On the other hand

Use your WRONG hand sometimes: if only to feel how good you are with your right hand. And to teach your brain something new, about something old.

Do it to feel the world differently. Start small. Brush your teeth with your other hand. Wash a pan with your other hand.

Then take a bigger step. Learn to play ping pong with your other hand (it’s pretty easy). You won’t make the Olympic team with this strategy but you do open yourself up to the possibility to one day say to your ping-ponent what Inigo Montoya said to the Man in Black in the Princess Bride movie “I admit it you are better than I am.” “Then why are you smiling?” your ping-ponent will say “Because I know something you don’t know. I am not left handed.” And then you unleash your right hand mad-skills and win the match. Unless, as in the movie, your ping-ponent says “I am not left-handed either.” Then you are on your own, but with slightly better overall hand eye coordination, and a slightly new experience of the world.

Extra: I tried reaching my boys how to throw a football and found it really hard to explain the motion they needed with my right arm and shoulder. Then I realized there was a teaching tool hanging off my left shoulder; and I learned, with them, how to throw a football, this time with my left arm.

Putting yourself in another’s arm socket is a sure-fire way to understand better how to communicate with them in a way they will surely understand.