If You Can't See It, You Can't Achieve?It

Think about the car that you drive right now. 

Who makes it?

What year is it?

What color?

When did you buy it?

Ok, now think about the day that you bought it. You probably felt great, you felt accomplished and you were excited to drive around. As you were driving, you see cars passing by and there goes the same car driving past you. You pull up to a red light and there’s another one sitting right next to you. You continue on and pull into a parking lot only to find yourself parking your new car next to the same exact one.

What’s happening here? Why does everyone all of a sudden drive the same car? Was there a special sale? How could this happen?

The truth is, they have always been there you just didn’t notice.

Your Reticular Activating System (RAS) wasn’t conscious of the car beforehand but now it is.

Your RAS is a bundle of nerves at our brain stem that acts as a gate keeper. It filters out irrelevant information and allows relevant information into our awareness.

Before you bought that car, that information was irrelevant so your RAS didn’t find the information important enough to make you aware whereas now that you have the car, it does.

This same principle can be applied to other areas of your life as well…

Your RAS takes what you focus on and creates a filter for it. You see, our mind and body gravitates towards what is known, what is comfortable. When you think of something enough, your mind can’t separate that belief from reality and two things happen:

1. Your RAS takes what you are focusing on and creates a filter for it. For example: if you’re trying to work with a particular organization, you may start seeing their logo around you more, you may find out that your uncle’s friend works there and that you’re old college friend is the hiring manager. All of these things were true beforehand, yet you never knew because your RAS didn’t know it was important to you until you made the decision to want to work with them. Your RAS sifts through all the data throughout your day and only presents pieces that are important to you and all this happens without you noticing.
2. The more you think about something, the more you are able to work towards it because your mind is increasing its comfort with that particular thing. Remember, your mind goes to what’s comfortable and the more you think about something, the more your mind will find comfort and achieving that thing.

When you believe in something that you want to accomplish, the RAS immediately starts working to filter all the experiences that will help shape that into your reality. You’ll start identifying people and organizations that need your product or service that previously weren’t at the top of your mind.

The problem is that your RAS can work against you as well. If you constantly think of reasons why you can’t do something or the obstacles that are in the way, your RAS will constantly put those things in your consciousness. If you wake up worried and stressed, your RAS will continue to identify stressful occurrences and people to your life.

You’re not attracting positive or negative situations in your day to day, your RAS is just bringing them to your forefront based on what it thinks you want to see and hear and it bases that decision based on what you’re thinking.

Why do some people always seem to be positive in such a negative world we live in today? 

Why do some people always seem to be negative in such a positive world we live in today?

See, both of those statements can be true depending on what your outlook is.

If you want to see the good in the world, your RAS will help you find it. If you want to see the bad in the world, the same is true. So what that means to me is that you have a choice. You can choose what you want your RAS to focus on and bring into your life. So if you have a choice, why would you ever choose to have negative things around you?

Now that this has been brought into the forefront of your life, put it into practice. Do it each and every day. Set up alarms, reminders, sticky notes, whatever you need to make this work and remind yourself to do it.

Start believing in what you can accomplish and opportunities will appear in front of you that were always there…