Logical?

Now we are getting into sweeter motivations for a person with a strong Blue preference to dive into plotting. Why? Because it is framed in a way that aligns with what they value, i.e., their preferences. Those same plotting meanings/considerations would not necessarily be sweet for someone with a super strong Red or Yellow preference.

We can always add more joy to an activity that we know will serve us when we find a way to align it with our own values and preferences. The tedious becomes motivating. The dreaded filled with pleasure. Sweet!

The Goodjelly Prompt of the Week

Using the chart below that lists the Strengths of each quadrant in the Herrmann Whole Brain Model:

1. Imagine what would be sweetening meanings about plotting for someone with a high Red preference or a high Yellow preference.
2. Identify a writerly activity that you don’t enjoy. How could you change the meaning of doing that task so it more aligns with your preferences?

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Whole Brain Thinking Quadrant Strengths*

*Source: Herrmann Global, LLC