[JCavilia]

Not that it matters, but don't you have your left and right reversed? On drop-bar road bikes, the right hand shifts the rear der and the left hand shifts the front. (Just curious ... I have virtually no experience with flat-bar bikes or MTB bikes.)

With STI- or Ergo-type levers, one mnemonic is that the physically bigger lever shifts to a physically bigger chain ring or cog; and vice-versa. Don't know if visualizing it that way would work for you.

I could be wrong, but I think he has a flat-bar bike with trigger shifters like a MTB. So I don't know how those go. In any event, as we all know, it takes no more than an hour or two of riding for those things to become second nature.