Growing up I came from a highly technical household.  I was always taught how to analyze objects and fix their parts if necessary.  Some people call that skill being a mechanic, but I find that it is really just a life skill that most people need.  This is one of those things that can potentially be linked to a side of your brain.  Most people who are like me seem to be “left-brained.”  What are some traits of a left-brained person you ask?  Well, for starters we tend to be very analytic and logical.  This naturally leads us to be stronger in math and science but weak in other subjects such as art and any other creative subject.  Now, normally people are born like this, with an affinity for a certain half of their brain.  This is generally the case, but there are some people that change over time.

Most of the time this is caused by an injury but there are other cases of people changing the way they think spontaneously during their life.  The latter is what happened with me.  When I was young (under the age of 6) I was always drawing pictures and painting and creating stories to tell people.  This is generally linked with the right side of your brain so people like this are dubbed “right-brained.”  After I turned 6 my dad finally decided it was time for me to help him work on our cars.

From that point on there was a lot less creative side of me and a lot more of the calculated analytic side.  Why was this car making a squeaking noise?  Maybe it was the serpentine belt or an accessory belt or the clutch.  There is no creativity just a checklist.  Even now that I am in college I am still awful at drawing and poetry.  So, as a kid, I was transformed from a right-brained person to a left-brained person.  It was almost similar to a Skinner-Box where I was trained to think a certain way.

I was used to being creative, and through working on cars and the house as a kid I was acclimated to being analytical about everything.  Why did the house make that creaking noise?  As a kid I would have dubbed it a ghost but now I would just say it was the wind moving the structure or simply a squeaky floorboard.  This is just proving what we learned about the Skinner box.  With enough repetition and rewards one can be trained to act and even think in a different way.