16 Facts About Left Handed People

“You really have two left feet.”

The left half of our body is often associated with negativity.  But, did you know that left handed people are faster when typing, for instance?  Some of the most used letters – A, E, R, S, T – are placed on the left side of the keyboard, that’s what makes lefties faster typers.

Did you know that left hander and right handers are not only different in the preferred use of their hands?  The reason is because the left and right cerebral hemispheres process things differently, todays blog is full of facts about left handed people!

Right handers need left handers and vice versa.
The collaboration between both left- and right-handed people is often particularly fruitful, as illustrated by the following anecdote:

On long walks across the desert, there are no points of reference at all.  If right handers walk alone, trying to maintain one direction, they tend to drift a little towards the left. Because their right leg is usually stronger and, therefore, makes slightly longer strides.   For left handers, it’s the other way round.  On their own, they would all be walking in circles.

This is why Alexander the Great had left and right handers walk side by side during long journeys across the desert.  They automatically corrected each others’ course, walking straight ahead in the end.

This works not only in the desert, but also in the business world… Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer formed a real dream team.  The left hander is responsible for creativity and ideas, the right hander for their implementation.  Left-handed people need to feel safe, while right-handed people take higher risks.  Therefore, a left-handed director and a right-handed camera operator would make the perfect team.

Being conscious about everyone’s needs and accepting the different ways of thinking and acting can pave the way for some truly great inventions, collaborations, etc.

Also Einstein, Bill Gates, Goethe, Churchill, Ghandi, Mozart and Aristoteles were lefties and most likely knew these characteristics all too well:

• • • They love rituals, fixed processes, and have the need to feel safe
    • They love being alone, also enjoy spending time with others, but escape into their own world of thoughts after a certain time
    • They enjoy the company of animals
    • They enjoy silence
    • Their working spaces or apartments are considered artwork
    • While right handers share their experiences, thoughts and feelings with others, left handers often seek refuge in their thoughts and dreams
    • They are optimists and linguistically gifted
    • Their thinking is analytical (also Freud was allegedly left-handed) and strategical. They have big goals and plan everything in detail
    • Unexpected complications in the ever changing present are often perceived as tormenting
    • They build furniture without instructions
    • They are more attracted by colors, constructions and classical music
    • They closely watch their surroundings
    • They come up with all-encompassing ideas and have right handers implement them
    • It’s easier for them to remember faces because they use both cerebral hemispheres for recognition
    • Left-handed people mainly use their right cerebral hemisphere, which is responsible for creativity and the perception of “the big picture”
    • They are driven by intuition, perception, emotions and fantasies

Left or right hander?
Have you been retrained as a child, but would actually have used your left hand for writing?

Take this short test: Clap your hands once.  Which hand is underneath the other?  Your dominant hand usually is the upper one.  This means left-handed people clap their left hand into their right one.

Or try out how left/right handed you are:

Luckily, nowadays children aren’t retrained anymore by binding their left hand to their back as they were in the past.  Things have changed!

Fun fact: There are still are several tribes in Ghana where lefties can’t become tribal leaders.

Whether left hander or right hander, people can’t be judged EXCLUSIVELY by their handedness.  Too many other factors, like talent, education, environmental influences, learned skills, experiences, etc. are also impactful.  Handedness is used as an assessment criterion in the research of personality structures, not for typological purposes.  It does, in part, determine our attitude, way of thinking and actions, yet handedness is by way not the only important factor here.

P.S.:  Parents shouldn’t press rattles or spoons in their babies’ right or left hand, but hold or place them right in front of their children and let them decide themselves.

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