Leverage Your Reticular Activating System

Our brain functions uniquely. When you are sitting in a room or walking on a road, you notice everything without noticing anything in particular. Unless something specific catches your attention or you decide to focus on something specific.

Try this for a simple mental exercise. Wherever you may be right now, close your eyes and visualize what all is there around you in your room. You can broadly recall from memory the different elements that are there around you. But, if someone were to ask you all the red color elements that you noticed just before closing your eyes, you would not be able to say. That is because your mind sees nothing specifically unless you consciously guide it to focus on something.  

Reticular Activating System

When you focus your mind on something, it has this incredible superpower to bring into your conscious awareness anything related to that which focus your mind on. In the world of neuroscience, this power is rooted in your Reticular Activating System (RAS), a bundle of nerves in your brainstem that filters out unnecessary information, just so the important stuff gets through.

When you think of buying a particular car brand, the RAS is why you start observing the same brand everywhere around you. It is also why you can concentrate on the book you are reading while there is a TV blaring music in the background and yet immediately snap to attention when you hear someone calling your name.

I have written about this before. What you focus on you will attract more of that in your life. Focus on the bad, and you will invite negativity into your life. Focus on the good, and good shall appear because your brain is seeking it out. All this is your Reticular Activating system influencing the world you see around you.

Imagination Is The Key

Now, imagine you want to achieve some outcome in the future. When you visualize the outcome in clear and specific terms, your Reticular Activating System channels your focus and awareness in such a way that all the relevant information, ideas, connections necessary for you to get to that imagined outcome will start manifesting.

In yesterday’s blog , I wrote about the power of imagination. When you can imagine with all the clarity what you want something to look like in the future, your Reticular Activating system will get to work.

Something extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.