Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is an author, speaker, and Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. You may remember her from her Ted Talk (viewed by over 27 mm people) and her NY Times best-selling book, My Stroke of Insight, A Brain Scientists Journey. In this book, she chronicles the experience of her rare stroke at the age of 37. She lost her ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her past. It took eight years for her to rebuild her brain — to recover all physical, emotional, and thinking abilities.

Her second book is called Whole Brain Living, The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. In this book, she blends neuroanatomy with psychology to illustrate how we can short-circuit emotional reactivity to lead a more fulfilling and peaceful life. Most of us have been led to believe that our right brain houses our emotions and the left brain our rational thinking. Jill shares that it’s not that simple. Each of our hemispheres has both an emotional and a thinking brain. In this book, she presents these four distinct modules of cells in the brain as four characters that make up who we are. She presents a whole new language that we can use to understand our behaviors, feelings, and emotions.

In this discussion, she introduces us to the 4 characters and offers ways we can find more peace in our daily lives and create healthier relationships.

The more we become familiar with each of the characters in ourselves and others, the more power we gain over our thoughts, feelings, relationships, and our lives. Indeed, she says, we discover that we really do have the power to choose who and how we want to be in every moment.